Liquid Assets
Draped softly, wrapped in filmy layers, or gathered in witty flounces, new ultrasheer fabrics are helping designers to lighten as well as loosen up.

Blackout
Designers are amping it up with hits of bold color in combinations cool enough to challenge the hegemony of black.

Fashion Victim
In which our hero test-drives an assortment of men’s wear stylish enough to survive an onslaught of urban hassles and hazards, escaping with nary a wrinkle.

Leash Life
New Yorkers with style put on the dog with their equally stylish canine companions. (Four-sleeve sweaters are optional.)

Art and Sole
A Brancusi in a 7B? Shoe designers from Manolo Blahnik to Prada are making heels so winningly sculptural they look right at home on a pedestal.

Show and Tell
After too many seasons of predictably plunging necklines and climbing hems, designers are reinventing the art of baring flesh. New erogenous zones make their debut, from the top of the thigh to the crest of the hip.

Essays
Male Mannequin Wherein we take writer Marshall Sella and transform him from blank slate to fashion plate. The Duchess of Bergdorf’s Bob Morris on the woman who’s called 50 years of high fashion The Compleat Woman Penelope Green on the hot new skirt that has moved pleats way beyond schoolgirl.

DEPARTMENTS
The City Politic
BY MICHAEL TOMASKY

The alternative gubernatorial candidates, and why they shouldn’t be written off

The Culture Business
BY ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN

Tag, you’re it: Three longtime graffiti artists go corporate

The National Interest
BY HANNA ROSIN

The right wing is left stranded as most Americans refuse to go into the Starr chamber

MARKETPLACE
Best Bets
BY CORKY POLLAN

Victorian hardware; copper tops; prints of the city

Sales & Bargains
BY ONDINE COHANE

Sales huge (Barneys’s warehouse) and cozy (Meghan Kinney’s boutique)

Woolf trap: Mrs. Dalloway is accomplished if stiff

Theater
BY JOHN SIMON

Side-splitting: Gun-Shy is a great American divorce comedy

Classical Music
BY PETER G. DAVIS

Northern lights: Scandinavian work lands in America

Dance
BY TOBI TOBIAS

Ballet Nacional de Cuba wins over a skeptical crowd

Television
BY JOHN LEONARD

Harlem Renaissance revival: Oprah marries The Wedding to the screen

CUE
New York Magazine's weekly guide to entertainment and the arts.

Intelligencer
(Gossip)