Project Runway is all about vision and delusion. The vision to put a cute dress on a magazine cover. The delusion that will stop print from going extinct. The vision of concentration. The delusion it leads to victory.

Anna Wintour has set a mythically high bar of imperious bitchitude for other fashion magazine editors to live up to, but no doubt Joanna Coles—the British editor of Marie Claire now familiar to reality TV viewers thanks to Running in Heels—would love to be talked about in the same tones of fear and awe. The quotes in this weekend's Daily Mail profile, therefore, must be music to her ears (if not actually written by her publicist). Coles, who's "said to make Wintour look like a warm-hearted pushover," apparently presides over an office "often in danger of drowning in a tidal wave of tears."

Comedian Sascha Baron Cohen's outrageous gay Austrian character Bruno recently made his own movie, in which he makes fun of the fashion industry. Curious about who got got? Fashion Week Daily has the answers.

♦ Charges will not be filed against Shia LaBeouf in connection with his car accident in LA in July. He may still lose his license, though, for failing to submit to a blood-alcohol test after the crash. [E!]
♦ Lindsay Lohan is so scared of her dad that she may take out an order of protection against him. [P6]
♦ Last week it was rumored Leonardo DiCaprio and Bar Refaeli had split up. Now it's rumored they're back together. [OK!]
♦ Robert De Niro is a giant pain to work with who makes "weird midnight phone calls." Or at least that's what Harvey Weinstein and Quentin Tarantino said in a taped phone conversation from 1997 that's just now been leaked. [P6]
♦ Julia Roberts left the Waverly Inn covered up in a pashmina, which means it's time for a fresh round of rumors that she's secretly pregnant. [The Sun]

• Jennifer Lopez competed in a triathalon in Malibu, then flew to New York to throw Marc Anthony a birthday party at the Bowery Hotel. It's unclear, though, if she ever had an injured foot, which was the reason she gave for pulling out of the Project Runway finale last week and now some are wondering if a fight with Harvey Weinstein over a movie role was the real reason she cancelled. [People, NYDN, MSNBC]

The pickup artist Mystery defined the "sniper neg" as an under-the-radar insult or backhanded compliment. Paging Nina Garcia! Her new boss, Marie Claire editor Joanna Coles, just sniper-negged her to Fashion Week Daily. Well, it's probably just an example of British no-nonsense bluntness, as opposed to the American tradition of blowing smoke up someone's ass (so to speak). What has Nina's presence done for the magazine? the Daily asked. "It's not clear what it's done so far, other than give us a ridiculous amount of attention..." Hey-o!Nina however, in the same issue, doesn't seem to worried:

» The scene at Michael Kors was inevitably the central portion of the fashion industry/magazine world/reality TV venn diagram: Nina Garcia, Rachel Zoe with her client Joy Bryant, Heidi Klum, Joanna Coles, and Joe Zee drew the limelight away from Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, Blake Lively, Bette Midler, and Kors' mom Joan. On the runway the (smiling!) models, who were told "you are the most glamorous beach bums in the world," showed off middle-of-the-road, cheerful outfits with polka dots and gingham aplenty. [NYO, NYDN, IHT]

I get the sense Joanna Coles is one of those people whose unbridled enthusiasm for everything lends her a dorky quality that make her gargantuan ambitions somehow endearing. Since she took the editor-in-chief spot at Marie Claire two years ago, the magazine's newsstand sales have plunged nearly 30%, but you get the feeling she doesn't let it get her down! And anyway, people are paying attention to Joanna this Fashion Week because she just hired Project Runway judge Nina Garcia away from Elle. Fashion people sometimes say bitchy things about Joanna, mostly "that Joanna Coles is a nerdy poser who has to pay Nina to sit next to her at fashion shows," because fashion people are ridiculous and so is Joanna, a little bit. Just today Fashion Week Daily ran a huge long interview with her along with a little gossip item that seemed harmless but was actually sort of cruel! Read that and our Coles FAQ — and just for kicks, see a pic of Nina Garcia in a realllly short skirt — after the jump.

