Curling up next to the fire with a glass of Malbec, a calculator, and copies of Elle and Vogue, Times fashion writer Eric Wilson delved into the underbelly of "price upon request," that obnoxious line that comes after a designer credit in a fashion glossy, which normally signals that you, a mere mortal, cannot afford the lavish item for which they will not reveal its cost. Except actually, that's completely inaccurate. "Price upon request," while sometimes a designer-requested stand-in for an inflated price, is actually most often used when a magazine simply cannot find out how much the dress, bracelet, or shoes they're featuring actually costs.

How come? Because right after designers unveil their runway collections, magazine editors request those garments to be shot for upcoming issues. Those issues are closed months in advance, well before the designer completes orders with stores on individual garments, and thus, they haven't priced the item yet, which means when the magazine asks for its price, it receives no answer. So the magazine goes ahead and prints "price upon request," and directs readers to call a store (like Barney's or Saks) for the information, after the designer tells the magazine that is where they should expect the garment to be on sale. But what happens when too few stores buy an item? The designer might choose not to even produce it, letting it live and die on the runway. This means the magazine shot and printed that frilly dress, praising it in front of their readers, and the designer never actually made it, which leads to angry readers with maxed out credit cards struggling to buy a garment that doesn't exist.

And this has always been standard in the industry.

You would think Wilson, with his meticulous counting and notation ("price upon request" appeared "104 [times] in the October issue of Elle") would know that. Or that because Wilson is the Times fashion scribe who's been penning away from the newspaper for a handful of years, and before that enjoyed stints at such fashion-y places like Women's Wear Daily.

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Wondering what to expect on tonight's premiere of Elle reality show Stylista? Then revisit our review of the series' first two episodes over here. "The first two episodes feature multiple feuds, a dramatic cat fight (taking place in a kitchen — how cliché) and a truly unnerving panic attack that leads to a contestant being rushed to the hospital. So it's safe to say the show isn't lacking in drama." [Mollygood]

Just in time for tomorrow night's premiere of The CW's Stylista, Elle magazine's fashion news editor and its newest reality star Anne Slowey jumps at the chance to drum up buzz courtesy her feud with former staffer and current Marie Claire fashion director Nina Garcia. Or actually, she totally tries to swat away the spat but at the same time only fuels it. Totally by coincidence!

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In a spiked profile for a women's magazine, which was repurposed for content on Tina Brown's The Daily Best, Jennifer Lopez insisted she wasn't a Scientologist, but also: she hates psychologists and pills that help with anxiety. Which, you know, are absolutely not themes of Scientology! There was plenty of speculation, then, about which magazine spiked the story — almost certainly to please The Jennifer — and now, an answer. It was Robbie Myers' Elle who kicked reporter Kevin Sessums off the story after his first interview got too personal; that is, Lopez admitted to having a nervous breakdown in her trailer. Eek! And now that Brown published the material Sessums walked away with? "We're very unhappy about it, and think it was poor judgment on his part. As long as we have represented Jennifer, we have never heard her refer to having a breakdown of any sort."

Overseas Vogue publications are getting more and more press recently, while Anna Wintour and her iconic American brand seem to be fading into the background. Of course, not all of this is positive press (*cough*Vogue India*cough*) but at least one name is making the rounds for a possible upset in the Conde Nast hiearchy:

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While you're busy watching The Rachel Zoe Project tonight on Bravo, you will pine for the days when you could count on Project Runway not to be delayed right before its season premiere. Too bad the Marie Claire reality show for the Style Network won't be out till next March to tide over your Nina Garcia cravings till Tim Gunn makes it back on the airwaves, huh?

Running in Heels, the new reality project from Garcia and her new magazine home, documents "life at Marie Claire through different sets of eyes, from senior level staffers to interns," which means it won't be a competition show per say, though there are bound to be many losers, like Lifetime — since the show is headed to the Style Network, which is roughly the equivalent of cable's wasteland.

