We're all about the new Page Six magazine. Our only question is why Sunday should be the only day the Post comes with a free gossip magazine tucked in.

Naturally, our favorite feature was the "25 Best Dressed Women at Fashion Week."

We were amazed to see on the list: two fake-glasses sporting ladies (Jesse Kamm at #20 and Georgia Frost at #24), our middle-school style icon (Kim Gordon at #25), and Irina in acid-washed denim (#8).

After all this joy, we were only slightly baffled to see Bijou Phillips channelling Mary Poppins with a goofy umbrella and clad in the kind of dress we wouldn't even bother trying on at Salvation Army.

How does that get you five places ahead of the fierce styles of Carine Roitfeld (#13)?

Can someone please explain?

--ALISON COOL

In June, we wrote about how British wunderkind Christopher Kane is collaborating with Beth Ditto on an outfit for October's Swarovski Fashion Rocks concert.

If you can't wait to see what vibrant outfit these two have cooked up, whet your appetite with the Autumn 2007 issue of Pop, which features a spread shot by Steven Klein of Ditto traipsing about in fashions both off-the-runway (Prada, Yves Saint Laurent) and made specially for the magazine (Gareth Pugh, Louis Vuitton, Proenza Schouler). Both humorous and poignant, the photos have that Paris, Texas vibe of wanderlust and adventure with the jet-set styles to match.

The accompanying article proclaims Beth Ditto is a "size hero," an icon both revered and criticized for representing an alternative to fashion's willowy norm. It also explores some of the underlying skepticism surrounding the singer's rise to fame and fashion notoriety.

Is the style world embracing Beth Ditto out of a genuine interest in her art and message or is it using her in a bid to establish itself as a tolerant community? Is all this hoopla over her image overshadowing what's important - her artistry and originality?

Discuss.

--NATALIE GUEVARA

This Saturday, London's V&A museum debuts 'The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-1957'.

The exhibit will feature 100 outfits from houses like Dior, Balenciaga, and lesser-known English couturiers like Hardy Amies and Norman Hartnell. There will also be bills and receipts on display --one informs us that in 1950 a couture Balenciaga evening gown cost $230--.

Though today's couture is often discussed as one of the last links to the hallowed traditions of luxury clothing, the show and accompanying article in October's Vogue UK throw light on just how much it's changed.

In 1950 there were over 30 couture houses in Paris. A couturier would present 150-200 looks a collection, all of which were intended for sale. Shows took place daily until interest in ordering the clothing was gone, and customers might order 30 outfits from a single house in a season.

A suit from Dior's 'New Look' collection retailed for $180. For those on a tighter budget, retailers like Bergdorfs bought patterns directly from the designers to make their own, cheaper, versions of the couture looks.

Nan Kempner was a lifelong customer of couture, both in the "golden era" and in the nineties. Before she died she declared that couture is not "made for real women anymore. It's theater now-- and I've seen it all."

Couture today does seem like a distant, fantastic dream. But if you're looking for a peek at the era when couture was something you wore for a walk in the park, check out the V&A--

or if you can't make it to London, just buy the exhibition catalog.

--ANNA FIELDING GRIGGS

This week's Time Out New York pronounces fashion magazines useless and irrelevant to the real lives of fashion-forward New Yorkers.

Here's what they have to say:

"Flipping through the September issue of Vogue, we realized something we always knew but never got pissed about until now: The magazine’s useless. It’s pretty to look at, for sure, influential and impressively heavy—this month’s was their “biggest issue ever,� part of a record fall for fashion mags in general.

But New Yorkers looking for actual clothes to wear had to sift through 727 pages of ads, only to find a spread featuring an amazon in an explosion of “dyed fox fur spliced with plaid taffeta� and Sienna Miller wearing what looked like a turkey stitched to her back."

Of course, we're not cancelling our subscriptions anytime soon (then we would just get bills), but Time Out is right, in a way. It's not exactly news that fashion trends hit the streets before you see it on the runway, that the expensive clothes sprawled across the glossy pages of fashion mags are not really what the fashion cognoscenti wear in real life.

But the article does raise some interesting questions about fashion magazines in general. Clearly magazines can't keep up with the speed that information is moving across the internet through myspace, blogs, party photos websites, and all the rest.

So why do we keep reading them?

--ALISON COOL