It's A Mad World.(Mad Men, Michael Kors)

The critically acclaimed series Mad Men on AMC fueled Michael Kors's fall/winter collection--imbued with the kind of impeccability associated with the world of domestic Grace Kelly --wannabe Betty Draper, wife of the series' lead, Donald Draper. January Jones plays Betty in belted silhouettes by Katherine Jane Bryant (the Emmy Award--winning costume designer of Deadwood, who created clothes as a six-year-old in Cleveland, Tennessee, for her dolls made out of worn-out socks and salvaged fabrics).

Kors hosted a screening at Bryant Park Hotel of the second season's premiere episode, in which Betty has been upgraded from the first season's suburban housewife at the supermarket to sleek equestrienne with hard hat, tweed riding jacket, and camel cashmere coat--just the look of a Westchester wife of an advertising exec. Jon Hamm, who plays Donald, and Chris Noth, from the summer hit and series Sex and the City, attended the event, where Kors introduced the episode with his usual boyish wonder and enthusiasm. His spring/summer collection is going to continue in the sixties vernacular of cool blondes like Betty, who descends the steps of a hotel lobby in beige chiffon buttressed by layers of crinoline, stilettos, and a fur coat tossed over her shoulders as casually as a sweater.

The designer himself would never have Betty make an entrance in a full-length fur with an Austrian crystal necklace--this trophy wife would have been handed down pearls from a grandmother or notched up her dinner look with faux diamonds.

Just a thought, Ms. Bryant!

Scaling Back

"You are disappearing!" Marie-Josee Kravis, one of the best-dressed ladies in New York, said to me. I had just finished lunch with Peggy Noonan, Deeda Blair, and Joe Armstrong at Michael's, wearing a Richard Anderson seersucker suit ordered four years ago. I had never pulled it out of the closet, because I was afraid it wouldn't fit. Well, this summer it did.

Kravis's compliment--a point of pride for me--signaled that three months (off and on) of one-hour sessions five days a week with fitness master David Kirsch, who has resculpted the bodies of Liv Tyler, Ellen Barkin, Linda Evangelista, and Karolina Kurkova, was working. Kirsch took me on as a client after I saw VOGUE' s Stephanie Winston Wolkoff in the office and said, "This is not liposuction! What have you done to get this body?" By training vigorously four times a week and not falling back into old eating habits, the mother of three was down 80 pounds in a year (if you're counting).