Fashion’s New Order By ERIC WILSON and CATHY HORYN Today’s power players have one thing in common: whether part of the establishment or nascent forces, they have changed the way we see fashion in the 21st century.

RAF SIMONS The Designers JACK MCCOLLOUGH AND LAZARO HERNANDEZ The Designers PHOEBE PHILO The Designers MARY-KATE AND ASHLEY OLSEN The Designers SARAH BURTON The Designers MARC JACOBS The Designers STELLA MCCARTNEY The Designers HEDI SLIMANE The Designers MIUCCIA PRADA The Designers THE MODELS Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss MICHAEL KORS How to Make a Million DIANE VON FURSTENBERG The Go-Betweens LULU KENNEDY The Go-Betweens JENNA LYONS The Go-Betweens The E-LEBRITIES Crashing the Media Elite, One Tweet at a Time SHALA MONROQUE The Eyes & Ears CARINE ROITFELD The Eyes & Ears PENNY MARTIN The Eyes & Ears ANNA WINTOUR The Eyes & Ears OPENING CEREMONY The Store That Ate Fashion DANIELLA VITALE The Merchants NATALIE MASSENET The Merchants FIVESTORY The Merchants SID MASHBURN The Merchants ANDREW ROSEN The Business Side BERNARD ARNAULT The Business Side CARMEN BUSQUETS The Business Side MICKEY DREXLER The Business Side LENA DUNHAM The Wild Card KIM KARDASHIAN Admit It: You Knew She’d Be Here ASAP ROCKY The Wild Cards EDWARD ENNINFUL The Image Makers PATRICK LI The Image Makers GUIDO PALAU The Image Makers RONNIE NEWHOUSE The Image Makers PAT MCGRATH The Image Makers

FOR much of the 20th century, the seating chart of a runway show gave a fairly accurate reading of power in the fashion industry. The press on one side, retailers on the other; editors and buyers prioritized neatly from front row to last. But so much has changed in the new millennium — the great online migration, fashion’s ascension as a leading force of popular culture, a thriving new generation of young designers and the explosive growth of social media — that power can no longer be measured solely by where you sit.

In fact, the players have changed, sometimes in subtle ways. There are giants whose power is perennial, as when Anna Wintour, already at the top of the pyramid, sealed her legacy by creating an annual night out for shopping, all the while rebranding herself as a fashion philanthropist, not the devil who wears Prada.



There are others who have unexpectedly become forces. It is now possible that the junior accessories editor sitting in the third row has a bigger voice than the editor in chief; or that the teenage blogger outweighs the middle-aged veteran who spent decades clawing her way up, just to get to the middle. So much competing noise, from people and devices, has skewed the perception of who really takes precedence.



To have power in fashion today means to have real impact, the kind that demonstrably moves an industry, as opposed to merely moving merchandise. It was this criterion that The New York Times considered foremost when setting out to define a new power establishment: those pullers of strings who, reacting to seismic shifts in technology, communication and the economics of their industry, have reshaped the way the rest of the world sees, senses and consumes fashion.



More symbolic than scientific, the following list includes designers, retailers, editors and stylists, and people whose work is largely behind the scenes. There are some whose power was established long ago, and others whose ascent is recent, but each was selected because of his or her impact on fashion in the 21st century, rather than for a lifetime of achievement. Many critical darlings whose work is broadly celebrated, as well as beloved designers whose businesses are worth billions, do not appear here for a simple reason: power is not a popularity contest.



THE DESIGNERS



Oh what a difference a little rivalry makes. As the spring 2013 runway season begins today, there is a sense that everyone will be trying just a little harder, that the fashion flock came home from their vacations a little earlier, especially in Europe. The game is on, and the star players are taking their places.



In New York, there are young designers on the rise, each vying to become the next big thing. In Paris, the first ready-to-wear shows of Raf Simons at Dior and Hedi Slimane at Yves Saint Laurent will take place, showcasing two of the most important designers in fashion today. Which will be the definitive look of the season? The lush coloring of Mr. Simons at Dior? Or the as-yet-undefined vision of Mr. Slimane for Saint Laurent.



