In this excerpt from Radar Magazine's March fashion issue, meet the style-world's new power elite

This article is from the March issue of Radar Magazine. For a risk-free issue, click here

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We really do get the icons we deserve. In 1968, it was Jackie Kennedy. Fast-forward to 2008 and our aspirational logic has imploded, thanks to a 22-year-old former surf groupie whose mind-numbingly banal—and yet, strangely fascinating!—life as a Teen Vogue intern is cataloged on The Hills, MTV's most lucrative invention since the music video. Through the power of basic cable, the coffee-fetching ingenue has been catapulted to instafame. Rumor has it that LC so upstaged her bosses that they're trying to stuff the front-row genie back in the bottle, severing their ties with the reality series. But Conrad, said to be landing at a new glossy this year, is unstoppable. Millions of tweens believe passionately in her fairy tale, and they all get allowances. The Lauren Conrad Collection launched in September 2007, featuring a 10-piece line of camera-ready dresses best accessorized with a caramel tan and a blank stare. Roll your eyes, but Conrad, in her pearls, headbands, and empire-waisted floaty dresses, is the mild-mannered muse of the moment.

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PISSING EVERYWHERE ISN'T VERY CHANEL reads the little black sign in Lagerfeld's Paris loo, which pretty much sums up why the fashion world can't get enough of the scarily slim seventysomething couturier. His personal rebranding efforts may veer toward the broadest rag-trade caricature—the powdered-white ponytail, stomach-cinching black pants, and noir shades—but they're perfectly calibrated for mass consumption. He also cannily picks his muses (Lily Allen, Irina Lazareanu, and Lindsay Lohan) with an eye on deep-pocketed consumers decades his junior. This year Lagerfeld celebrates his 25th anniversary perched in Coco Chanel's bergère, but he's not letting his legacy go to his head.

"I don't go around calling myself an artist," he's said, in what might be the motto of the New Fashionistas. "If anything, I'm a whore. I go wherever they pay me."