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Call it exploitation, post-colonialism, or poor marketing, but the image seen here is actually part of a high-end fashion spread. The editorial layout, which features a toothless gent identified only as "man" who holds a $200 Burberry umbrella, is part of Vogue India's attempt to capitalize on the nation's growing middle class.

The mag's August issue featured not models, but "average" citizens, all unnamed, holding designer bags and couture items. Yes: Poor people wearing items they couldn't afford with the sale of both kidneys.

Generally, we'd applaud the use of non-models in a fashion book. But we usually reserve our "thanks for not using anorexic models" applause for those who don't substitute them with "skinny because of malnourishment" persons.

Most Indians survive well below the poverty line on less than $1.25 a day, giving this whole spread a very disturbing Derelicte-Zoolander vibe. But it's the way Vogue India is using its models — Look! Silly poor people! — to appeal to the middle class (that thi that's supposed to help get rid of the caste system) that's so offensive.

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New Yorkers with $10k to blow for VIP tickets (or $250 cheap seats for lowly wage slaves) are invited to a Sept. 9 Barack Obama event. It is the launch party at Charles Nolan studio for something called "Runway to Change with Special Guests Sarah Jessica Parker & Ann Wintour." Yes, Ann Wintour — that's how it went out to campaign supporters. Organizers, clearly, screwed up the Vogue editor's name, and we know no worse a crime. Especially when the woman is raising $100-$200k for ya and puts you on one of her magazines. "It was either a typo or the extra syllable would have thrown off the haiku we were going for," joked Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan. Yeah? Then explain misspelling the names of both New York Gov. David Paterson and actress Scarlett Johansson.

Hockey player Sean Avery, who made a name for himself by personally pleading with Anna Wintour for a Vogue internship, and then taking his shirt of in Men's Vogue to write about it, looks like he might be trading teams. Yes, he'll still be inventing rules for the New York Rangers, but what's this about his schmoozing up to Marie Claire?

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Sunday marked the twentieth year that Anna Wintour has been editing Vogue. Ex-staffer Robin Givhan sent up her former boss, reporting said the editrix was celebrating the milestone "by doing . . . nothing."

Twenty years atop a magazine is an astonishing feat by itself; that Wintour, seen here in 1988 and 1989, has spent it running Vogue, the fashion bible, is even more impressive. And while she's weathered more than one scandal, plenty of nasty gossip column items, and the refusal to acknowledge the word "blog," there's one thing that, in two decades, hasn't changed. And the photo pictorial to prove it is below.

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At last night's Fifi Awards: New York Rangers hockey player Sean Avery walked the red carpet with Vera Wang (who didn’t speak to reporters), but nobody seemed to recognize him except for me. I called him over to talk about his new internship at Vogue, which he just started last week. He claims he’s done his share of photocopies and is not intimidated by Anna Wintour.

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At last night's Costume Institute Gala – which is a cartoon version of Fashion Week, which itself is a cartoon version of reality – celebrities and Anna Wintour wore frilly costumes to The Met in keeping with the theme of "Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy," walking up the red carpeted steps in front of a throng of photographers.

Ms. Wintour was described in this way: "She seemed to be broadcasting a message of total earthly control." She imagined herself as Storm, from X-Men. "I control the weather," she said. (It was in the 50s with a few clouds in the sky.)

David and Victoria Beckham blessed the crowd, along with Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen, Mary J. Blige, George Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Giorgio Armani.

Many guests were "unusually" prompt. Not all of them. The mayor showed up late, as did The Donald+Melania, fat people-adverse Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, Janet Jackson, Donatella Versace, and Donna Karan.

Some women, like Iman, correctly wore her clothing. Others, like Mischa Barton and Anna Wintour, did not.

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Sean Avery, the New York Ranger who's set to become a Vogue intern (!) this summer, was hospitalized last night after lacerating his spleen. As Jossip reported earlier, the totally-straight Avery secured the Vogue internship after writing a letter to Anna Wintour. We don't know what was in the letter, but perhaps Avery and Wintour bonded over being "the most hated man in hockey" and the most-feared woman in fashion, respectively. Avery's duties at Vogue will include the usual intern bitchwork of messengering gowns, getting coffee, and making photocopies. The AP says that Avery is in stable condition and will only need to be hospitalized for a few days, so it won't interfere with his Starbucks and Hermès scarf runs. Maybe he should extend his hospital stay, though–he's gonna have to lose some weight if he wants to fit into those sample sizes.

*we tried to make a hockey ice/icy Wintour pun, but it just wasn't happening

If it weren't for his proclivity to sleep with women, guys like hockey player Sean Avery might go by the label "gay." Yep, the man loves clothes, and we love stereotypes. Though he's "the most hated man in hockey," he was likable enough for Anna Wintour, who agreed to hire him as a Vogue intern after he wrote in with the request. Though he's earning $2 million with the New York Rangers, this summer he'll be schlepping couture from messengers to the Vogue offices, perhaps even the Men's Vogue offices, though that won't do much for his tendency to style girlfriends.