But the truth is, there is already a talented field of designers at work, most of whom have only recently risen to the level of establishment. There are, of course, perennials (Ralph, Giorgio, Karl, Donatella — if they don’t need a last name, they’re here to stay), but you have the feeling that a leadership change had been in order for some time.



Click through the thumbnails above to read more about the designers; models; go-betweens; eyes and ears; merchants; business people; wildcards and image-makers who are ruling the game today. In fact, the players have changed, sometimes in subtle ways. There are giants whose power is perennial, as when Anna Wintour, already at the top of the pyramid, sealed her legacy by creating an annual night out for shopping, all the while rebranding herself as a fashion philanthropist, not the devil who wears Prada.There are others who have unexpectedly become forces. It is now possible that the junior accessories editor sitting in the third row has a bigger voice than the editor in chief; or that the teenage blogger outweighs the middle-aged veteran who spent decades clawing her way up, just to get to the middle. So much competing noise, from people and devices, has skewed the perception of who really takes precedence.To have power in fashion today means to have real impact, the kind that demonstrably moves an industry, as opposed to merely moving merchandise. It was this criterion that The New York Times considered foremost when setting out to define a new power establishment: those pullers of strings who, reacting to seismic shifts in technology, communication and the economics of their industry, have reshaped the way the rest of the world sees, senses and consumes fashion.More symbolic than scientific, the following list includes designers, retailers, editors and stylists, and people whose work is largely behind the scenes. There are some whose power was established long ago, and others whose ascent is recent, but each was selected because of his or her impact on fashion in the 21st century, rather than for a lifetime of achievement. Many critical darlings whose work is broadly celebrated, as well as beloved designers whose businesses are worth billions, do not appear here for a simple reason: power is not a popularity contest.THE DESIGNERSOh what a difference a little rivalry makes. As the spring 2013 runway season begins today, there is a sense that everyone will be trying just a little harder, that the fashion flock came home from their vacations a little earlier, especially in Europe. The game is on, and the star players are taking their places.In New York, there are young designers on the rise, each vying to become the next big thing. In Paris, the first ready-to-wear shows of Raf Simons at Dior and Hedi Slimane at Yves Saint Laurent will take place, showcasing two of the most important designers in fashion today. Which will be the definitive look of the season? The lush coloring of Mr. Simons at Dior? Or the as-yet-undefined vision of Mr. Slimane for Saint Laurent.But the truth is, there is already a talented field of designers at work, most of whom have only recently risen to the level of establishment. There are, of course, perennials (Ralph, Giorgio, Karl, Donatella — if they don’t need a last name, they’re here to stay), but you have the feeling that a leadership change had been in order for some time.Click through the thumbnails above to read more about the designers; models; go-betweens; eyes and ears; merchants; business people; wildcards and image-makers who are ruling the game today.

Francois Guillot/Agence France-Presse -- Getty Images Mr. Simons was already the Pied Piper of fashion during his years at Jil Sander. (He’s the reason you’re wearing bright pink.) But his move to Dior this spring quickly showed everyone — his new boss, Bernard Arnault, included — that Mr. Simons could take command of a historic name in fashion and bring it new life. With his July couture show, he put Dior back in a leadership position after its annus horribilis.

Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times With new investment in their company and a splashy new store on Madison Avenue, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler are next in line to have a major global fashion label.

David X. Prutting/BFAnyc.com Ms. Philo didn’t reinvent the wheel at Céline. She just did her work really well. Her strategy for reviving the brand was pitch-perfect: by making great products. (Isn’t that Céline bag a daughter’s version of her mom’s Hermès?) She also put a new stamp on minimalism. Her look is severe, but she knows how to put the jazz into it, too. And she does it all in a way that seems cooler than anyone else.

Jason Decrow/Invision Winning the Council of Fashion Designers of America award this spring as women’s wear designers of the year cemented the reputation of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen as real fashion designers, not just celebrity designers. Also, they made the Starbucks coffee cup an acceptable fashion accessory.

Justin Lane/European Pressphoto Agency When Sarah Burton stepped in as the designer of Alexander McQueen following Mr. McQueen’s suicide, it seemed a mighty tall order. But she took over the house with surprising self-assurance and grace. And then came Kate. Beyond the obvious coup of creating the wedding gown for the Duchess of Cambridge, Ms. Burton is the rare designer who does the fantasy thing well. She embraces creativity much as Mr. McQueen did, and you sense the influence of both on young designers at fashion schools around the world. At the same time, Ms. Burton makes such good clothes for the company’s commercial lines that she has raised the bar high.

