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At the intersection of fashion and race car driving there are no stop signs or lights, just a lone traffic cop wearing a dashiki and green chenille cuff cap. We bet there aren't too many people roaming the halls of 4 Times Square who can appreciate the finer subtleties of off-road racing but we found one — Michele Shapiro, research editor at Glamour and rally enthusiast. She s trained in the art of clawing her way through sample sales and dropping trou in the Moroccan desert. Amazing truths about the fashion magazine industry and fanciful musings on international road trips are revealed after the jump.

Age: 34
Occupation: Editor/Race Car Driver
Location: East Village

1. Fashion Week is upon us and I'm sure the offices of magazines like Glamour are more frantic than backstage runway changes. Or, maybe you're all just sitting on your trendy denim-covered asses as usual. Please reveal some juicy facts and truths of the fashion magazine industry.

Truth: I do work my trendy denim-covered ass off. That is when I m not answering questions for some online blog or out at a lunch time sample sale. [Fact within a truth: There are simply just not enough lunch hours in the day to sample sale shop properly. Case in point, I had to go back to the Prada S.S. three times because I kept running out of time. It s become a problem and something perhaps worthy of an ASME luncheon lecture because I think that I ve completely forgotten how to shop at regular stores.]

2. Industry experts estimate that the making of all September issues of fashion magazines could wipe out a Canadian province's entire stock of lumber yards. Glamour, for its part, puts out a relatively slim issue at .58 pounds but with the highest paid circulation of 2.4 million, that's roughly 1.4 million pounds of Glamour. Simply, is that enough?

Do you think it would help if someone declared the red flannel shirt the new "must-have" item for fall?

3. You're no dainty fashion type, you actually kick some serious motorsport tail. You teamed up with your sister to compete in the Rallye Aicha des Gazelles, an 8-day/1550-mile race across the Moroccan desert. Vehicle questions: Did you ever think of doing it Mad Max style on a motorbike? Was that Nissan SUV your first choice? How did she handle?

One of the questions I get asked a lot is, "At 5'3 [I must say that s actually how tall I am in bare feet, and this basically only happens at the beach, but I'm really 5'6 in stilettos which is pretty much what I ll look like if anyone meets me—just so we re clear on this.] and 105 pounds are you really strong enough to race cars?" My answer, "I'm driving the car, not lifting it." With motorcycles, they say it's all about balance but you still need to hold the damn thing up, so no I'm happy with my car.

We loved our baby, Big Blue [aka our Nissan Patrol]! That car gave us everything she had and never let us down. For 8 days we flew [sometimes literally] over sand dunes, raced over rocky mountains and sped over dirt paths and we never had to change a tire. Which incidentally I do know how to do.

4. Okay, the really important stuff involving the race: what did you eat during those 8 days and what was the "bathroom situation" like?

We were provided with French army rations which included two different kinds of pate, tuna in red sauce and canned cheese. However we decided to donate these items to the Berbers [Bedouins of Morocco. Oh, by the way: Bedouins are desert nomads and Morocco is not an island. I just point this out because I dated this guy, bizarrely who graduated from Harvard, who did not know these two things. Oh what an Ivy education buys you these days.]. The Berbers helped us along the way by assisting us with digging when we got stuck in the sand and giving us directions, which wasn t always helpful considering they usually spoke Arabic or French which we did not understand. But on those rare times they did speak English it was usually something like, "Take a left at the camel" or "Head straight for that rock and take the fifth path down, oh and beware of taking the fourth path because there s a cliff." So, instead we ate food that had been donated to us by our fabulous East Village grocery store, St. Marks Market. They let us come in and pick out necessities like peanut butter, tuna [sans nasty red sauce] and pumpkin seeds [if you re ever in need of food with a lot of salt, you can t do much better than pumpkin seeds]. So we brought groceries from New York all the way to the Sahara and boy were we happy we did.

The second question my mother asked me was, "Where will you go to the bathroom." [The first was obviously, "Are you insane?"] I m not really much of a camper, but it wasn't that bad. The reality was there was no one around for miles, so when it was time to "go" this is pretty much how it went:

1. Announce to your partner, in my case my sister, that it your was time to "go."
2. Head to the back of Big Blue.
3. Drop trou.
4. Look around and enjoy the beautiful landscape.
5. Safely dispose of tissue in plastic bag.

5. Did you ever have to fight off poisonous snakes and scorpions with some stanky-ass J-Lo perfume?

I ve never actually smelled the J-Lo perfume. Is it really that bad or perhaps are you just jealous there's no Gawker eau de toilette?[Ed: Oh, but there is. If the armpits of Anna Wintour and Simon Dumenco could have intercourse, that's what it smells like.]

Michele Shapiro's Top 5 Road Trips I d like to take and the 5 cars I d like to take them in:

1. New York to Tierra Del Fuego, Chile [via the east coast route] in a 1976 Cadillac Deville. My favorite road trip to date was: San Francisco—Guatemala—New York. [Disclaimer 1: In this litigious society of ours I d be remiss if I didn t say, children don t try this at home.] So, this time I d like to continue all the way south ala Motorcycle Diaries in reverse, minus the lepers of course.

2. Havana to Santiago de Cuba in a 1957 Chevy Bel Air. Cuba is one of my favorite places, but I didn t make it much past Havana. I would like to pick up my friend Jorge Luis and cruise along the Malecon blasting Los Van Van and smoking Cohibas [No, I don t actually smoke cigars, but I love the smell. My grandfather used to smoke them and to me it s up there with popcorn and fresh laundry as one of the best scents ever].

3. Bialystok, Poland—Odessa/Kiev, Ukraine—Moscow/ St.Petersberg, Russia in a bullet proof Humvee. This is the ethnic tour of my past. I will begin with Bialys in Bialystok [Though I wonder if they re as good as the ones in the LES?], a toast to my grandfather and his home country and then on to the Ukraine where I will toast the rest of my grandparents with lots of vodka and heavy, bad food [Disclaimer 2: clearly I m not advocating drinking and driving, simply driving then stop driving, and then the drinking. Kids, seriously do not drink and drive]. Then on to Russia for more Vodka and bad food to toast the time when I thought I was Russian. I actually grew up thinking I was Russian because that s what my mother told me. I guess it was just easier than explaining where the Ukraine was. Thus, there s still a part of me that is sentimental about Russia. Or perhaps it s just too many Dostoevsky novels.

4. Palermo/Rome/Cinque Terra, Italy—Monaco—St. Tropez, France—Barcelona/Malaga, Spain in a 2004 Morgan Aero 8. I see myself winding the coastal roads, top down, with a huge pair of Chanel sunglasses and a guy not unlike Marcello Mastroianni circa La Dolce Vita sitting next to me. My Marcello would arrange for me and my Morgan to be taken care of in the manner we're both accustomed to. For me, Cristal at every stop [Disclaimer 3: Again notice the appearance of the word stop, you must stop the car and then imbibe.] and for my Morgan, an Evian bath and Creme de la Mer wax.

5. Ho Chi Mihn City/ Hanoi, Vietnam— Kompong Luong, Cambodia—Phuket/Bangkok, Thailand in a Koenigsegg CCR [purely because I want to drive this damn car]. This would be a nice drive through S.E. Asia at 242 mph, culminating in a few weeks rest in the Thai islands. Actually if I had a Koenigsegg and a shack on some Thai island I think I d never return.

Read more about Michele's race across the Moroccan desert at SpeedSisters.com and her work for Seeds of Peace.

—Andrew Krucoff and Chris Gage conduct a daily interview series for Gawker.