Anyone familiar with the particular charms of New York City knows a reservation can be hard to score in this town. Opentable.com helps diners avoid the dreaded 5:15 p.m. supper, and now, beauty addicts have their very own assist—lifebooker.com. The new site works like an online concierge, showing users what services are available in specific neighborhoods at specific times, and has lined up a small but impressive list of participating spas and salons, including The Townhouse Spa at the Chambers Hotel, Great Jones Spa in SoHo, Delluva Vinotherapy in TriBeCa and the Rita Hazan salon in Midtown. Best of all, your cubicle colleagues won't ever have to overhear you saying, "Hi, I'd like to make an appointment for a Brazilian bikini wax" again.

Talk about art world staying power. Last Saturday, I drove up to Dia: Beacon to see Merce Cunningham unveil his 769th site-specific "Event." The greatest of living choreographers, Cunningham, now 88 and still spry of mind, drew a packed house of hipsters young and old from the worlds of art, dance and new music. (I also spotted Christophe de Menil, a member of one of the great American art families and artist Dash Snow's grandmother.)

An Event, in the Cunningham parlance, is a combination of excerpts from older works, put together by the choreographer with new snippets and in a new order, which is decided—literally—by his roll of the dice. As with all of Cunningham's works, the dance, music and décor come together for the first time on opening night. (Cunningham staged his first Event in Vienna in 1964, using a décor by his then in-house designer, Robert Rauschenberg.) Cunningham watchers love to try to pick out the bits they recognize. I've been a follower for years and am always struck by the feeling of anticipation before one of these performances: No one knows quite what to expect, not even Merce.

I was curious to see how he'd use the unconventional space of the Walter de Maria galleries at Dia. The dance was performed by two groups on two adjoining stages linked by a square doorway, and the audience was urged to move around and watch the dance from various vantage points. Each time I was about to move to the other side, I'd be rooted to the spot by some sudden rush of movement right in front of me. At first it was captivating to see what seemed like mirror-like images on both stages; then suddenly the two parts were moving in entirely different ways. The point was that you could never see the whole dance at one time, though I wasn't alone in finding it both intriguing and frustrating. In fact, depending on where you stood, the dancers occasionally disappeared from view entirely, so that you were left looking only at other audience members watching something you couldn't see.

Though no longer an enfant terrible, Cunningham remains firmly on the cutting edge. For a 2006 work, each audience member listened to an iPod loaded with the score set on shuffle mode, and in the coming months he plans to launch "Mondays with Merce," an interactive studio webcast that will connect audiences to him and the dancers in real time. Earlier in the week, he'd dropped by Rauschenberg's opening at PaceWildenstein, and while he and Bob sat together chatting happily, gallery goers vied for their autographs and snapped photos of these modern masters via cell phone.

Photo by Anna Finke

When I moved to Paris from Los Angeles last year, one of the upsides was a welcome respite from the never-ending onslaught of trashy celebrity culture. In L.A., if you don't Tivo The Hills and check TMZ twice a day (as I did, I admit), you often have nothing to contribute to a dinner party conversation. In Paris, however, being seen buying a tabloid like Gala is still more embarrassing than being caught chain-smoking in a maternity ward.

In truth, I always suspected that the relative paucity of gossip rags here was due not just to the time-honored Gallic respect for la vie privee, but also to the lack of interesting French celebrities.

And then Nicolas Sarkozy came along. In recent months the president (who appeared on Gala's cover seven times in 2007) has overturned decades of social and political protocol, and the ever-discreet French have been trying to figure out how they got tricked into electing Donald Trump. From his scandalous October divorce from Cecilia to his all-media globetrotting with ex-supermodel Carla Bruni to last weekend's release of three new biographies revealing Cecilia's true opinion of her ex—as an unstable egomaniac—the talk here is all Sarko all the time, which seems to suit the president just fine.

Alas, the hyperkinetic Sarkozy moves so fast that it's almost impossible to cover him in a monthly magazine like W. A few weeks from now, when our next issue hits the newsstands, who knows? Sarkozy may already have confirmed the latest rumors that he and Carla are expecting a child, or he may have dumped her for Angelina Jolie.