Thibault Camus/Associated Press Dior, in the end, didn’t happen for Marc Jacobs, but so what? Criticize him, bash him, love him as you will: he still has the power to say no to just about anyone.

Neil Hall/Reuters Stella McCartney has demonstrated that she is the designer who could. She has savvily worked a look and created a media personality based on ethical design, all without being preachy. And in so doing she created a line that’s wearable and appealing, to both insiders and consumers.

Eric Ryan/Getty Images More than a decade ago, Mr. Slimane changed the course of men’s wear at Dior Homme, and his appointment to YSL has given him seemingly unlimited power. And he’s wielding it. His decisions to move his studio to Los Angeles and change the sacrosanct YSL logo have been greeted by Saint Laurent intimates not as controversial, but as infallible. Is he breaking the rules? He could be saying that you don’t need Paris to do high fashion. The proof will be in what he shows.

Vincent Yu/Associated Press What to say about the enigmatic Miuccia Prada? She belongs on any list of powerful designers just because she’s Miuccia Prada. How about this: Think how much better this year’s Costume Institute exhibition comparing her work to Elsa Schiaparelli would have been had they just dropped the part about Schiaparelli.

Joel Ryan/Associated Press (left) Ufficio Stampa Ferragamo European Pressphoto Agency (right) Even at their personal nadirs, snorting cocaine and throwing cellphones, there has been no controversy great enough to bring down Kate or Naomi. At the London Olympics, the duo retained pride of place during a fashion show at the closing ceremony, each dressed by Sarah Burton of Alexander McQueen. And each is having a banner year: Ms. Campbell is filming a new modeling-competition series for Oxygen Media, and Ms. Moss will be the subject of a November coffee-table book from Rizzoli that is being published in eight editions. Each will have a different image of Ms. Moss on the cover, including versions by Mario Testino, Corinne Day, Mario Sorrenti and Juergen Teller.

Todd Heisler/The New York Times BY this point in the interminable fashion parody known as “Project Runway,” even losing contestants cannot help but crack up when Michael Kors dismisses their work with a brilliant flash of his fiendish wit. Of a strong-shouldered dress that was trailing what looked like limp noodles, he said on a recent episode, “She just looks like Rigatoni Mad Max.”



No matter your opinion of reality television, there is no denying that Mr. Kors, who redefined the image of a “top American designer” for the public at large, is having the last laugh professionally.



The wildly successful initial public offering of his company in December defied expectations not only in the fashion industry, but also on Wall Street, which has historically had a love-hate relationship with designers. According to Bloomberg Markets, Michael Kors (symbol: KORS) had the best performance of any initial public offering between September 2008 and the end of 2011.



And Mr. Kors, while he’s no Mark Zuckerberg, has become a very wealthy man. The offering raised $944 million on its opening day, $117 million of that going into Mr. Kors’s pocket. He made another $135 million in a secondary offering in March, which is not bad for a designer whose label was recently described as “Hermès for Staten Island.” (This was said by John Idol, the chief executive of Michael Kors, so you would imagine he meant that lovingly.) Now trading above $50 a share, the company has a market value of more than $10 billion, a performance that has trumped most popular technology stocks of the same period. The stock price more than doubled during its first two months alone.



While his success on Wall Street can be seen as vindication for a designer who once had to declare bankruptcy on Seventh Avenue (in 1993, after a failed venture into lower-priced sportswear), it has also revived the kind of interest in the stock market among designers that hasn’t been seen in years. Now investors are sniffing around anyone who remotely resembles the next Ralph Lauren, and nary a week goes by without speculation about the financial potential of businesses like Diane von Furstenberg and Tory Burch.



That said, financiers tend to be as fickle as fashion designers. See the cases of Kenneth Cole, Tommy Hilfiger and the former Liz Claiborne company, all of which tumbled as public companies when their names fell out of favor. What is that thing that Mr. Kors and his cohorts like to say? Oh, yes, it goes, “One day you’re in ...”

