"Hearst Corporation... continues to host parties even as it folds magazines like CosmoGirl... It seems excessive." [Page Six]

♦ Lydia Hearst, seen here attending a party last week, doesn't think her family's publishing company should be hosting parties these days. "It's time to work through this crisis, not party through it," she says. [P6]
♦ How are Madonna and Guy Ritchie coping with their split? Madonna has supposedly enrolled in anger management classes at the Kabbalah Center, while Guy has been out with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. [The Sun, People]
♦ Elisabeth Hasselbeck is introducing Sarah Palin at a rally in Florida this weekend. [ET]
♦ A month after vacationing together in St. Tropez, Jennifer Lopez has asked Benny Medina to come back on as her manager. [Fox411]

♦ Pat Field's debuted her line for HSN today. The Carrie-like dresses cost $150 a pop and each order comes with a subscription to Vogue. "If only Anna Wintour would go on the air and shill along with Pat Field." [The Cut]
♦ Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen might be feuding, their neighbors might hate them, but their fashion empire keeps expanding: They've just signed a deal with Steve Madden to create a shoe line under their Elizabeth and James brand. [WWD]

It will probably be a fun weekend for Lydia Hearst: the heiress turns 24 today. Others blowing out candles today: Jimmy Fallon is 34. Soledad O'Brien of CNN is 42. Richie Akiva is 32, although the invite to his birthday party said it was his 30th. James Lipton is 82. Former HarperCollins chief Jane Friedman is 63. Defense attorney Barry Scheck is turning 59. And model Victoria Silvstedt is 34. On Saturday: Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein (pictured here with Lydia, a first we imagine) will be 54. Financier Joseph Perella will be 67. Sophia Loren will turn 74. Ad exec Scott Goodson will celebrate his 45th. Interior designer Geoffrey Bradfield will be 62. And Jossip's David Hauslaib will turn 25. On Sunday: Jane Rosenthal will be 52. Stephen King will be 61. Bill Murray will celebrate his 58th. Jerry Bruckheimer will be 63. Book publisher Geoff Kloske will turn 39. Natural History museum president Ellen Futter will be 59. Nicole Richie will be 27. Cheryl Hines will turn 43. Luke Wilson will be 37. And filmmaker Ethan Coen will be celebrating his 51st.

No really, I checked with Jezebel editor Anna Holmes, seriously no one cares this year. I even checked with the anonymous comments left on New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn's blog; this is like the most irrelevant-feeling Fashion Week since the terrorists got involved. Why? Well I thought of five good reasons! This guy (pictured) is your first clue…Marc Jacobs is the only designer anyone cares about and, even though his collection was sort of cool this year, his collection has always been sort of a loss-leader funded by his insane diva behavior and that behavior mostly stopped this year. Last September Marc Jacobs started his 9 p.m. show two and a half hours late and everyone had a hissy fit about it, which in turn caused Marc Jacobs to have a hissy fit over how he was an "artist" and people should not be thinking about quotidian details such as whether their dogs had been fed. Then he dyed his hair blue, went insane and maybe also to rehab. Anyway, that is as good as it gets, in fashion. (That should tell you something.) But he is sane this year. It's all about the clothes, and no one really cares about clothes! Everyone who isn't Russian is poor. Times Thursday Styles regular Stephanie Rosenbloom has a story about the nation's thrift stores. This is hugely significant for two reasons: 1. It is actually a story, and last year around this time Stephanie Rosenbloom was writing about horseback riding in the Hampton's, but it turns out she has been hiding out in the Business section lately, getting down to proverbial business. 2. The story is that the demand for other people's cast-off ill-advised purchases has exceeded the nation's supply of ill-advised purchases. Cindy McCain is the new Victoria Beckham. Example: last week Us Weekly decreed Michelle Obama to have hands-down better style than Cindy McCain. This week the selfsame magazine has a whole feature on Cindy's supposed "makeover" and how pretty she suddenly supposedly looks! And that is not even to mention the matter of Sarah Palin's disappearing-reappearing beehive, and Michelle Obama's Thakoon dress and the cool shirt pictured above, which we found on Philebrity. Political fashion icons are the new celebrity fashion icons, and that is bad for the industry because unlike worthless celebrities who are allowed to change outfits as fast as they can spill tequila and Sparks on the ones they were wearing, politicians, at least when they are not wearing $300,000 dresses, have to pretend they understand the realities of working-class Americans busy raiding thrift stores/insurgent safe houses. The must-have item this year is the jumpsuit. Perhaps you heard about the school in Texas that recently decreed that all kids who chose to violate dress code requirements by rolling up their skirts or whatever would risk being forced to don prison jumpsuits for the remainder of the school day. Now, there is always going to be that one group of totally cool high schoolers who make the prison jumpsuits into some sort of "subversive" fashion statement, but bottom line is that high schoolers would not be incurring dress code violations if they did not want to show off their skinny high schooler legs etc. etc. and those high schoolers grow into the adults who consume fashion. So this gives me pause:

Poor Lydia Hearst is still stuck in the hospital, having been rushed to the New York-Presbyterian ER last night for kidney stones. But this is Fashion Week, dammit, and there's socializing to be done, and so she's going to fight through the pain. "She is still expected to be seated front row at the Tommy Hilfiger show Thursday, and to attend London Fashion Week next week." Lance Armstrong would be proud, babe. [Star]

Cityfile compiled a booklet of Faces at Fashion Week and posted it online so people like you could have your own glamorous little liquid crystal menagerie to admire right at your very own venue of indentured servitude. Look, Carine Roitfeld! The Ronsons! Andre Leon Talley and Kelly Cutrone and two separate Hearsts! And the most startling realization upon clicking and resetting text size enough to read the goddamn thing…

[Heiress and socialite Lydia Hearst (Shaw) at New York Fashion Week's Calvin Klein 40th anniversary party last night; image via WENN] MisterHippity's new line beats the original, Ghost of Hairdos Past Stalks Fashion Week.