Well if it isn't a blessing from the Gawker Media Gods who brought us that pretty fundamentalist rape victim hating Alaska Governess! The Style Network plans to double your viewing rations of Project Runway judge Nina Garcia! This was known already, actually, but now there are details: the show is called Running in Heels and revolves around the staff of Marie Claire magazine, Elle having fired Garcia after deciding to make a reality show featuring Garcia rival Anne Slowey. Nina vs. Anne! Elle vs. Marie Claire! It is like Road Rules vs. The Real World, only…something we'll actually set our DVRs for! But can the show be anywhere near as awesome as the reality-TV-esque circumstances that enabled it to be?Nina told me1 last month she'd had plenty of offers to do other shows before, but didn't want to do a makeover show. She hasn't: According to Marie Claire, Running In Heels intends to "offer unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to Marie Claire and the stylish, smart women who put the magazine together each month," including "private video confessionals," in which "viewers will learn how the interns cope with their jobs, their superiors and each other." That sounds so good!!! Except, of course, for two things: 1. Seriously, it's Marie Claire.2 How bad could the bullshit be at Marie Claire? The show runs the risk of being as boring as Vogue's stupid three million dollar "documentary" web show no one except Tatiana watches. At least Elle's Stylista has the virtue of being watchable, at minimum, as a trainwreck. 2. It's going to be on the Style Network. Which is owned by Comcast, unlike new Project Runway host Lifetime, which is half-owned by Marie Claire publisher Hearst. What kind of entertainment conglomerate snatches up Nina Garcia only to not air her new foray into "docu"-reality TV? Something is off there. My guess is that Nina, who is pretty controlling of her image, did not want to make a campy gossipy addictive voyeuristic Devil Wears Prada-type reality show when she is already, you know, famous.

1) The 303's new gallery in Chelsea was christened last night with a performance by The Virgins and partiers Lisa Spellman, Kirsten Dunst, Matt Creed, Thurston Moore, Serge Becker, Anna Sui, Byrdie Bell, Cynthia Rowley, Poppy de Villeneuve, Genevieve Jones, Julia Restoin-Roitfeld and Magnus Berger (left), Jessica Stam, Marilyn Minter, Sean MacPherson, and Rogan Gregory. [PMc/FWD]

• Did Uma Thurman and Arki Busson get secretly married during their engagement party earlier this month? If so, does that mean the European vacation they're on right now is really a honeymoon? [Page Six]

Joanna Coles

Eric Nicholson, former Jane editor and one-time America's Next Top Model judge, has just departed his job as senior editor at Marie Claire. He recently told Jane Pratt's radio show, reprinted in WWD, of his time at Hearst that "Yeah, it's definitely bigger and different. I wouldn't say better. My heart always will be at Jane magazine with you." That might have been the straw that broke the camel's back. According to one version of the story, editor Joanna Coles tossed the trade rag at him and ordered him out of the office. But hold on, drama queens. According to a Hearst spokesperson, he's leaving the magazine for a number of reasons, and any interactions, which were non-dramatic in nature, happened in a private room. We're sure he'll land on his very expensively-clad little feet. And we sure hope he gets all Atoosa for his second act!

• Say hello to the new Wall Street Journal. For free! [WSJ]
  

• Fashion magazine editor in chief documentary fever has risen to such a pitch that there are even cameras following around Marie Claire's Joanna Coles. Where will it end, Life& Style?? [NYT]
  

The other day we were getting a pedicure—we'll leave it up to you to figure out which of us we're talking about—and were idly flipping through a copy of the November Marie Claire, the one with Sarah Michelle Gellar on the cover. ("Gellar grows up! And she's even more fab!" Ew.) Now, a couple things: We generally do not read Marie Claire, because it is often boring, but we'd been hearing all this stuff about EIC Joanna Coles' "new" MC and wanted to check it out, despite the fact that we find Sarah Michelle Gellar a rather, shall we say, uninspired cover choice. (And by "uninspired," we mean, remind us why we should care about her, exactly? She played a vampire slayer on a TV show years ago and she's married to a B-list actor. Yawn.)