Somehow the travails of Buzz Bissinger v. Will Leitch, Jared Paul Stern v. Ron Burkle, Page Six v. Vanessa Grigoriadis, Cathy Horyn v. Giorgio Armani, Dale Peck v. Rick Moody, and Leonard Wieseltier v. Andrew Sullivan get boiled down to what's going on between Lauren Conrad and Heidi Montag:

CONTINUED »

It was when NYT fashion critic Cathy Horyn noticed the gals of the original Charlie's Angels reunite at the Emmys that became her "aha!" moment: She wanted a blog to chronicle all the minutiae without writing a full newspaper article. She decided starting On the Runway, which hasn't been updated since March 21, was the right move when she wrote about the Marc Jacobs show two years ago that ran two hours late; she blogged about it from a Park Avenue restaurant, which is probably when she also realized she didn't even want to sit front row, or be there at all. Web-streamed fashion is the future!

Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn has a history of feuding with the designers she covers, but none so much as Giorgio Armani, who, like Helmut Lang and Dolce & Gabbana, banned her from his runway shows. Which is such a total diss because it's not like Horyn can't just go on Style.com or Wire Image to see what tortures he created for women this season. But without access to the shows, she misses out on the caste system of seat placement, and in the end, that's fashion's real tournament. But it appears Horyn would prefer to do without the whole nonsense of fashion shows, as if the millions of dollars in free publicity they delivered for the designers were somehow a commodity you could replace. Says Horyn: "I would be much more excited if he unburdened himself of the whole system, closed down the shows, stopped with the backstage stroking sessions, and went directly over the Internet to the public." For the record, we wholeheartedly disagree; making fashion a democracy will take all the snob appeal out of it.

• Did Cathy Horyn like Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B show? No, apparently she did not. Says Horyn: "Among the words I wrote in my notebook, until my pen came to a stop, were 'blob,' 'very last season,' 'bad secretary,' 'astonishingly bad,' and 'Ditzville." Well, damn!

• American Next Top Model winner Caridee is, paradoxically, neither modeling nor a winner.

• Samantha Ronson (celebrity DJ and Lindsay Lohan's sometimes-girlfriend) reminds us why sister Charlotte is the fashionable one.

• Man sues bodega. 'Nuff said.

CONTINUED »

• NYT fashion scribe Cathy Horyn gets her criticism handed to her in a lace-trim, leather-accented charmeuse hand basket. [WWD]

• Radar's Jeff Bercovici continues his time honored tradition of stealing the scoops of others. [Gawker]

• If a $10,000 matchmaking professional succumbs to using Match.com to find her own dates, does a bear still shit in the woods? [NY Mag]

• Politicos use MySpace for more than finding underage youth to have sex with. [WSJ]

• Chinatown is pissed about Hollywood taking over its streets to film movie after movie. How are they supposed to traffic in counterfeit Louis Vuitton handbags with the increased police presence? [amNY]

• All it took to get the New York Times stock price to spike a bit? Rumors of a takeover bid. [Variety]

• Which is more meta: Jack Shafer on Kurt Anderson, or Kurt Anderson on the New York Times? [Slate, NY]

New York Times' fashion writer, Cathy Horyn, is feeling the backlash of her sharp words. Last February, Horyn mentioned Carolina Herrera's line in a piece summarizing the fall shows after Fashion Week. And she wasn't exactly flattering.

Horyn's famous last Herarra invited words were, "remarkably irrelevant."

"I can't imagine her wearing these clothes: print dresses in pool shades of aqua (with black tights, to boot) and rusty wool suits with fussy collars or ruched yokes and sleeves that looked trussed rather than finessed. With a ruched garment, do you really want to see the strings?"

Needless to say, the Times and especially Cathy Horyn, were not invited back to the Herarra show this time around, with Herrara's camp claiming the designer felt, "personally attacked" by the review. In other news, underpaid and unrecognized fashion bloggers are being more frequently asked to cover the fashion shows.

Amazing. Fashion designers really love to be praised. So it obviously makes more sense to have the the critics desperate for invites — they guarantee reviews so glowing, readers get sunburned from their computer screens.

Fashion Feud, Part Deux [Stephanie D. Smith, WWD]
Bloggers Get Under the Tent [Rachel Dodes, Wall Street Journal]

This morning, we fell in love with Cathy Horyn. Not only did she brave the shoe departments at Barneys and Bergdorf to research her story on 5-inch stilettos, she (or her sadist editor) had the grand plan to don said shoes – for research purposes, natch – at Michael's. She just happened to pick the day when Anna Wintour, Tina Brown, Joan Rivers, and Ralph Lauren were also lunching.

At Avenue of the Americas and 55th Street I got out of a taxi. Taking the R train there was out of the question: not only are the heels high and slanted, but they also taper to a point the size of a nailhead. I had thought to take along a pair of ballet flats, which many bright women in New York on their way to a date or a party have no trouble rationalizing. It's like having a limousine without the expense and bother.

I mounted the curb. Now six feet tall, I suddenly felt less invincible than wretchedly vulnerable, to gross stares and gusts of wind. Michael's, barely half a block away, seemed a journey of several miles.

I clumped toward the big "Love" sculpture. I thought: "This won't do. Lunch will be over by the time I get there." Looking around — oh, what was the point! — I ducked behind a pillar and put on my ballet flats. Then I hurried on to Michael's, bolting past Ms. Wintour and the noontime crowd.

The only way to improve on this story: Embellish the facts, pretend to have kept the heels on and tripped over Wintour, spilling her gravlax all over her patent Chanel.

Stilt Walking Into Spring [Cathy Horyn, NYT]