Garcia, who left Elle earlier this year to work at MC so she could continue her Runway judging gig, also guarantees herself a new platform to compete with Elle's Anne Slowey, star of that magazine's upcoming reality show Stylista and new face of the magazine. We're particularly excited for the videotaped confessionals that interns will be forced to complete, though this would be a much better gimmick on Stylista, where Slowey purposefully tries to make tears flow from the unpaid help.

Stylista judge and Elle creative director Joe Zee may or may not be ruining the magazine, may or may not be polluting the magazinewith shirtless model boys, but most certainly is leveraging the magazine to cement his own brand.

Enter "From A to Zee," the most clever take on "From A to Z" since Centrum's "From A to Zinc." Zee's new web feature is a 26-page listing of his favorite things for fall; if popular, we see the feature returning in the winter, spring, and that season when everybody leaves New York.

But as with any "A to Z" list, where objects of desire must begin with the letter of the alphabet on whose page they appear, we're never impressed with what they can come up with for letters like B, G, or M. Give a second-grader some blocks with letters on 'em, and he'll be able to find a word that begins with C ("car") or H ("harlequin").

It's those tricky letters, like Q, X, Y, and Z, that must impress us.

Inevitably, X always turns into something that is "Xtreme" (as it does with Zee's list) or "X Marks the Spot," as it does in Departure magazine's "Dress Code: The A-to-Z Style Guide" this month. But how does Zee manage with for the rest of the challenging alphabet?

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The premiere of Elle's reality show Stylista has been moved up a week. It now hits the CW on Oct. 22 at 9pm. We updated our BlackBerry calendar before even typing this. [TVW]

According to a handful of Elle staffers we've spoke with in the past few weeks, the magazine's editor, Robbie Myers, is actually pretty well liked by many on the masthead. Sure, she has her flaws ("What's with the constant giggling?" snipes one; she's always in a "shitty mood," counters another) and we've been fed plenty of anecdotes to squeeze her in to some Jossip copy, but might Ms. Myers actually be running a fashion magazine and have the respect of her staff? Pity, then, that in New York's feature this week about the feud between soon-to-be-ex-Elle staffer Nina Garcia and fashion news director and Stylista face Anne Slowey, Myers didn't get to have her say. Though quizzed by the article's author (Gawker Media's Moe Tkacik) about Project Runway and Stylista, Myers wasn't asked about the supposed bad blood between her two minions. And that doesn't sit well with her: "That story is full of quotes about why I did what I did, how could they possibly know why I did anything or what motivated me to do anything in my job, unless they ask me? Even if someone else where to speculate about why I did something, the fact that nobody called me even to fact check it is egregious." (Myers has written us notes before, saying some of our coverage hurt her, too.) And there's the rub: Tkacik is, by profession, a blogger (from Jezebel to Gawker in some twisted job hijacking involving Radar), and we're trained not to ask those type of questions that might have you confuse us with journalists. But if her work is going to appear in New York, well, perhaps it should have met higher standards — and reported all sides of the story. By not doing so, well, this mini scandal stays alive.

It comes down to this: Nina Garcia and Anne Slowey played for separate teams under the same owner. Garcia, the former Elle fashion director who's now connected to the magazine in name only, was a protege of creative director Gilles Bensimon, who did not time to check his wristwatch for incoming Elle editor Robbie Myers, who arrived in 2000. Slowey, the fashion news editor and star of Elle's new fall reality show Stylista, is in the Myers camp, though perhaps only because she wasn't in the Bensimon camp.

Which isn't to say these two never got along — they did — but in the end, it explains why we've heard handfuls of stories, about both sides, trading gossip about each other.

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Jonathan Van Meter's New York magazine cover story this week about plastic surgery — really, is there more to be said about people in this city having work done? — had, like anesthesia gone wrong, one unexpected side effect: outing an anonymous source who plans to get plastic surgery for her 60th birthday. It didn't take much sleuthing to finger the woman as Elle publisher Carol Smith. Gracefully owning up to the detective work, Smith says her face lift will have to wait; she's moving apartments.

