DESIGNED TO DIE

Leggy, lippy, freelance stylist Dallas O’Connor (Going Out in Style, 2000) packs her Pradas, her knockoff Teyvas, and her appetite for Espresso Martinis and flies off to Seattle to beautify the Tobin-Charles fashion insert photo-shoot. Before it even begins, gorgeous male model Richard careens off the road in Mr. Tobin’s fancy Porsche, and dies. Then another model breaks a leg and has to be replaced, and Dieta (still another member of the kissy-face one-name-only crowd), the insert’s producer, is shot, and Ms. Charles is slowly being poisoned by someone tinkering with her designer-water bottles. A mysterious man with the world’s sexiest voice keeps calling out to Dallas, who, while swapping bitchy wisecracks with Freddie the hair designer and creating to-die-for accessories out of vines and duct tape, tries to decide who’s killing whom. Among the theories she considers are an Italian mafia vendetta; a Filipino mafia bendetta; a model war; Charles trying to eliminate her partner Tobin; money partner Thom Goodfeather ousting big-spenders Charles and Tobin. Eventually, Dallas and her chums on the shoot try a little vigilante justice on their suspected perp, and with a mildly surprising couple of twists, they’re all headed back to the airport for other shoots—and more shopping sprees.

High camp, Women’s Wear Daily–style, with an insider’s knowledge of how to rip out a necktie’s seams, iron it just so, and hand-stitch it to perfection—as well as enough toney brand names to fill the designer floor at Neiman’s.