To what lengths was Anna Wintour willing to go to make Fashion’s Night Out a success? Remarkable ones. Her presence at the kickoff event in the sportswear department of the Elmhurst mall Macy’s last night capped a long residency in the overcast and chilly outer borough: “I’ve been in Queens every night, and I was here this morning at 8 a.m. I was in Queens at the Open until 1 a.m. last night, watching Roger!” But did Wintour — sans sunglasses but wearing her own commemorative T-shirt (belted of course) with a black-and-white mermaid-and-fish-print skirt — seem cranky? Hardly! She smiled as she signed Fashion’s Night Out shirts, and before she disappeared into the crowd, she turned to Si Newhouse, clutched his hand, and said, apparently with great earnestness, “Thank you for coming to support us.”
Meanwhile, at Ralph Lauren last night, Wintour crept up behind an unsuspecting woman debating her purchase of an FNO T-shirt and said, “You should buy it — it’s for a good cause,” into the woman’s ear before breezing past. The shopper was so shocked that after immediately purchasing the shirt, she thrust her cell phone into our hands and demanded that we take a picture of her with Anna, who actually obliged. Maybe she liked the woman’s retro tech — it was Nokia flip phone.
