DUBAI'S DIVAS-IN-TRAINING.(The Talk of the Town)

Anticlimactic as it may have been, the news last week that Meredith Vieira would replace Katie Couric on the "Today" show marked the denouement of a fur-flying, nail-biting, years-long game of musical chairs among television's leading ladies. Several days before the succession drama was resolved, a professor named Bernard Purcell found himself dealing with a similarly delicate logistical challenge, also involving a slew of attractive, ambitious media women. As supervisor of the Communication Technology program at Dubai Women's College, in the United Arab Emirates, Purcell had volunteered to chaperone a delegation of female students--aspiring reporters, newscasters, film directors, and graphic designers--on a fourteen-day visit to New York, as guests of N.Y.U.'s graduate film program. "Moving twenty girls around is hell," Purcell said. It was the first time any of the women had travelled to America. They financed the trip by appealing to the Crown Prince of Dubai.

"We were at a career fair, and Alreem"--a glamorous and fearless third-year--"walked up to the Prince and asked him, in her best Arabic, 'Can you please pay for us to go to New York next year?' " Purcell, a sunburned Australian whom the girls call Papa, said the other day. Alreem Al Tenaiji (nicknamed Fifi) is Purcell's star pupil: she hopes to be a network presenter, and, in fact, with her benevolent yet royal air, she resembles an Emirati Diane Sawyer. On her fifth night in town, she was wearing a luxurious shearling coat, along with gold lame high-tops and jeans embellished with fur cuffs. Her highlighted hair, instead of being covered by a black abaya, as is customary in the U.A.E., was styled in a buoyant blowout.

"What sizes do you have?" Alreem asked a salesgirl after wandering into a vintage boutique near the Washington Square Hotel, where the group was staying. She was holding up a long, neon-yellow dress.

"Um, that's the only size we have," the salesgirl said.

Across the store, a classmate fingered a pair of chandelier earrings. "These have been worn?" she said, before carefully returning them to the rack.

Vintage shopping, it became clear, was an unfamiliar concept for the Dubai women. Their country was founded in 1971, and, as one classmate said, everything there is new. (Another student said of the United Nations, which the group visited, "I think it's really old, right? Like from the nineteen-thirties?") Also remarkable to the visitors were: subways, the preponderance of dogs on the street, break dancers, "the city's wooden houses," Falun Gong protesters, art museums, musicals, the large crowds that go to musicals, Victoria's Secret, the freeeeezing weather, the fact ...