Dave M. Benett/Getty Images As the president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, DVF is willing to play the diva and the power broker at once. And she plays both roles so well.

Stefan Rousseau - WPA Pool/Getty Images Interview magazine described Lulu Kennedy as “the patron saint of British fashion,” and that’s not far off the mark. No matter where you turn in London, Ms. Kennedy, the founder of an incubator program called Fashion East, is hustling for young designers. She has helped many of them, like Richard Nicoll, J. W. Anderson, Jonathan Saunders and Gareth Pugh, become better known through showrooms and runway sponsorships. In April, Love magazine signed her on as an editor at large. Sure, everybody’s all about supporting young designers these days, but Ms. Kennedy has helped so many that she actually put a city back on the fashion map.

Joe Schildhorn /BFAnyc.com Jenna Lyons, the creative director of J. Crew, has affected fashion as a well-tuned filter of trends and ideas. She knows what goes together, and we’re not just talking about clothes. Through her behind-the-scenes engagement with the industry, Ms. Lyons, a consummate makerof introductions, has become a mentor to the young generation of designers. She also has a special ability to translate fashion in a way that makes sense for the mainstream. It says something when Michelle Obama chooses to wear a J. Crew cardigan to transmit a specific message: I may like fashion, but don’t call me an elitist.

Will Ragozzino/BFAnyc.com THE dawn of social media has given us a new understanding of the fashion world, if in greater detail than any of us really wanted. Thanks to platforms like Twitter and Tumblr, it is now possible to have eyes and ears on the runway, and backstage, and at the show taking place simultaneously across town.



But such changes have also created a Darwinian experiment of sorts in which old-school journalists, editors and assorted communicators of fashion news of the classic mold have been thrust into a contest that could be called Survival of the Twittiest. And the reach of their posts can easily be measured.



Prolific Twitter users like Kyle Anderson, the accessories director of Marie Claire, and John Jannuzzi, the style collective editor at Lucky, both have scores of 72 on Klout, a tool that tracks the reach of users through social media. Their bosses, Joanna Coles, the editor of Marie Claire, scored 61, and Brandon Holley, the editor at Lucky, rated a 55. (Ms. Coles was named editor of Cosmopolitan on Tuesday.)



Now, take that with a big grain of salt. Ms. Coles and Ms. Holley are presumably too busy to play with Twitter all day, and Mr. Jannuzzi is the magazine’s resident blogging expert with a background in social media, after all.



But the numbers do suggest that, in a very few years, the number of players who have emerged online has upended the power structure. Ambitious junior editors are cleverly turning themselves into brand names, and savvy publicists are circumventing the traditional route of a news release by offering a behind-the-scenes (if highly calculated) view into their worlds.



In olden times, would house flacks have been able to affect fashion beyond banishing an editor to the second row? Now they’re celebrities: Aliza Licht, the senior vice president for global communications at Donna Karan International, has cultivated more than 415,000 followers on Twitter as DKNY PR Girl. Based on the popularity of her latest posts, mostly about people seeking seats for a runway show, you would think that DKNY is the most exclusive thing in town.



At Oscar de la Renta, Erika Bearman (above), also a senior vice president, has cast her boss in a hip light with irreverent posts as OscarPRGirl (145,000 followers). To wit: “even when he is speaking Spanish, i can always tell when Oscar is teasing someone.” Far from being a behind-the-scenes player, Ms. Bearman landed a spot on Vanity Fair’s International Best Dressed List this year. She was wearing Oscar de la Renta. Go figure.



Sure, it’s a lot of fluff and a lot of noise, but you could argue that Ms. Licht and Ms. Bearman have created platforms that influence the perception of their brands more broadly than the words of most critics. But their real impact, in 140 characters or less, is this: Other companies now realize that they, too, have to invest in social media, even if it’s ultimately meaningless.



A sampling of magazine editors and their Klout scores as of Wednesday. Several top editors, like Anna Wintour and Glenda Bailey, did not have measurable results.