The French themselves, meanwhile, are watching the drama unfold with that mix of horror and fascination that we Americans know so well. At a dinner party the other night, a wealthy and elegant Frenchwoman declared that Sarkozy was the first plouc (a notorious Gallic put-down meaning something like a peasant or a hick) to ever occupy the Elysee Palace. After trashing his flashy clothes, his bad grammar and his unfathomable lack of discretion, she admitted that he does have attractive, muscular legs, which she knew from seeing his jogging photos in magazines like Gala. Then, when pressed, the woman admitted that she finds Sarkozy kind of hot. "He's a plouc," she said, "but a plouc with a certain charm."

Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images

Nearly every week W's conference room is transformed into a shoe lover's Shangri-la as our fearless accessories assistants and interns organize hundreds of designer pairs. Here's what the room looked like this week as a team sorted through Lanvin platforms, bejeweled Louis Vuitton pumps, Viktor & Rolf sandals and more after a recent shoot.

Emma Fletcher, Lyell

Industry devotees of Lyell, the collection of delicate blouses and dresses designed by Aussie Emma Fletcher, weren't remotely surprised when Ecco Domani recently announced the line as one of five women's wear winners of its Fashion Foundation prize. Along with a healthy $25,000 check, however, the award stipulates that recipients must stage a runway show during next month's New York fashion week--a first for Fletcher.  A former manager of the club Tramps, Fletcher has been turning out sweet, graceful clothes for four years, and has been whispered about as posing a threat to Jane Mayle's reign over a certain kind of gamine, unfussy Hollywood girl. (Michelle Williams and Natalie Portman are Lyell fans.) Still, a grateful Fletcher seemed a bit stunned by the windfall when reached at her blink-and-you-miss-it NoLita boutique. (The vibe? Just imagine trying on piles of thin velvet dresses in some fabulous great aunt's Art Deco, black-and-white tiled bathroom.)  "It's going to be quite dark and moody, with depressing music," the designer said of her debut show, which will take place at the National Arts Club in Gramercy Park on February 2. "To me, the clothes are the easiest thing to produce. It's all the other stuff--the lighting, the models--that's tough."  So what's foremost on her mind, as she embroiders, pins, and sews her way through the next month?  "I just want the show to have a lot of feeling."

www.lyellnyc.com
173 Elizabeth Street, New York
(212) 966-8484

Blaring rock metal music, shabby painted black walls, the pervading smell of garlic. It doesn't exactly ring chic, or even shabby chic for that matter. Nevertheless the Garlic & Shots, a bar situated on a quiet Soho back street, has suddenly become a haven for London's fashion packers.

Don't try to order a trendy cocktail at "The Garlic," as it's known. For drinks, the choices are only beer, garlic-infused vodka shots and wine (served in half-pint glasses.) Then there's the food: garlic burgers, garlic steak, garlic nachos... you get the picture.

A fashion stylist friend of mine brought me by for my first visit a few weeks ago. I was struggling to figure out the appeal when I first walked in, but I had to agree, it does have a charming speakeasy-meets-biker-bar vibe. And it's not trying to impress anyone. People asking for receipts for their expense accounts are greeted with disdain. As are people asking for ketchup.

We spotted Amy Winehouse, who was there with friends, as well as socialites Alice Dellal and Laura Fraser, fresh from a Donna Karan cocktail party in Mayfair. At another table, Burberry model Ben Grimes was drinking with a gaggle of fashion magazine editors.

Garlic breath has never been so on-trend.

Getty Images/Stockfood

If the beauty sections of Whole Foods and Bergdorf Goodman had a love child, it would be Vert. The Venice, California-based beauty boutique, which opened in mid-October on Abbott Kinney Boulevard, carries practically every luxe eco-friendly beauty line we've ever heard of. Aesop, Jo Wood, Naturopathica, Stella McCartney, Red Flower? All here.

