Anna Wintour may be all-powerful in the world of fashion as editor of Vogue magazine but it seems even the almighty can get it wrong when it comes to frocks. Wintour topped a list in Time magazine of the fashion faux pas of 2008, wearning a silver dress to the Met Costume Gala that “makes her look like she’s encrusted with ammonoid fossils.”

But the stylish Wintour had some good company on the list. Coming in second place was Janet Jackson in a gold jumpsuit she wore to open the concerts on her RockWitchu tour which Time said did not seem to fit quite right and made her look like she came from another planet.

Christian Siriano, who won the fourth season of “Project Runway,” came under fire for wearing a gold, ruffled satin shirt while others in the firing line included Gwyneth Paltrow, Beyonce, Paula Abdul, Katie Holmes, and Kate Bosworth whose Chanel ensemble looked “like stacked muffin tins.”

Think of any others?

I’ve faced gun-toting rebels, driven through sand storms in Iraq and landed backwards on an aircraft carrier at 200 miles an hour, but had anything in my 16-year career as a Reuters correspondent really prepared me to face the withering stares and tight smiles in the hostile battleground of London Fashion Week?

Like any correspondent trained for war, I considered my protective body armour: an old Savile Row suit (bought on sale years ago), white double cuff shirt (still stain-free!), Hermes tie acquired nearly a decade ago and a worryingly scruffy pair of black shoes with flapping soles.

Not exactly haute couture for men, but then I was going to cover women’s fashion. Would they really care?

The pre-contact jitters began long before I pitched up on Monday at London’s Natural History Museum, where the British Fashion Council holds its twice-yearly festival of fashion labels, models, designers and buyers.

I had always imagined London Fashion Week as a riot of organza, silk, floating dresses and skinny girls with funny hairdos sashaying down the catwalk to the delight or disdain of a thousand Cruella De Vils determined to skin those deeeelicious puppies!

Could a bulky, six-foot-two, rough-hewn Canadian (think Desperate Dan from the Dandy) pass from one event to the next anonymously?

 Would I melt in a puddle of perspiration when the Devil wearing Prada gave me that top-to-toe look that says: “Out of my way insolent worm”? What, it struck me, on God’s green Earth was organza anyway?

By the time I had registered and made my way to the press lounge past the legions of chic and I imagined haughty women, I was already desperate for a drink in a place where the tempting dangers of daytime champagne lurked everywhere. Water then.

I composed myself as best I could in order to ask the very nice women at the press desk if they could please point me to a technician who might help me log on to the event’s wireless network, so I could send out stories.

“Oh you mean the Geek Squad,” replied one of the three women behind the desk. “You can’t miss them, they’re all wearing white business shirts and a tie”.

I looked around the room at all the people dressed in designer labels or the young people in their own shabby chic creations, then down at my carefully selected suit, white shirt and tie and back at the ladies behind the press desk.
Then we all burst out laughing.

That was the turning point from fear to fun.

I trawled the halls for quotes from buyers on how the credit crunch was affecting their business, I pestered exhibitors and rang PR people for access.

They were all really friendly, helpful and like the slender, elegant Italian buyer Chicchi Ginepri, gently instructing me in the mysterious world of fashion whether they were haggling with a designer or dashing off to a show.

Then I went to a catwalk show and my growing confidence evaporated faster than a tear drop on a hot tank in the Iraqi desert.

The show flashed past in a blur of colours, patterns, shapes with barely time to take notes or even see each outfit.

“How do they describe them in such detail?” I wondered, before realising I had been sitting on the show notes handed out by the press office. NOTES! Thank goodness.

Could I see the designer and talk to Jaeger Chief Executive Belinda Earl, I timidly asked Jaeger press person Francesca, as I made my way to the front row to seek the opinions of the great and the good on the spring/summer 2009 collection. Could someone tell me what music they played?

I trawled the front row. Two of Mick Jagger’s daughters, Lizzie and Georgia, were bouncing with delight and model Erin O’Connor was friendly, relaxed and happy to be quoted, though I suspect they were all a bit bemused by my appearance in their world.
 Backstage Jaeger Chief Earl cracked through the business numbers, the branding and designer Karen Boyd smiled sweetly when I mentioned that she came from the same part of England as my wife,  before giving me a chaps-friendly description of her designs.

Maybe I just got lucky on the day. But no, the next day I saw Aquascutum and it was more of the same. Designer Michael Herz was patient with my inclination to ask absurdly ignorant questions and Aquascutum Chief Kim Winser even offered to show me round the store.