Nina Garcia, fashion director of Marie Claire: 84



Derek Blasberg, multiple affiliations: 81



Joe Zee, creative director of Elle: 80



Mickey Boardman, editorial director of Paper: 78



Hamish Bowles, international editor at large of Vogue: 71



Edward Enninful, fashion and style director of W: 68



Laura Brown, features/special projects director of



Harper’s Bazaar: 65



Cindi Leive, editor in chief of Glamour: 64



Giovanna Battaglia, contributing fashion editor of W: 61

Evan Sung for The New York Times In a sea of preening fashion plates, you have to love how Shala Monroque, the creative director of Garage magazine, puts herself together. She is a rule breaker. It’s hard to imagine her wearing the runway. And the woman can rock a turban.

Robert Wright for The New York Times “It’s a big return, no?” Carine Roitfeld says at the end of a teaser video for the release of her new magazine, called CR Fashion Book. Well, it would have been, had she ever bothered leaving the stage. For all the behind-the-scenes drama that preceded her exit from the editorship of French Vogue in December 2010, Ms. Roitfeld has held on to power with a grip so tight that she should be used as a case study for personal branding in the digital era.



Lesson No. 1: Say yes to everything. Whether styling shows for Givenchy or magazine features for V and W magazines, or promoting a book, or becoming a grandmother, or collaborating on windows with Barneys New York and makeup with MAC, Ms. Roitfeld has been a constant source of news for a media world that thrives on the gluttony of nuggets. The mere act of releasing an image from her new magazine this summer was enough to set fashion blogs afire for weeks with speculation of what would be next.



In answer to her question, her return is so big, in fact, it has practically eclipsed any talk about a big redesign taking place over at that other magazine she edited for 10 years.

Dave M. Benett/Getty Images Newsstands are awash in artsy biannuals, but Penny Martin, the editor in chief of The Gentlewoman, stands out for having shown that there is room for the voice of an authoritative insider, with coverage of fashion that goes beyond the gloss of a blog post. She is the thinking woman’s fashion editor.

Emily Berl for The New York Times The queen.

Emmanuel Fradin for the International Herald Tribune LOOKING back at the 10-year history of Opening Ceremony and its rise from what seemed to be a nutty idea to what is probably the most influential retailer of the new millennium, you sometimes have to think that its founders, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, had an incredible run of dumb luck. How could a pair of self-professed mall kids from suburban Los Angeles have figured out the key to fashion for their generation?



No matter where you shop today, you can detect their influence. The reverence for 1980s California streetwear brands, the discovery of indie labels from far-flung corners of the world, the fervor for unconventional collaborations, the unapologetic embrace of hipsters, even the success of the fast-fashion Topshop chain in the United States — it can all be traced to the store Ms. Lim and Mr. Leon opened in 2002.



Opening Ceremony, on a once-desolate strip of Howard Street in SoHo, is like the physical incarnation of the sampling phenomenon that has defined fashion, art and music of the last decade, with its fast-moving merchandise and gazillions of references. Ms. Lim and Mr. Leon have their fingers in a little bit of everything: retailing, wholesaling, designing and now publishing. (You can get a good idea of their aesthetic in the new annual magazine published by the store, or in an anniversary coffee-table book about Opening Ceremony coming from Rizzoli this week.) Last year, they were even hired by LVMH to design the Kenzo collection in Paris, which would also seem like dumb luck if it didn’t make so much sense.



Kenzo Takada, when he was starting out in Paris the 1970s, opened a store that seemed visionary at the time for bringing disparate elements of global fashion and streetwear to a city that was accustomed to a standard of fashion that was dominated by a uniform designer look. Isn’t that exactly what Ms. Lim and Mr. Leon have done in New York?

Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images for Barneys New York As the chief operating officer of Barneys, Daniella Vitale is about as visible a presence as anyone can be in fashion. It also helps that she is forbiddingly tall, with an abundant mane and the ability to move swiftly in stilettos. Yet in many ways, Ms. Vitale is the ideal behind-the-scenes player. She defers easily to her boss, Mark Lee, but also speaks her mind — to him as well as to vendors. She plucked buyers away from the rival Bergdorf Goodman and oversaw the redo of Barneys.com. But



it’s her straight talk that people admire.

David X. Prutting/BFAnyc.com How many times did she hear “Women will never shop online”? Natalie Massenet, the founder of Net-a-Porter, obviously didn’t listen. As the site moves into its second decade, Ms. Massenet continues to be the sure-footed leader on the Web.

