Michael Kors may have been missing from Project Runway last night, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been logging in some quality time in Los Angeles. Perhaps honing his first color cosmetics collection, Very Hollywood, a collaboration with Estée Lauder (their second one of the designer variety after a couple with Tom Ford)?

Think glowing Carmen Kass and the Kors runway (or Hilary Rhoda in the Craig McDean photographed ad campaign) and you’ll get the vibe of the makeup. There’s definitely nothing heavy, even the lipsticks are called “sheens”.

Frequent Kors front-rower and the cosmetics brand’s SVP and Creative Director Aerin Lauder told WWD, “The Estée Lauder customer is very much the Michael Kors customer: someone who wants a wonderful product, someone who understands fashion, someone who understands luxury, someone who wants quality.” We totally agree that this seems like a perfect match.

The Whitney Art Party’s on Wednesday night and we’ve gotten the first edition of the confirmed guest list.

Starlets and artists will be there in droves, but as far as models go, there’s Coco Rocha, Lydia Hearst, Dree Hemingway, Brooklyn Decker, Lisa Cant, Julie Henderson, Maggie Rizer, Selita Ebanks and Hilary Rhoda.

And of course, we have no idea what to wear, especially since the party’s sponsored by BCBG again which means all of their perfect little bodies will be swathed in Herve bandages with feet tucked into sky high heels. Because sure, no one’s looking at us, but it takes a serious outfit to guarantee we won’t hide in a corner under the weight of being anything less than 5’11 with long blond hair and the perfect Rick Owens leather jacket.

So, should we follow in the footsteps of last year with a long vintage floral number, flat sandals and little effort? Or, is it time to step it up with something a bit smaller and louder? If only we had this in our closet.

This model roundtable, hosted by Sally Singer, beats Vogue’s actual model issue by a longshot.

The magazine filled a Minetta Tavern table with Lauren Hutton, Karlie Kloss, Caroline Trentini, Iman, Paulina Porizkova, Naomi Campbell and Hilary Rhoda for a discussion on modeling past and present.

Yes, it should be about five hours longer, but in just this brief clip Lauren says the industry’s become criminal, Iman talks about being YSL’s African Queen muse, Caroline says she’s struggling with her self-confidence, Paulina calls for a model age limit and Karlie expresses frustration over being just another blank slate.

IMG’s changed their website.

We’re kind of indifferent to colors and fonts, but we’re enthralled with their new “Welcome to the World of Beautiful People” video.

Before, one was greeted with an almost perfect trifecta - Kate Moss, Daria Werbowy and Gemma Ward - now you get more, but one less.

The black and white slideshow gives screen time to Naomi, Hilary Rhoda, Stephanie Seymour (in that ridiculous POP come-back shoot), Heidi Mount, Lara Stone and Angela Lindvall, but where oh where did Gemma go?

Just because she’s disappeared from life and runways and campaigns and everything but The Black Balloon doesn’t mean she’s lost her modeling spot.

Does it?

We thought Gwyneth Paltrow’s July Bazaar cover was just a very delayed reaction to Iron Man - turns out it’s part of a 40-page Estée Lauder campaign that continues within the magazine, just barely disguised as editorial.

The cosmetic giant placed the four faces of their new perfume, Sensuous, throughout the issue, even though the actual ads don’t debut until fall. The move means a priceless Gwyneth cover for Bazaar and an insane amount of advertising for Estée Lauder before their ads, (which also feature Elizabeth Hurley, Carolyn Murphy and Hilary Rhoda), even hit.

This weekend, The New York Times asked if the partnership meant Hearst, (which owns Bazaar) was selling out, before admitting that it’s actually a pretty smart move.

This morning, WWD reports an even cooler partnership between Marie Claire, (which is also owned by Hearst) and Ray-Ban. The two have commissioned five New York City artists to create billboards to promote Ray-Ban’s new colored Wayfarers. And the magazine will also run three times more Ray-Ban ads this year than ever before.

The symbiotic relationship between fashion magazines and fashion advertisements has been losing steam as circulation has slowed for print publications and more companies turn to online advertising. So while at first these ad campaigns, whether subliminal like Estée Lauder’s or in your face like Ray-Ban’s, seemed a bit desperate, we actually think they’re kind of cool - especially when real artists are getting into the mix and what used to be a boring ad gets taken to a new creative level.

