Everybody knows New Yorkers are fashionable and fashion-centric and often fashion-eccentric. We're the center of the US fashion industry and hello, we have Bill Cunningham!

Still I'm always amazed at how the tribe of Upper East Side women with children I study manages to pull off looking amazing while having young kids. Sometimes the trick is a "uniform" of sorts. One extremely hard-working, down-to-earth mom I know used to show up at school drop off every morning schlepping her three kids under the age of five — in head to toe Chanel. "It's easy," she explained. "It's like upscale Garanimals" (you know you want to watch the YouTube commercial from 1975 so there it is).

Maybe they have another secret? Lately I'm noticing that the women I study have "movie star ways." In a town with tons of beauty and fashion industry professionals in training looking for work, you can do what celebs do — hire a hair and makeup artist to get you ready for an event, or a personal stylist, at a price that won't break the bank.

In the spirit of participant-observation and in order to understand better the tribe I study (sometimes my research is a lot of fun), I hired a stylist named Christian Meshesha. Christian studied fashion at Parson's and worked with Alice + Olivia owner Stacy Bendet among others. Now he's taking on clients of his own, so I got my foot in the door early.

Stylists save you time, which is money where I live. But they also save you money. Thanks to Christian's amazing eye, we found about 40 outfit combinations already in my closet that I hadn't realize were possible. He also suggested a list of basic updates for my wardrobe, freeing me up to work on my book rather than scour the internet for cashmere sweatpants. In the morning I just pull out a hanger with the outfit he dreamed up all ready to go. No extra thinking as I rush to get the kids and myself out the door. Hey, I could get used to this!

Here's a photo essay of some of Christian's work in my closet; an amazing recent discussion and dinner with Karl Lagerfeld at Lincoln Center hosted by Harpers Bazaar and the Corporate Fund of Lincoln Center; and my new utter obsession — a store called Tiina in the Hamptons (Amagansett, to be exact). It's more like a salon than a store — while I was there the legendary photog Pamela Hanson dropped in with some of her equally cool and understatedly famous friends to chat with Tiina and try on a pair of Crippen jeans.