Know who's getting in the way of Jessica Simpson remaking herself as a country star? Elle. You might think the magazine's styling her in tight jeans, a plaid shirt, and a cowboy belt buckle — all, likely, insisted upon by daddy Joe — is part of her transformation away from dumb blonde "pop star." And it tried to be. But the Photoshop mess is getting in the way. Though her head may be properly placed on her body — Elle recently had this problem with Mariah Carey — there is something plainly wrong with the bend of her hips and the positioning of her legs, not to mention the torso from the miniatures shop. Ms. Simpson's blonde locks aren't the only artificial things on this magazine.

Nina Garcia, currently appearing on Project Runway's fifth season as Elle's "editor-at-large," is, as you already know, totally done with Robbie Myers' mag and has not-so-quietly moved on to Marie Claire. And though she doesn't officially start there until Sept. 2, she's already moved into her office — perhaps because the one Elle was keeping for her is lined with glass shards. (Marie Claire denies she's started working there, citing Garcia's contract with Elle; they insist she's only been in the office to coordinate fashion show travel.)

And while Garcia is definitely a commodity worth grabbing for Marie Claire — which is expected to scoop up Project Runway when it moves to Lifetime — it turns out the relationship might not be a match made in couture heaven.

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Once upon a time we ran some insider speculation that Joe Zee, Elle's always smiling creative director and judge on this fall's Stylista, was ruining the magazine. Today none of that matters, because there is a more interesting storyline: Zee hasn't spoken to Nina Garcia since she "left" the magazine for Marie Claire. Then again, who who from Elle is talking to Garcia? After the saucy way she left things with publisher Carol Smith, and the much-talked-about feuding between Garcia and editor-in-chief Robbie Myers, it's not like there's constant Twittering between the two parties. [MB]

With Elle's reality show Stylista in the can, The CW screened the first episode on Saturday for critics at the Television Critics Association's event in L.A. If reports are to be believed, it's quite scathing! As we could tell back in May, the show's real appeal comes from fashion news director Anne Slowey, who's Miranda Priestly-d herself into an on-air diva.

Slowey claims to have carried 32 goldfish in 32 separate bowls to a woman's house, without killing them, as part of her duties on Day One at Vogue. She also claims that on Stylista, she's "just being myself." Heh.

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Madonna on Out. Jennifer Aniston on Redbook. Kelly Clarkson on Elle. All of these are shining examples of magazines Photoshopping their cover subjects to within a inch of reality. Pop superstars replaced with alien lifeforms. Body parts swapped in and out. Arm, torso, and ass fat replaced with white space.

Now, Elle is adding Mariah Carey to the esteemed list of cartoons.

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This latest, three-frickin'-minute-long promo for Elle's reality show Stylista is the most comprehensive overview of what this show is going to be about. Despite the insider gossipmongering, which labeled the show a "trainwreck", you have no choice but to be excited about this television program.

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Harvey Weinstein's brilliant, and inevitable, business model for Project Runway now includes a new cash infusion: dollars from the magazine. When he was first shopping the show around in the early 200s, most magazines passed on the opportunity to be attached, and Elle was the only taker. It's been a brand boon for the Hachette fashion book, but after the fifth season, they're gonna lose it. And whoever wants the opportunity to work with Runway, now on Lifetime, will have to pay for the privilege. Seven figures, anyone?

In a new interview in Elle's July issue, Mary-Kate Olsen refuses to be interviewed about Heath Ledger. "I'm not going to comment on that. I won't give you a word about that in the nicest way possible. Let's move on." [People]

The sniping inside Elle continues, and the fella with the biggest target on his head is creative director Joe Zee.

Fresh off bitter internal reviews of the the magazine's reality show Stylista comes more criticism of Zee, who, with editor Robbie Myers, threw a viewing party for the twosome's Ugly Betty season finale cameos.

"Your story about the hype of the '1 second' cameo for Joe Zee on Ugly Betty was very accurate," says a spy. "No one could believe he would throw a party for such a thing. He is such a lens fly - will do or go anywhere to get on TV."

But it's not just Zee's vanity that's vexing staffers. It's what it's costing the magazine. A source says all of Zee's personal vamping and obsession with being on TV – and, apparently, in the magazine: he's spotted with Rihanna in her issue's table of contents – means "he has taken his eye off the ball at his day job." Translation?

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