Amid storms from Galveston to Wall Street, if the mention of “fashion” feels unseemly today, please resist the urge to arrest it on a morals charge, accusing it for merely existing or, more specifically, if you had the misfortune of stumbling on Bravo’s Tuesday night début of “The Rachel Zoe Project.” That’s just another unfortunate exercise in Bravo’s penchant for promoting marginal style talents (“Project Runway,” “Top Design”) into freak minstrels to laugh at. As the witty Ginia Bellafonte inferred in The New York Times, Zoe is as much Diana Vreeland as … Sarah Palin is John Adams?

The more consumer confidence sinks, the more concern rises in the global fashion industry, especially as preparations for the holiday shopping season approach. But there is hope in a bottle: While women might resist big-ticket fashion items, they will occasionally splurge on a beauty product. The cosmetics industry, worth about $24 billion a year worldwide, is anticipating about seven percent growth this year; remarkable, all things considered.

So it was with great delight that The Etceterist happened upon the world-famous dermatologist Dr. Patricia Wexler at Manhattan’s chicest hotel, the Plaza Athénée on East 64th Street at teatime over the weekend. Fashion Week finally ended here and the flock – in greatly reduced numbers due to the cost of travel and fears about the economy – is moving on to London, Milan and Paris for more shows. Dr. Wexler was attending to business related to the launch of her newest product, Patricia Wexler MD Dermatology Intensive 3-in-1 Eye Cream, available on bathandbodyworks.com and ebay.com among other venues. Like her 3-in-1 Day Cream, in one week it started to re-contour the area around The Etceterist’s eyes.

The Etceterist: It works!

Dr. Pat Wexler: Of course it works!

ETC: You went to lots of shows during Fashion Week, how was your week?

PW: I went to Carolina Herrera, Michael Kors, Vera Wang, Donna Karan, Marchesa and Tory Burch.

ETC: And?

PW: Like everywhere, people are talking about the economy and the election.

ETC: You are very politically oriented. May we talk surface first before we get “under the skin”? What do you think about the faces in politics right now?

PW: They are different across the board. On one side you’ve got the Democrats, Michelle Obama with this very natural, youthful beauty and also Mrs. Biden, who is very natural and understated, her hair and her makeup, and that she wore Kay Unger a lot during the convention, which is very recession oriented.

ETC: And the Republicans?

PW: Cindy McCain is a much more upscale face and a lot of people talk about how young she looks for her age and the fact that it looks like she cosmetically enhances herself.

ETC: “Cosmetically enhances”: Love that expression, you’re so polite, Pat. Do you think she does?

PW: I think she probably does and she does a good job. She looks like she does more maintenance than the other side.

ETC: And Sarah Palin?

PW: It is definitely a look.

ETC: Any suspicion of “cosmetic enhancement”?

PW: No.

ETC: John McCain?

PW: He had surgery because of skin cancer. You would not call that cosmetic enhancement. You call that restorative.