1) One of many Fashion Week kick-off events was the Agyness Deyn-hosted, Thierry Mugler-sponsored bash last night at Christie's, where Chloë Sevigny, Henry Holland, Kelly Osbourne, Peaches Geldof, Yigal Azrouël, Kelly Cutrone, Paul Sevigny, Kate Schelter, Jennifer Creel, Holly Dunlap, Genevieve Jones, Jen Cohen, Dori Cooperman, Ellen Von Unwerth, Padma Lakshmi, and Mary Alice Stephenson previewed the auction house's fall sales of post-war and contemporary art, impressionist and modern art, and fashion. [The Daily, Wireimage, NYO]

• John Edwards probably won't be invited to speak at the Democratic national convention unless he addresses those nagging rumors that he had a love child with Rielle Hunter. [Page Six]

At last night's party for C-list gays, "Angels and ___," we hear that this website offended model/socialite/heiress Lydia Hearst-Shaw by referring to her as a "pseudo-heiress" the other day. Our spy Jory reported, "We ran into Alan Rish, publicist for Lydia Hearst, who was very nice but almost immediately jumped on us for yesterday's Open Caption. 'She's super cool,' [he said of Lydia]. 'She usually doesn't mind that stuff, but yesterday it got to her. I mean, 'Faux Heiress', what does that mean? She's not a faux heiress, she's a real heiress! I don't understand why you would say that!'" Yes, but... a real heiress wouldn't be so insecure about her social status. (Her mother's married name is Patricia Hearst-Shaw—so Lydia publicly—and conveniently—drops the unglamorous "Shaw.")

Parker Posey walking her dog through the Village ... Katie Holmes leaving another day of rehearsals and walking to a playground with Suri a few hours later ... Mariska Hargitay, Christopher Meloni, and Luke Perry shooting a scene for Law & Order in the meatpacking district ... Kelly Ripa outside the David Letterman show ... Blake Lively and Taylor Momsen showing up to the Gossip Girl set in Chinatown ... and Lydia Hearst and Aubrey O'Day posing for a Tara Subkoff "photo shoot" downtown.

• Tommy Hilfiger and Dee Ocleppo were supposed to have two weddings coming up—one in Mustique and one at The Plaza—but now they're having none because the whole wedding has been called off. The Post's suggestion: "Maybe he should rethink his hairpiece." [Page Six]

[Pseudo-heiress and socialite, I guess, Lydia Hearst with singer, I guess, Aubrey O'Day outside New York hotspot, I guess, Butter last night, doing that ol' fake lesbian PR thing; image, I guess, via Splash Also, there's this.]

Kate Hudson and son Ryder crossing a street in the Village ... America's Next Top Model's Jay Manuel leaving the ABC studios ... Madonna and Lourdes leaving the Kabbalah center ... Seth Rogen playing outside Late Night with David Letterman ... Bernadette Peters walking into a Midtown office buidling ... Lindsay Price taking a stroll downtown with her mom ... David Cross and Amber Tamblyn walking David's dog through the East Village ... the cast of Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants outside TRL ... Shaquille O'Neal leaving his hotel in Midtown ... Leighton Meester getting in a limo at JFK ... and Aubrey O'Day and Lydia Hearst holding hands on their way out of Butter and kissing in the limo waiting outside.

In model-heiress Lydia Hearst's self-manufactured feud with Paris Hilton, Hearst positions herself as the more upscale socialite. Her sidelines constitute a "legitimate career," her poses those of a "supermodel" rather than the pedestrian kind and her family lineage is somehow more distinguished. Of course she's pretty much wrong in all regards about all that, but that doesn't mean she'll stop trying to make it true through endless repetition. So when the 23-year-old decided to flash some more skin (outside of bra-optional parties), she didn't do it in an endless series of nipple flashes, Paris Hilton style. She did it with her first lingerie campaign, for "upscale" brand Myla — and got coverage in the sorta-classier New York tabloid, the Daily News. Listen to how she says "ogle my body!" — and, optionally, ogle her body again via a remarkably stiff picture — after the jump.

• Do you have $300 million burning a hole in your pocket and a yen to see Tory Burch's company get even bigger? You're in luck: a stake in the popular-with-Upper East Siders label is up for grabs. [WWD]

1) Donna Karan's annual designer garage sale in support of the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund was co-hosted by InStyle and Kelly Ripa on Saturday. Betsey Johnson, Lydia Hearst, Euan Rellie, Lorraine Bracco, Jessica Stam, Katie Lee Joel, Debbie Matenopoulos, Hana Soukupova, Charlotte Ronson, and Nanette Lepore browsed stalls manned by the likes of Rachel Zoe and Shoshanna Lonstein Gruss, raising $3.6 million. [FWD]

Lydia Hearst is many things—heiress, model, actress, journalist, selfless soup kitchen volunteer. (Okay, we're not so sure about that last one.) But ping pong champion? The obscenely social 23-year-old won one game and lost another at a ping pong tournament at SoHo House on Monday night. And she did it in a gold Phillip Lim dress and heels, too. Somewhere Randy is beaming with pride. [W]

• Lydia Hearst is no longer just a pretty face, says OK mag, now that she's joined the cast of Gossip Girl. We won't attempt to parse that logic, but focus instead on the delightful news that things are going well with Lydia's boyfriend Matt Rains, Heatherette designer Traver's brother. The couple enjoys "bowling, botanical gardens and walking through Central Park together." How wholesome! [OK]