The Sunday Styles finally went to Fashion Meets Finance, an event where Manhattan banker-types and fashion slaves meet, consummate, and procreate certain genetics to create lineages of people you'd rather not know. Their findings are, while nothing new, nonetheless awesome.

Granted, Sheila McClear wrote about this last year, Matt Harvey did this at the New York Press back in January, and in what reads less like a party report and more like Heart of Darkness: NYC '09 Edition, Jenna from Jezebel channeled her inner Josef Conrad to dive headfirst into the New and Improved FMF earlier in the week. I would recommend reading her piece, first, but it's kind of terrifying.

But maybe the Times discovered something different in their findings, maybe they found something to like about this entire enterprise. After all, this is the Sunday Styles, a section of the New York Times almost entirely devoted to attempts at instilling an inferiority complex in the hoi polloi. Maybe they saw it through a different, less cynical lens, one that cynics can't permeate.

Or not. Try this on for size:

"From my experience, I've dated lawyers and doctors and they're nice; I just prefer finance," Ms. Yanush said, before applying a fresh gloss of candy-apple-red lipstick in the ladies room. "My girlfriends who are in long-term relationships with finance guys are very happy."

Or this:

Alan Nieves, 24, a derivatives salesman for an investment bank, confirmed that when it comes to who attracts whom, "There's a system in place and that's how it is," adding, "It's the New York scene."

Or this:

A 25-year-old financial analyst who was double-fisting glasses of Johnnie Walker Black, said that identifying yourself as a banker ("dropping the banker bomb" as he put it) had traditionally been a potent lure on the dating scene. "As the recession got worse, the magic bullet lost some of its mojo," said the analyst, who asked not to be named to protect his employer, a private equity firm, from the publicity associated with the evening. "All my paralegal friends were suddenly getting dates and my banker friends weren't." His own social life, at least, did not suffer because of recession, he said, but he still didn't see the potential to meet someone special this night. "Let's just say I'm not going to find my future ex-wife here," he said.

The lovely thing about Times writer Katherine Bindley's report is how hard she struggles with not writing something along the lines of DICKBAGS, MANY OF YOU, especially when she takes to quoting to invitation: "'We are here to announce the balance is restoring itself to the ecosystem of the New York dating community,' the party organizers said on their cheeky Web site." Somewhere, buried deep within the confines of the Sunday Styles editorial bullpen, there has to be a style guide filled with euphemisms like "cheeky" their writers are forced to use in place of designations like "goddamn ridiculous." It's probably a great read.

Meanwhile, in two separate apartments buried deep within Murray Hill, a second or third walk of shame/point of pride is being recounted to a group of well-to-do bankers or fashion workers. Soon, they will marry, and one day, after appearing in the Weddings & Celebrations pages, spring forth children from their loins. And when asked where they met by their children one day, they can point them to this website, and tales of double-fisting Johnnie B. and laughs about lying on the application will ensue. Possibly followed by a moment of very loud, silent disquiet.

Banker Seeks Beauty: Must Be Upbeat (Like the Economy) [NYT]

Doped Race Horses, Ozwald Boateng & Gluten-Free Vodka: Last Night Finance Guys Showed Me The World [Jezebel]