Celebrity stand-off
by Suzy Menkes International Herald Tribune
As Britney Spears - blonde, glossy-lipped and 40 minutes late - took her seat at Matthew Williamson's late night show, the crowd greeted her with boos. But whether or not you like the paparazzi feeding frenzy, the New York mantra is that the front row is as important (maybe more so) than what is coming down the runway.
So Calvin Klein snagged Gwyneth Paltrow (in denim and diamonds) while Marc Jacobs's stellar celebs included the rapper and designer Sean (P. Diddy) Combs and the rapper Foxy Brown (in a pelmet of a denim mini skirt), whom Jacobs embraced for immortalizing his name in rap lyrics.
At Zac Posen's show, the "Star Wars" heroine Natalie Portman was having a love-in with her fox terrier, Charlie, while "Sex and the City's" very pregnant Sarah Jessica Parker came to Narciso Rodriguez's in virginal white. Overexposed were the blonde fashionista Hilton sisters, Nicky and Paris, and the Trumps - Ivana, with new beau, and her former husband, Donald.
Flop of the week? Farah Fawcett in Rick Owens's front row - but with a remodeled face that the photographers failed to recognize. Star of the week: Stella McCartney, who opened her first store in the increasingly hip Chelsea area and proved that, even without her famous father in attendance, she can cut it.

Hollywood's former golden couple, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, have teamed up once again, this time to sue a luxury cosmetics retailer for reportedly implying that the pair endorsed their products.
The $15-million lawsuit was filed by Tom and Nicole on Thursday against the US subsidiary of French luxury goods company Sephora.
In the advertisement, Cruise and Kidman were pictured alongside text which read: “Tom and Nicole - The red carpet glamour of Hollywood's royal couple never fails to leave us with eyes wide open.”
The pair claim the unauthorised use of their image for the advert had made them “involuntary models without pay,” and that had they truly backed the company’s products, they “would have been paid a very large sum of money”.
Although Tom and Nicole have avoided being seen with, or near, each other at recent media events, the lawsuit against the French conglomerate Moet Hennessey Louis Vuitton, which owns Sephora, proves that they are capable of burying their differences for a common cause.