We actually kind of love it, and we’re sure Andy Warhol’s probably giggling in his grave.

What I learned at the Met Ball last night:

- Zac Posen is my fashion superhero. Please see his combined superman costume with Kate Mara.

- Models only hang out with models. I felt like a kid in a candy store watching Coco, Anja, Hilary, Chanel, Stam, Lily D., and Doutzen cluster for 15 minutes…although literally no one else cared. Apparently George Clooney’s a bigger deal.

- Michelle Trachtenberg is one of the models. She jumped into Stam’s arms and kiss/kissed everyone else, (while also, interestingly enough, avoiding every single Gossip Girl cast member on the red carpet).

- Philip Lim and Chanel Iman are the perfect couple - and probably the only two people who look amazing in that faded mustard color.

- The Voguettes did not have to wear shades of white. I spotted mint green, gold, purple, and navy - which was on Meredith Melling-Burke who also wore Natalie’s beloved YSL star necklace.

- When I asked Christopher Bailey which superhero he was channelling, he said, “Christopher Bailey!” and giggled.

- Donatella Versace wears a wig.

- Penn Badgley wears red and blue cufflinks - his personal homage to Spiderman - while waiting for Blake Lively to pose for pictures. Apparently, the waiting has become a nightly routine.

- When Pacey stands next to Chuck, Nate and Dan, I long for the teen dramas of my adolescence - even if the clothes are better now.

WWD reports rapidly circulating rumors of Charlotte Gainsbourg for Balenciaga AW’08.

Did Jennifer Connelly set a celebrity precedent for Nicolas Ghesquière?

Because we were really hoping the brand would return to the good old days of real models and launch more girls like Hilary, Coco and Suvi.

We love Charlotte as much as the next francophile, fashion obsessed girl, but try as we might we just can’t picture her wearing those razor sharp black dresses.

Maybe Carine can give her lessons in dominatrix like dressing?

[OVERHEARD IN A MODELING AGENCY]

Model Agent: Hillary’s doing well.

Agency Intern: Campaign-wise? Yep

Agency Intern: You mean Rhoda, right?

Model Agent: No, I was talking about Hillary Clinton.

Model Agent: I guess that counts as a campaign, though?

We like Hilary Rhoda as the face of Estee Lauder, but her new ads with Carolyn Murphy strike us as lacking.

Why?

Because Hilary and Carolyn are twelve years apart (she’s 20, Carolyn is 32). And yet, they look exactly the same - the matte skin, the cloudy expression, the plasticine smile.

It’s true that makeup should bring out your best, but we’re not sure women in their 30s want to look like a blank slate… and we are sure that women in their 20s don’t want to look like they’re 32.

We can see the advantages in smoothing out your youth - for job interviews, for court hearings, for dates with 40-year-old hedge funders.

But we’re still a little confused -

Shouldn’t Hilary and Carolyn’s ads show the different kinds of beauty that Estee can help you find, and not just… shiny skin?

We still can’t find Hilary Rhoda this week, but one absent model has come back to the runway:

Lydia Hearst starts her catwalk tracks tomorrow.

We bumped into the redhead - whose color has toned down considerably - at the Marc Jacobs party last night, where she told us she’s booked for Betsey Johnson and JustSweet by Jennifer Lopez tomorrow.

But isn’t she also Heatherette’s muse?

“I am!” she exclaimed, “But Jennifer Lopez is asking her models to arrive 2 hours before the show. It’s going to be an incredible production.”

Speaking of incredible productions - can we handle Heatherette, Betsey Johnson, Zac Posen, and Jennifer Lopez in the same day? x

Thanks to last week’s examination of the Forbes Top Model list, we’ve gotten more emails than ever about how models get paid.

Here’s a quick breakdown:

Models make most from ads. Hilary Rhoda pulls in $1.5 million because she’s Estee Lauder’s new face, not because Vogue Italia keeps putting her on the cover. Gisele hasn’t walked many runways, but because of her Victoria’s Secret earnings, she makes more than most hedge fund managers.

Meanwhile, models who do get booked on catwalks pull thousands of dollars per season - I remember last year, when a designer offered Irina Lazareanu $10,000 just to walk. But more often, the girls get paid (at least partly) in clothes.

Here’s a good example:

When we saw the darling Chanel Iman at Marie Claire’s Supermodel party last week, she was wearing a killer pair of Dolce & Gabbana heels.