Designed in a minimalist style with modular bookshelves and an industrial-looking concrete floor, the shop has an open-jar policy, encouraging the curious to experiment. "It's like a big beauty playground," says owner Renata Helfman. Helfman, who shuns any products containing parabens, sodium lauryl sulfate or petrolatums, also prides herself on stocking the more obscure lines, like the ayurvedic-based Pratima skin products and Priti nail polishes (which contain no formaldehyde or toluene).

Since opening, the store has drawn a mix of traditional beauty consumers and hard-core "green" types. Vegan posterchild Alicia Silverstone even came in. "She's so knowledgeable about this stuff," gushes Helfman. "When she walked in, I felt like Ghandi had arrived."

Vertlosangeles.com

For the past few seasons, one of the best things that could happen to a young New York fashion designer has been getting a call from Bumble and Bumble. Yigal Azrouël, Alexander Wang, José Ramõn Réyes, Rebecca Taylor and Thakoon have all staged runway shows at the salon's multi-level Meatpacking District location, known as House of Bumble. The eighth floor, where the shows take place, has the requisite high ceilings, large windows and raw feel. And best of all, it is offered to lucky designers free of charge.

But designers shouldn't get too cozy with the gratis deal. Starting with the next round of shows, Bumble will begin capping the number of times most designers can show at the space at two. The company's president, Peter Lichtenthal, says the policy is meant to ensure a continuous rotation of new talent. So this February, designers Jeremy Laing and Ohne Titel (who have both shown at the space once), will send their collections down Bumble's runway for what will probably be the last time.

Who needs the beaches of St. Barth's for Christmas when a new foot of snow is being dumped daily over Utah's Little Cottonwood Canyon? My family and I just returned from a week-long ski trip to Snowbird and Alta, and although every muscle in my legs has yet to recover, I'm still thinking about some of the sybaritic pleasures we discovered.

Snowbird and Alta, which are literally around the bend from each other, each offers its own distinct translation of luxe comfort. Snowbird's is, without a doubt, Cliffspa, high atop Cliff Lodge. Its rooftop pool and hot tub offer spectacular views of the white-peaked mountains. Whether you're a native Mormon or a New York City atheist, the view gives new meaning to the term "God's country."

Alta, generations older than Snowbird, has kept its old-school ways, from its charming rustic lodges to its no-snowboard policy (they've even resisted adding safety bars to the chairlifts). And it offered a most thoughtful surprise that we discovered on our last day. Stopping for lunch at the restaurant at the mid-mountain Watson Shelter lodge, we began the tedious process of removing mittens and loosening buckles. Then we noticed several pairs of inviting fleece Ugg-like slippers stowed neatly in a corner. "Oh yes, please, they're for you to wear while you eat," offered one of the waitresses. The four of us pounced on the pile and happily wiggled our newly cozy toes throughout our meal.

Cliffspa at Snowbird

As a nonsmoker living in Paris, I long ago learned that there's no point in whining about the smoke level in cafes here, even if getting a quick espresso sometimes seemed more damaging for my lungs than working in a Chinese mine. Secondary smoke was one of those Parisian inconveniences (along with mean shopclerks and lack of decent peanut butter) that you just learned to live with. So this week's ban on smoking in cafes, restaurants and bars has brought many unexpected breaths of fresh air. Most surprising of all has been the way the recalcitrant French have willingly complied with the new law. As of this writing, the ban has been in effect more than 24 hours, and there have been very few reported infractions, let alone riots in the streets. Of course, France is still France, so the national newspapers are jammed with philosophical essays wondering whether the new ban signals the final death knell for liberté, egalité and, especially, fraternité. In last weekend's Journal de Dimanche, famed pundit Bernard Pivot predicted that cemeteries will soon have to offer separate sections for the remains of smokers and nonsmokers, and he wondered whether Heaven's appeal will now be definitively eclipsed by that of Hell, where fire and smoke are presumably welcome. Another newspaper, Le Parisien, trotted out a quote from Moliere's Don Juan, in which Sganarelle declares that "He who lives without tobacco doesn't deserve to be alive." So far, 60 million Frenchmen seem to disagree.

AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere