The $6,000 price tag for Bottega Veneta’s Cabat bag is admittedly horrendous, and justifying it in today’s Thursday Styles with a defiant anti-consumerism stance feels a little rich. But as hypocritical and heretical and snobbishly high-minded as designer Tomas Maier may be, I dig the message. It’s refreshing to hear an influential discouraging mindless acquisition (even the bagsnob would give the Cabat serious thought). Whether Maier’s intentions are green, I don’t care. That’s the upshot and it’s awesome.

“Hello, I’m a cougar!”Okay, Demi Moore didn’t really shout those words from the cover of Bazaar this month but she might as well have done. What other image could we possibly be meant to conjure when a 45-year-old woman, who is famously married to a 30-year-old hottie, seductively poses in sumptuously dated duds while pawing a large stuffed cat? It’s unclear whether she’s in on the joke. Also of note: In the interior family photo spread, the daughters don’t at all resemble Demi — and it’s not that they’re Bruce Willis look-alikes. Nope, it’s that Demi has had $750,000 worth of cosmetic surgery and there’s nothing like grown children to provide the proof.

Ariel Levy is just plain mean in her assessment of Silda Wall Spitzer, and the ugly bind in which she now finds herself. “…she will not have the consolation of her own career as she comes to terms with the man she gave it up for … it exposes the risks women take when they make certain kinds of choices — things that, after Silda, they might not think are safe.” First of all, picking on stay-at-home moms — even privileged ones like Silda — is like picking on nuns: they are undervalued cost-savings centers doing god’s work within a chauvinist system.

And second, nobody with career ambition views staying home as “safe.” More likely, she is tortured daily by her decision, constantly calculating how she will eventually re-enter her profession as she devotes her present life to food prep and playdates. So, why do smart women like Silda stay home? Naturally, there is a measure of “not my husband.” But more than that, becoming a parent hopefully makes you a little less selfish. Committing yourself to your family should not be grounds for smug crucifixion.

Whether or not Silda dumps the Luv Guv, as Levy encourages her to do, we hope she gets a figurehead position at her old law firm and uses it as a bully pulpit from which to campaign vociferously for truly family-friendly flex-time options for the rest of us. It wouldn’t stop the adultery but it would certainly allow women to hedge their bets.

I want the name of Thandie Newton’s dermatologist. The woman has the freshest, clearest skin I’ve ever seen. Believe me, I was really, really close to her — I had to move my things so she could sidle into the banquette next to me at Le Pain Quotidien’s Bryant Park location this morning. (She was very gracious about it.) Although I couldn’t observe her, my friend Ruth says Thandie ate. Which makes me want Thandie’s nutritionist’s name too. And whichever stylist scored that hot leopard-fur trench, well, I want that name too.

Whatever the racial implications of Vogue’s April cover, featuring LeBron James and Gisele, it must be pointed out that, in a historical first, the magazine is participating in the country’s dialog about race in a timely manner. That Vogue thought it would score kudos, not controversy, by featuring the first black man ever on its cover, makes the image all the more relevant to the current political moment. As Nicholas D. Kristof wrote in his column about Barack Obama’s nuanced speech on race, “Much of the time, blacks have a pretty good sense of what whites think, but whites are oblivious to common black perspectives.” Unlike Glamour, however, it’s hard to imagine Vogue engaging in any kind of future self-flagellation exercise. Just imagine: Vogue, The Black Issue. For sure, Andre Leon Talley would write about how the incident sent him right back to Diet Camp.