Best Women’s fashion show - Alexander McQueen, October in Paris. A Hollywood diva writhed painfully to death by overdose on the floor of a Paris ballroom after a demolition derby of deranged beauties, black-eyed wretches in patchwork skirts, and eye-popping mad women screaming at demons. Based on Sydney Pollack's Depression-era drama "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" McQueen’s spring/summer 2004 show - whose invitation was a flattened out pill box, bearing the legend "28 tablets in blisters of 14" - was a brilliant reminder that McQueen is the most original talent in fashion today.

Best Men’s fashion show - For fashion veterans tired of runways, Carol Christian Poell came staged 2033’s most inventive show. Models wearing his spring-summer 2004 collection floated down Naviglio Grande canal in Milan at sunset. “They will dry,” smiled the lanky Poell as his 17 models floated into sight from under a ridge.

Best women’s fashion designer - Miuccia Prada. Celebrities and sex might be the biggest sales components in fashion, but the most influential designer right now is the leader of intellectual chic. Thanks to her wit, insight and brilliance, Prada’s collections receive the highest possible compliment - they are more copied than any other - and its stores are architectural must-sees. When Miuccia showed tweed trilby hats this spring, they began appearing on New York sidewalks weeks after, and the fifties tourist melodrama of the collection she showed in October is all over magazines right now.

Best men’s designer - Hedi Slimane. Executives moan you can’t get into his tight-fitting clothes that are modeled by scrawny adolescents Hedi meets in bars and public transport but the men’s creative director of Christian Dior is the most influential tailor in fashion since Giorgio Armani. He’s a study in contrast, a Frenchman who lives in Berlin, a downtown iconoclast with very formal manners and a master minimalist capable of baroque excess. Now that Tom Ford is leaving Yves Saint Laurent, we know who should be his successor. Why not make it Yves Slimane Laurent.

Best ad campaign - Louis Vuitton. She may be just Jenny from the Block, but she made the most talked about ad campaign in fashion in 2003. Shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, and featuring male model Andres Segura, the clean, sleek ads underlined how cutting edge the brand is, despite approaching its century and a half. Arcus Piggott shot the campaign, which also features 25-year-old male model Andres Segura.

Best female model - Natalia Vodianova. The queen of the New York catwalk two seasons ago, this Russian beauty these days only appears on just one - Calvin Klein. With an exclusive million dollar Klein contract, and an aristocratic English real estate heir for a husband, that comes as no surprise. Not bad going for a gal who aged 15 sold fruit at a stall in her hometown of Nizhni Novogorod.

Best male model - Freddie Ljunberg. Obscure in US we’ll admit, but the Swedish soccer star still landed the most sought after gig in men’s fashion - the Calvin Klein underwear model. Freddie, who London’s Evening Standard once described as having cheek bones so sharp they could cut cocaine - is a famous clothes horse in the UK. Rival fans of his club team Arsenal frequently greet him with an unrepeatable version of Village People's "Go West."

Best fashion party - Costume Institute Goddess Ball. Wall to wall super models, a score of designers, dashing leading men and a slew of actresses, Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Parker Posey and Angie Harmon in $2 million of Harry Winston’s jewels, looking just like the title of the ball goddesses. And what a setting - square white candles, white linen clothes, fine wines, lobster and caviar in the Metropolitan Museum - as good as it gets.

Best fashion icon - Hope Atherton. Her name may mean nothing in Flyoverland, but here in Manhattan no soiree is complete without the city’s most original dresser. Bloomers as a top, Berber belts as necklaces. They’d make for fashion victim on anyone lese, on Hope they are a fashion victory.

Best fashion red carpet moment - Nicole Kidman in a red beaded halter-neck Pucci dress that she wore in bare feet to the premiere of Dogville in Cannes. It might not have been her greatest fashion statement, but the shot of her in a red dress in front of a half dozen tuxedoed men flashed around the world. Nicole arrived just 24 hours after Penelope Cruz, the current squeeze of her ex husband, left town. French critics raved about Dogville, and panned Cruz’s Fan Fan La Tulipe.

Best fashion restaurant - Trattoria Delle Langhe. No trip to the Milan fashion season is complete without a visit to Le Langhe, the Piedmontese restaurant that is Tom Ford’s favorite local eatery. Wear Gucci, drink Barbaresco wine, eat their pasta with truffles and spot the designers. On one typical night we spotted Zac Posen, Thomas Maier of Bottega Veneta, designers Stephen Fairchild, and Giambattista Valli, plus Joan Kaner of Saks, America’s biggest retailing pencil.

Best fashion technology - Vertu cell phone. Who spends $20,000 on a platinum encased cell phone? Fashionable celebs like Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna, of course. As if the design weren’t enough of a draw, who can resist the lure of highly personalized service, and lackey’s on the other end of the phone who are willing to perform any task—from arranging a holiday to simply kissing your ass—on a moment’s notice?

Best foreign fashion magazine - Vogue Italia. Even if you can’t speak a word of Italian if you want to know the future of fashion you read Vogue Italia. Under Franca Sozzani it’s been consistently the best women’s fashion magazine for two decades. That’s why Steven Meisel, Bruce Weber, Mario Testino, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, Craig McDean and Peter Lindbergh, i.e. the Gotha of modern style image making, will always change their plans to shoot for La Franca.

Best fashion nightspot - Soho House. It’s where Anna Wintour hosted the introduction dinner for David Beckham and Posh Spice, Radiohead held a boozy private party, Nicole Kidman and Lenny Kravitz smooched at a private screening, Robert De Niro and Adrien Brody held summit talks, Samantha got thrown out of on Sex and the City and LA cinema stars rub shoulders with New York media barons. And that’s just the first nine months of business.

Best store opening - Roman Polanski downed drinks, uber artist Jenny Holzer bathed the two-floored boutique in a trademark light projection of giant text, beautiful women danced up a storm to DJ Peter Kruder and New Yorkers enjoyed the right to smoke inside a party at the opening of Helmut Lang’s Paris flagship in October. It was such great noisy fun; a score of police turned up at midnight and closed down the fete. “C'est unacceptable!" snorted the boys in blue outside the 3,500-square-foot emporium.

Best fashion accessory -This year’s hottest bag had to be Versace's biker bag - if you could get your hands on it. It helps if you are Elizabeth Hurley or Beyonce Knowles or Mariah Carey, who scooped up a hot pink version of the hobo-shaped handbag while staying at Donatella's Lake Como mansion. In August the company’s first delivery of 1,000 of bag with two zippered external pockets and chic stitched leather braiding, sold out in two weeks. But Cameron Diaz and J.Lo got their versions in rich chocolate leather, while Madonna and Demi Moore went for black.

Best fashion runway song - “Milkshake,” by Kelis. It might be bubblegum pop on this side of the pond, but we heard it at ever second show in Milan and Paris.

Best fashion scent - Word has it that financially Stella McCartney’s scent wasn’t exactly a monster hit, even if sales exceeded projections. But we like it anyway, ‘cause it captures, the cool irreverence that is Stella’s trademark.

Best fashion service - Quintessentially, the British “bespoke” concierge service that promises everything from front-row tickets at Wimbledon to backstage passes at Marc Jacobs. If they can book Kate Moss’s vacation in the South of France and find Gwyneth a cleaners, they'll do the rest of us just fine.