AS SOON AS THE model with the lilac camisole painted on her torso and a bevy of hip-hopping beauties sashay off the catwalk, every head in the room swivels to the dark-haired woman in the second row.
Photographers pounce, journalists scribble, society women gawk and crowds mill around to listen to what she has to say.
High-gloss lipsticks and elaborate body-paint are the main events at beauty megastore Sephora's first runway show, part of the New York autumn/winter collections, but Monica Lewinsky is the runaway attraction. As she and her publicist, Juli Nadler, try to make their way out of the scrum, they find themselves encircled by dozens of fashion reporters, all seeking the soundbite of the season.
It is a very relieved Nadler who is later able to report not a single question about the newly civilian Bill Clinton. Nothing about his controversial pardoning of Marc Rich and others, his alleged pilfering of furniture from the White House. Nothing, incredibly, about the fact that the former president and the raven-haired ex-intern are now living in the same city again.
No, the Newsweek and New York Post reporters simply wanted to query Lewinsky about the handbags she is now designing, about her take on fashion for the season, about what she liked most. Innocuous questions for a woman whose alliance with the then most powerful man on Earth scandalised the world.
A testament, perhaps, to her apparent success in cleverly reinventing herself at the tender age of 27. 'She's finally being seen as a legitimate handbag designer,' says Nadler, who has played an integral role in Lewinsky's new life as part-publicist, part-mentor. The intern-turned-designer smiles and nods, courteous, polished, professional, and glammed up to the eyebrows, hair and make-up impeccable and wearing a black jersey dress with a low-cut front. And, unlike so many other famous folk, she looks exactly as she does in pictures.