Yana Paskova for The New York Times One thing the post-recession world does not need is another “curated” boutique in the style of Colette. The term should be spiked. Can we just have a plain old merchant? Someone who buys with her customers in mind and wants to create a pleasant experience? Claire Distenfeld didn’t think that was too much to ask when she opened Fivestory in a town house off Madison Avenue, turning it into an elegant haunt. She carries a mix of fashion, jewelry and housewares, and displays a sharp eye, as when she bought Roberta Furlanetto’s line from Milan. What would the fashion police say? It doesn’t matter. Ms. Distenfeld isn’t listening.

Raymond McCrea Jones for The New York Times By JON CARAMANICA There’s the normal way to wear a double monk, and then there’s the Sid Mashburn way — top strap open, flying loose — which is, naturally, the better way. So it goes with Mr. Mashburn, the owner of an Atlanta store and clothing line that bear his name and are designed to outfit the Southern gentleman while understanding that that term is evolving. Spacious and austere, with tailors working intently in back by the dressing rooms, the store stocks looks (Italianate sport coats, some spread collars, some madras, white bucks, those double monks) that can tackle a range of conundrums with equal panache: what to wear to an art auction, to a pig pull, to church. They look great on Tumblr, too, where Mr. Mashburn is a folk hero of the men’s wear-nerd set.

Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images As a founder of Theory, Andrew Rosen may have once seemed like the last of a dying breed known as the garmento, the old-school Seventh Avenue fashion executive who sells blouses by the dozens and talks about dresses that “fly out of the store.” But given the direction of his career over the last decade, his image is now more like that of an empire builder. Among the up-and-coming labels he has helped develop are Alice + Olivia, Rag & Bone, Helmut Lang and, most recently, Proenza Schouler. His conglomerate-building has been described as the American equivalent of Gucci or LVMH — and by Anna Wintour, no less.

Valentin Flauraud/Reuters Never mind that Bernard Arnault is the richest person in Europe. For good or ill, his decisions at the luxury conglomerate LVMH, where he is chairman and majority owner, have a huge impact on the global fashion industry. He is fashion’s best example of the extreme fighter. He goes after what he wants (lately it seems to be Hermès) and generally gets it. True, he makes his executives at brands like Louis Vuitton, Givenchy and Céline tremble, and his entrances to fashion shows only lack for a ceremonial horn. But the fact is, he gives creators and executives plenty of room to do their jobs. If Mr. Arnault were less decisive, less stimulated by the action in the chiffon trenches, and less mindful of the world’s new deposits of capital, he would be merely another corporate chief.

Larry Busacca/Getty Images “Don’t you know Carmen Busquets?” people ask sotto voce when discussing the success of online retailers like Net-a-Porter and Moda Operandi. Actually, no. Ms. Busquets has kept a very low profile in the industry, despite a spitfire personality. Few insiders knew that the Venezuela native was a founding investor in Net-a-Porter; she reportedly had a big payday when Richemont, the Swiss luxury group, became majority owner. She also started Couture Lab, another niche site. She has said she prefers small investments in fashion and social media sites. Now everyone wants her two cents.

Seth Wenig/Associated Press Ann Taylor, Gap and, for the last decade, J. Crew owe a good bit of their meteoric rises to the merchandising madness of the chief executive Mickey Drexler. He is fashion’s Ray Kroc or Steve Jobs — and almost as mythologized. While his micromanaging style and business quirks, like speaking to employees on a public- address system or personally responding to angry customers, are the stuff of legend, it’s his gut that should be enshrined.

Ali Paige Goldstein/HBO One feels a bit ambivalent placing Lena Dunham, the creator and star of the HBO hit “Girls,” on a list of fashion tastemakers. Indeed, as the industry extends its arms (and offers, no doubt, of co-branding), there’s a strong impulse to yell, “Run, Lena, run!” In a fashion smackdown with “Sex and the City,” “Girls” would clearly lose. But the New York of “Sex and the City” scarcely exists today. It has vacated to Brooklyn, which is Ms. Dunham’s turf. The values have changed. Ms. Dunham’s liberal feminist voice is dry with humor and failure. And those are concepts that the resolutely perky, mendacious fashion world just can’t cope with; in its view, women must still be talon-sharp. Ms. Dunham’s character on “Girls” seems to ask the question, “You don’t think I’m pretty?” Yet our faith in her lies in the fact that she will not give quarter to your stupid judgments. For fashion, that’s an interesting dialogue to have.

Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Bet By JON CARAMANICA SCOFF all you want: Kim Kardashian floats above it all. See her strolling arm in arm with her boyfriend, Kanye West, in matching all-black outfits. See her on magazine covers — beaming, never smoldering. See her on Twitter, getting aphoristic.



A neurotic who subjected her life to reality television and tabloid glare, who put a whole family of narcissists and strivers and even the reluctant on her back, she is the most modern celebrity: unattainable, human, anxious. Many of her biggest moments have been failures (the sex tape, the televised speed wedding), and yet she has been remarkably resilient, building an empire from whole cloth. The truth is: no one asked for Kim Kardashian, but she’s here for good nonetheless.



And somehow, she’s not gauche. She has grown into her elegance, streamlining her old California casual chic into a blend of severity and camp. But fashion doesn’t shape her: there’s the family store, Dash, and the various endorsement deals, but they’re barely blips on her life portfolio. Notionally, Kim moves clothes, in the way that any role model does. But really, she moves dreams.

Chad Batka for The New York Times By JON CARAMANICA Traditionally, hip-hop royalty embraces high fashion after years of new-money climbing, but ASAP Rocky came in the door that way. He’s a sui generis figure: a Harlem rapper obsessed with Raf Simons and Rick Owens who is rewriting the way rappers present themselves. Now, even before his official debut album, Rocky (born Rakim Mayers) is sharing photo shoots with Alexander Wang and Jeremy Scott, and rewriting “Camelot” as an interracial prep romance fantasy with Lana Del Rey in one of her



videos. In his recent video for “Purple Kisses,” Rocky crawls into bed with two women,



and sure, he’s into them, but maybe not as much as the white Balmain jeans sliding down his rear.

Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times A decade ago, stylists came to power as the genies behind big-name designers and advertising campaigns. Now many of those stylists have stepped out of the chic woodwork to become their own brands. Such behavior seems an utterly foreign hunk of cheese to Edward Enninful, who began his career in waif-era London and is the fashion and style director of W. The clear signature of an Enninful shoot is a total command of how clothes should look on a body, combined with what is decisively contemporary — whether it’s a new silhouette or a new aspect of beauty or a new musical influence. In contrast with the narcissistic pattern of the industry, you sense that Mr. Enninful’s ambition is to tell a lively, relevant story.

Yana Paskova for The New York Times If you were looking for the next Fabien Baron among today’s crop of art directors and branding magicians, your gaze would most likely fall on Patrick Li. His fingerprints can be found on the graphic design of logos and packaging for some of the coolest designers of the new generation, with lettering, treatments and fonts that are carefully chosen to suggest a specific mood or emotion. When you look at a black gift box from Alexander Wang, you might think, “Hmm, kind of graphic, industrial.” Or you might see a street poster for Jason Wu, with the designer’s name in neon hairline script, and say, “How elegant, but also youthful.” Or you could receive an invitation from Rodarte that was dipped in black wax or covered in sand and think, “How endearingly kooky.”



Well, you’re supposed to, because Mr. Li’s job is to articulate a designer’s vision in the nanosecond it takes to look at the name on a label.

Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times You often hear people in the fashion industry say they won’t schedule a shoot unless Guido Palau is available to do the hair. That’s how much photographers and designers depend on his judgment. Mr. Palau, who got his break in the early 1990s while working with the photographer David Sims on shoots for the pivotal London music and fashion magazine The Face, may be the ultimate insider, but prestige hasn’t strained his magic or his freedom. Far from it. He works on most of the big shows, including Balenciaga, Prada and Louis Vuitton.

DAVID PRUTTING/PatrickMcMullan.com Ronnie Newhouse is the ultimate insider. As the art director who works with Louis Vuitton and Lanvin, among others, she has demonstrated great taste and amazing antenna — she can be found front row at every important show with her husband, Jonathan Newhouse, the chairman of Condé Nast International.