My notions of London Fashion Week had been transformed. The clothes at the stands, in the shows and on many of the people really were very lovely, the people expert at their jobs.

I want to come back for the autumn/winter shows in February, though this time I may ditch the suit and tie.

 As the Nov. 4 U.S. presidential election draws near, New York’s Fashion Week has launched its own campaign — for style.

The entrance to the tents at Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan, where designers are showing their spring/summer 2009 collections, are painted with large campaign-like badges that read “Declare your Style,” “Fashion = Change,” “Vote Fashion, “Super Model Delegate,” and “Accessorize for Democracy.”

And this week Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign is holding a fundraiser, due to be attended by top designers who have created merchandise for sale on the Obama Web site. Actress Sarah Jessica Parker and Vogue Editor Anna Wintour are said to be special guests for the evening.

Some designers, too,  have declared more than just their style on the runway. Liz McClean sent her final model down the catwalk on Friday wearing a Barack Obama campaign badge. Charlotte Ronson took on a different cause with her show Saturday sponsored by The Humane Society of the United States, which beamed its logo onto walls either side of the runway.

Ronson’s collection attracted a lot of attention with her DJ brother Mark providing music for the show, and DJ sister Samantha sitting in the front row with gal pal Lindsay Lohan.

U.S. tennis player Andy Roddick checked out the Lacoste show on Saturday, while Friday night Australian actress Melissa George and “Prison Break” star Camille Guaty graced the front row at Nicole Miller.

But the fashion and celebrities aren’t always center of attention.

A model at Korean designers Andy and Debb’s show on Saturday earned applause from the crowd when she finished her catwalk without missing a beat – after her four-inch heel fell off her shoe.

(this was posted on behalf of Silvia Aloisi, Reuters reporter in Venice) 

Britain does not have any movies in the main competition of the Venice film festival this year but it can console itself with the Gucci Group award going to one of its own.

Artist Steve Mcqueen won the top prize — given each year on the sidelines of the Lido showcase — for “Hunger”, a hard-hitting film about the final days of Bobby Sands, the IRA leader who died in jail after a hunger strike. “Hunger” had already scooped the “Camera d’Or” in Cannes earlier this year.

Festival director Marco Mueller, who is under scrutiny this year for a line-up that has disappointed many critics, said he had really wanted “Hunger” to premiere in Venice “but Cannes got there first”.

Mcqueen was up against another British nominee, London-based photographer Isaac Julien, who was nominated for his film “Derek”, written and narrated by Tilda Swinton. He also beat “Gunnin’ for That #1 Spot”, a Harlem-set documentary on high-school basketball prospects by Beastie Boys’ founding member Adam Yauch, and “Lou Reed’s Berlin” by last year’s winner Julian Schnabel.

French actress Isabelle Huppert and U.S. artist Jeff Koons were among the members of the jury, as was Mueller.

The winner was announced on Monday in a special ceremony at Venice’s Palazzo Grassi, the palace-turned-museum on the Grand Canal that hosts the contemporary art collection of the Gucci Group’s controlling shareholder, Francois Pinault.

Thursday was Valentino day at the Venice film festival, where “Valentino: The Last Emperor” had a glittering evening premiere at the Teatro La Fenice opera house. The Italian designer, who retired in January this year after nearly half a century in the business, gave the festival a much-needed boost on a day when glamour was otherwise in short supply. Liz Hurley and Eva Herzigova showed up for the screening, where long, flowing dresses and diamonds the size of marbles were in abundance.

The great man, wearing a white tuxedo and his locks typically well-coiffed, shared a few moments with us on his way into the screening.

“I left (the fashion business) with joy, I left because I knew that I wanted to live a little my life and I did a lot in fashion, so now I think about myself,” he said, speaking in heavily accented English.

The film is a fly-on-the-wall look at the couturier, and it features several amusing scenes starring his six pug dogs. One clip shows one of the pampered canines having its teeth brushed and a squirt of breath freshener added for good measure, while another shows a dog leaving a fashion shoot to relieve itself near the photographer.

Blame Borat! The fictional reporter played by British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen made “mankinis,” or skimpy V-shaped thongs, famous in a publicity stunt at the Cannes film festival to promote his hit movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”

It probably wasn’t British designer Alexander McQueen’s intention that his latest men’s beachwear on the catwalk in Milan prompted comparisons with Borat’s alarming lime-green creation, but perhaps it was inevitable.