Posted February 17, 2005
Hanging out backstage at the Bryant Park tent shows this past Friday, I discovered that one of the week's most-wanted fashions wasn't a frock—it was a cute little digital camera. In the VIP lounge I watched as the rich and fabulous clamored over the Olympus Stylus Verve. It instantly became the de facto digital camera of fashionistas everywhere thanks to its status as the week's most coveted goodie-bag schwag. Trust me, nobody felt any sense of servitude to Olympus simply because it sponsored this shindig (Fashion Week is officially known as Olympus Fashion Week). It's just that the Stylus Verve—a 4-megapixel all-weather digital camera with QuickTime movie mode and a 1.8" LCD screen—sports a totally hot outfit: an amazingly compact, curvaceous case (in your choice of red, silver, blue, white, orange, or black) that's retro-futuristic (I love the sloping, tail-fin-inspired design) and oddly adorable at the same time. The most fun I had all week (other than meeting Foxy Brown) was watching VIPs and their entourages fight over who got which color (celebrity beggars, it turns out, can be choosers).

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• Articles by S. Dumenco
• From the Feb 17, 2005 issue of New York