Bedbugs are spawning and biting their way through midtown, from the province of tourists to the province of fashion editors. Elle’s offices on the 44th floor of the Hachette Filipacchi building on Broadway and 50th Street have been closed due to bedbugs. Corporate sent out a memo alerting Elle employees that “a specially trained sniffing beagle was brought in to confirm” the presence of bedbugs and that the infestation was treated. Elle editors were told to work from home until Monday, but what this could mean for all fashion offices is scary.

You know what Elle has a lot of? Clothes. Nice clothes. Designer clothes. The nicest designer clothes in the world, in fact, that will be passed from Elle to a showroom to another magazine to a showroom to another magazine to a sample sale, with models wearing, and stylists handling, the clothes in between. Bedbugs like clothes, especially tightly packed racks of them. So hopefully Elle makes sure those are bedbug-free so the vermin don’t migrate to the province of high-fashion designers and freak out all the overreacting sorts of people who have to go to Fashion Weeks in a few weeks. Come to think of it, have the Lincoln Center people thought about bedbugs? Because we’d like an extra pass for a personal beagle, please, if not.

Elle offices closed due to bedbugs [Page Six/NYP]