Brooklyn brings out the best in Anna Wintour. We’ve never seen the Vogue editrix look as happy as she did with Marc Jacobs at the Brooklyn Museum’s launch of their Murakami retrospective. We can’t help but wonder what Wintour’s doing with her other hand. Something perverted, probably.

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Yesterday we tried to explain, but did not excuse, Vogue's "King Kong" cover, and assumed neither Anna Wintour nor Annie Leibovitz had any idea their LeBron James-Gisele Bundchen photo would cause so much controversy.

But maybe, in fact, they did. Or at least they should have.

Here's a World War I enlistment poster (via) from 1917, famous from its era, that encouraged men to sign up with the army to fight the German enemy. (Interestingly, the Germans found it so convincing, they Nazis used the same concept for their own World War II poster.)

It's hard to imagine Wintour or Leibovitz, or their staffs, in all their years studying photos and imagery, never came across this poster, or understood its racial ramifications with the ape carrying the helpless Lady Liberty. They understood it well enough to put Gisele in an eerily similar dress.

What is this impostor doing sitting front row at Lanvin?

Taking her seat, actually. Comedian Mademoiselle Agnès, made up to look like Vogue's Anna Wintour, was entitled to her own high profile seating assignment. So why the garb? "It’s an homage, we are doing a story on it and every season we do an episode called See Anna. We talk about the life and work of Miss Wintour and I think it was funny to do this."

But not everyone saw the comedic value. "I don’t find it humorous at all!," said a distraught Gilles Bensimon. "She’s a good friend of mine! I like Anna and I don’t like when people falsely make fun of her."

Then again, perhaps Gilles needs some new friends; he's been eschewed from any involvement at Elle, where he's supposedly the "international creative director," and is biding his time shooting J.C. Penny campaigns.

New York's turning French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld's words against Anna Wintour – the article referred to Roitfeld as the "anti-Anna," after all, but just as frail! – isn't the only icy chill the Vogue editrix is facing.

Friend, editorial subject, and advertiser Giorgio Armani is also stirring Wintour's pot.

At a press conference to promote the upcoming Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition "Superheroes," which the twosome are co-chariing, Armani was slinging INSULTS at her, using slurs like "indifferent." Indifferent! The, ahem, vitriol might be stemming from Wintour's call for Italian designers to show their collections closer to each other, to save visiting U.S. editors some traveling expenses. Ms. Wintour's towncar, after all, cannot ferry her to Milan as easily as it can $400 lunches right here in the city.

After dropping out of a Vogue photo shoot because it might, you know, play up her femininity, Hillary Clinton now faces Anna Wintour's wrath. In her February editor's letter, Wintour goes off on Hillary in the most lady-like way for bailing: "Imagine my amazement, then, when I learned that Hillary Clinton, our only female president hopeful, had decided to steer clear of our pages at this point in her campaign for fear of looking too feminine. The notion that a contemporary woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying. [...] This is America, not Saudi Arabia. It's also 2008: Margaret Thatcher may have looked terrific in a blue power suit, but that was 20 years ago. I do think Americans have moved on from the power-suit mentality, which served as a bridge for a generation of women to reach boardrooms filled with men. Political campaigns that do not recognize this are making a serious misjudgment."

And all this after Bill cut Conde Nast cousin GQ off at the balls to keep Hillary looking good.

You know how whenever someone's nervous about giving a speech or presentation, their quirky-but-unoriginal pal advises them to picture everyone in their underwear? Well, thanks to Starpulse, we now have an all too vivid mental pic of Anna Wintour in her brassiere to conjure up as needed.

Sure, there's nary a wrinkle in sight, but it turns out she looks gangly and mean even when she's not wearing a coat made up entirely of puppy-fur! And though we're impressed to see that Anna still has the body of a much younger woman shiny ten year-old boy, we choose to take comfort in the knowledge that the even the digitalized version of the Stick Figure With No Soul has laugh lines.

Rumors are circulating right this very second that Anna Wintour and Christina Ricci are, in fact, the exact same person. And though we see the resemblance (bobbed haircut, gangly limbs, shared propensity for wearing fire engine red) we can't help but wonder if the cherubic-faced Ricci's a bit too upbeat to pass for the much-older maudlin Vogue editrix.

Our verdict? Sorry, Xtina, but unless that hint of a smile playing on your red-tinted lips is really the cruel smirk of a post-firing euphoria, we're simply not convinced that you're capable of eating your own offspring. That's all.