Design world meets in New York for awards ceremony.

Byline: Karen Klages

NEW YORK _ There were paparazzi. A Red Carpet too _ actually it was red, orange and pink, and those were carpet tiles. And there was Sarah Jessica Parker, looking sexy in silver sequins.

Not the Academy Awards, but the 4th annual National Design Awards were held last Wednesday (Oct. 22) at The Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in Manhattan.

Some 500 of this country's design elite (and, yes, most of them wearing black) squeezed subway-style into the first floor of the museum for cocktails and then were funneled into an elaborate white tent outside (where it was no less sardined) for the dinner and ceremony.

"I don't know what's happening. It's almost Shakespearean. There is this alignment of the stars," said an ebullient Murray Moss, founder and owner of the design store moss in SoHo (where housewares are treated as museum pieces, encased in glass), a trustee of the museum and an official hand-shaker for the evening.

Moss was trying to explain all the fuss about design right now _ and, perhaps, why Newsweek put the topic on its cover …