The very same killer pair that she wore last season when she walked in their show.

So jealous!

Today’s Wall Street Journal makes the claim that “preppy” is back.

The problem?

It never went away.

It’s tempting to declare the apocalypse on a style trend (white is the new black! dresses - no pants - no dresses!), but the preppy influence is everywhere from Ralph Lauren’s continued success to Marc’s recent Nantucket totes, and even Hilary Rhoda’s streak from a Maryland field hockey game to the Chanel runway. But while the style’s dominance never changed, its customer base certainly did.

Upper East Side boys have long embraced L.A. hip-hop staples. (Think Timbalands and Nantucket Reds.) Finally, the vice versa effect has set in.

With rappers like T-Pain rocking both the mic and the madras plaid, it seems the hip-hop/preppy mix is here to stay.

Will you hop on the bandwagon? If so, will you do it by pairing existing pieces in your closet, or will you spring for one of Unruly Heir’s basketball hoodies- made of seersucker?

— NATALIE MATTHEWS

Hilary Rhoda’s ads for Estee Lauder finally hit magazines.

The Maryland native looks gorgeous in the campaign, but we wish she was used in a fresher way - after all, if Estee Lauder is going after a new group of younger, cooler customers, they might want to revamp their marketing and not just their faces.

But maybe Estee Lauder is going for a specific kind of teenager - the one who worships Teen Vogue and its ultimate poster child, Bee Shaffer.

The daughter of Anna Wintour is a student at Columbia University and a pro at shiny hair - but she’s also a more poised double for Ms. Rhoda.

Coincidence? Or something more?

“Someone please feed Snejana.”

If you didn’t read that as “Snay-ahna”, then you need to read the rest of this post.

Having tackled designer name pronunciation last week, it’s time to move on to another fashion trick:

The crazy names of models!

Please note, our information comes from the way bookers, photographers, and the girls themselves say each others’ names - not the way one would say them, necessarily, if it were 400 years ago in a tiny Ukrainian village.

And by the end of this list, you’ll be so grateful for Hilary Rhoda.

—ANNA FIELDING GRIGGS

We hear Jaslene has one of her first castings since Top Model today.

It’s not for Prada (which was Gemma’s first campaign), or BCBG (Stam), or Dolce and Gabbana (Hilary Rhoda).

Instead, she’ll be up for ads by Fetish, the clothing line started by Eve.

Coincidentally, Eve was a guest judge on last season’s Top Model, and had her own TV show - a sitcom - about life as a perpetually single fashion designer.

We wonder if her friend Tyra put her up to this campaign idea…

Today’s WWD has one report so exciting, it made us buy five copies of the paper:

They’ve heard Kate Winslet could be the new face of L’Oreal.

Kate’s one of the few famous faces that hasn’t been snatched by some sort of campaign, and as our favorite actress ever, we’re thrilled with the choice.

Still, the rumor brings up an interesting question: Is makeup is going the way of magazine covers, and yielding completely to the celebrity market?

Consider next season’s lineup, when Drew Barrymore becomes the face of Cover Girl, Eva Green takes her place at Dior Beaute, and Reese Witherspoon may pair with Estee Lauder (and possibly outshine the model Hilary Rhoda, whose campaign for the brand was announced in February, but now seems stalled). M.A,C’s Viva Glam is their most visible campaign, and it’s always done by pop stars, and Almay has Lauren Conrad and Jennifer Hudson on their roster. And when Daria’s snowboarding movie comes out in winter, Lancome’s face will be a model-slash-actress.

Are celebrities better for makeup brands? And who else should take a beauty campaign?

Is Vogue subtly apologizing to Gemma Ward?

As many of you may indignantly e-mailed, the magazine’s May issue was called “The World’s Next Top Models� and featured many familiar faces— Lily Donaldson, Chanel Iman, Doutzen, Stam (on the inner flap!)—but no Gemma Ward. Even stranger, the story inside opined that the face of Burberry, Calvin Klein, and Valentino isn’t a real supermodel!

But in Vogue’s June issue, Gemma opens a piece about what “six of fashion’s most fabulous faces of the moment do to get away from it all.� The group includes Hilary Rhoda, Racquel Zimmermann, and Coco Rocha, who you may remember from—the May issue of Vogue!

We could be reading into this, but is it a peace offering from the land of Wintour? And how are they going to go about making it up to Lily Cole?

—BESS LEVIN