You’ve read the story and seen the video of Nicholas White, the former Business Week staffer who was stuck in an elevator for 41 hours and never fully recovered. You’ve also seen the spoofs.

But what happens when life imitates, uh, life, with fashion royalty and a steel box?

Fashionistas turned out to honor Giorgio Armani today in droves. Some 150 of his adoring fans met for lunch at the Hearst Tower to see him accept the Couture Council’s Global Fashion Leadership Award. It was a gorgeous crowd (almost all dressed in Armani) and included Cathy Black, the president of Hearst; Glenda Bailey, indefatigable editor of Harper’s Bazaar; Joyce Brown, the head of the Fashion Institute of Technology; Nadia Swarovski, who graciously underwrote the event; Glenn Close, who presented the award; our own Liz Smith and many other luminaries. Mr. Armani, who was sporting sneakers, a solid tan and his signature black blazer, appeared completely relaxed and quite happy to be the center of attention. […]

Nonetheless, all of this went swimmingly (even though Mr. Armani stayed out late last night celebrating George Clooney’s birthday party at Bungalow 8) until he got stuck in an elevator at FIT for 15 minutes.

You have to understand what a disaster this could have been. Mr. Armani’s every move is orchestrated and planned by phalanxes of young men and women dressed in black that have ear pieces and cell phones and whose job it is to make things run smoothly. You see this sort of thing in movies about moguls – assistants running alongside smoothing the way, taking notes, handing out cough drops – but until you see such an organization in motion, you really can’t imagine it. Notwithstanding this potential body blow to his minute-to-minute scheduling, Mr. Armani was in fine fettle as he spoke to FIT students. They had had to go online for seats; the tickets sold out in ten minutes. [WOWOWOWOWOWOWOW]