But What of the Barneys’ Opening?

What’s happening at Barneys?

If you haven’t been asked that question lately, you probably don’t know--or care--about the answer. That’s cool. But we think gossiping about the New York-based store’s long-awaited Beverly Hills debut is a refreshing break from “Disasters Bring Out the Best In Us” stories.

Late last fall, insiders say, Barneys reps swooped into town, looking for a charity to honor at the store’s opening celebration. Months passed. Last week, the store advertised for sales help. This week, workers hosed off the imposing five-story structure’s tiled entry and put finishing touches on the decorative wrought iron work. Yet still no word on opening festivities.

“Not even a note saying, ‘It was very nice meeting you,’ ” said a liaison between the store and various charities. “It’s alienated a lot of people.”

That’s something L.A.’s high-end stores try hard to avoid. Hooking up with the right charities--whose members have style, influence and sizable clothing allowances--can bring in a steady stream of loyal customers.

The Armani store, for example, is ingratiating itself with the Children’s Action Network--founders include Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg, Nancy Daly, Lorraine and Sid Sheinberg--today and Saturday by donating a hefty 20% of members’ purchases to the charity. Next week, a select group of women will descend on Chanel for lunch and a look at the label’s spring collection. Proceeds from the $200-a-ticket event go to Education First! a group led by Lynda (Mrs. Peter) Guber.

Barneys will open “either March 4 or 5” is all a store publicist in New York could tell us, adding: “I can’t be quoted.” Those who can be quoted were apparently too busy to talk. But we hear locals can look forward to a very early, very no-frills breakfast on that day, followed by a stampede to the clothing racks.

Good News, Bad News: Much to the relief of women who color their hair, a study by the American Cancer Society concludes that using permanent hair dyes does not increase a woman’s overall risk of dying of cancer. But the nationwide study, published this week in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found that women who had used black hair dye for 20 years or more had about four times greater risk of dying of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple myeloma than those who never used dye.

That group of women, all 30 and older, represented only 0.6% of the 180,000 women in the study who dyed their hair at all, and there were only five deaths involved, the researchers said.

Franny and Janny: When that most un-nannyish of nannies Fran Drescher appears on “Arsenio” on Feb. 8, she’ll be dressed for the occasion in Todd Oldham. And she didn’t pay retail.

“Oh, what a surprise,” you’re saying. But that wasn’t always the case. Drescher--who showed us how to work an outfit in “The Big Picture”--had to be shown the celebrity-discount shopping ropes by the Star’s fashion guru, Janet Charlton. Charlton introduced Drescher, star of CBS’ “The Nanny,” to Oldham, and the rest is probably fashion history. The only problem, complained Drescher at a recent fashion soiree, is that she’s too thin to fit into Oldham’s sample sizes. Poor baby.

Forever Young: We couldn’t wait to scrutinize Shirley Lord, beauty director for Vogue magazine. And she didn’t let us down, showing up for breakfast with flawless skin, a most flattering shade of pink lipstick, just the right amount of jewelry and a great haircut. This was after tinkering late into the night with complicated seating arrangements for a Conde Nast dinner in her honor two days hence in New York.

“I used to work for (Vogue Editor) Anna Wintour’s father on Fleet Street,” Lord said of her time as a young journalist in London. “A marvelous editor. But I don’t dare mention that around the office,” she said with a laugh, “no one looks older than 16.”

Lord was in Los Angeles to promote her new book, “My Sister’s Keeper,” a saga of ambition, romance and greed set in the cut-throat cosmetics business--all fiction, of course. Fiction meets reality, though, in the beauty world’s exhaustive search for an anti-aging potion.

“Who wants the knife, when a creme will do?” Lord said. “There’s alpha hydroxy acids, Retin-A, lipids . . . and now the French are using estrogen replacement therapy.”

And which products does Lord favor? Erno Laszlo, always, for cleansing. “After that, I try everything.”

No Crumbling Foundations Here: Speaking of good grooming, makeup maven Eugenia Weston wants us to look good when the Big One hits.

Cynics may scoff at the notion that adding lipstick to your emergency quake kit can “help calm the psyche and restore a sense of outer- and inner-harmony.” But we’d argue that lining our lips masterfully in M.A.C’s plum liner gives us an edge in a world gone mad.

Here are Weston’s six quake-kit essentials: a lipstick that doubles as a blush, a conditioning stick (such as Vitamin E) for eyes and lips, a toner for cleansing, mascara, a concealer wand that doubles as foundation, and a medium-brown pencil for brows and eye shadow.

Sui Talk: Anna Sui will open a boutique at Bullock’s Beverly Center on March 3 and hopes they’ll put up a few Aubrey Beardsley posters to capture the mood of her La Brea Avenue shop.

After all, this is a woman who goes to tea at Campanile in an Edwardian brown velvet tunic from her fall collection and carries an old lady pocket book in muddy-color tapestry.

Although Sui frequently visits Los Angeles, she has yet to catch sight of her glitziest customers--Julia Roberts and Winona Ryder. She did, however, spy Ryder in a magazine, dressed in a Sui chiffon and velvet evening dress. “I search out Movieline, Entertainment Weekly, and I love the Star. They’re the best fashion magazines,” she said.

Sui said her friend Marc Jacobs is all but back in business, designing a collection for Iceberg, an Italian jeans label. (So is Sui.) And he’s talking about showing a collection of his own during New York fashion week in March.

Let It Snow . . . Not!: The owners of Mann’s Chinese Theatre nixed New York designer Isaac Mizrahi’s plan to have snow fall from the ceiling and cover the theater during a segment in his May 5 fashion show for AIDS Project Los Angeles.

But the chain-smoking Mizrahi, in town this week to scope out the venue, will have his way on plenty of other aspects of the show, from custom-made stage costumes to a premiere showing of a film about . . . Isaac Mizrahi. We wouldn’t miss it.