MTV Burns, Burns, Burns Over Cash Clip

Plenty of people have fantasized about shooting uber-thin model Kate Moss dead. None of them, however, work for MTV’s standards committee. After seeing Johnny Cash’s new video, “Delia’s Gone,” officials at the cable channel ordered a tamer cut of the deadpan tale, which stars Cash as a coldblooded murderer and model Kate Moss as his coldhearted--and dead--girlfriend, Delia.

“I guess they have a thing about dead women,” said a spokeswoman for Cash’s label, American Records. “You can’t abuse women when they’re dead, or something.”

What you won’t see in the video, which started airing this week on MTV, is a shot of Moss tied by a thick rope to a wooden chair that has toppled from the force of two gunshots and another shot of Cash--hair blowing like a madman--shoveling dirt onto Delia’s pretty face. (We thought she looked rather beautiful.)

Oh, well. An actress has to start somewhere. As the song goes, “Delia’s gone, one more round, Delia’s gone.”

King for a Day: Monday was a fashion marathon in L.A. It started with a lunch and show honoring Oscar de la Renta at the Beverly Regent hotel, continued into the evening with a cocktail party at the Fahey-Klein gallery in honor of Vogue’s Grace Coddington and ended with a dinner for De la Renta thrown by Barbara Davis--attended by both Ronald Reagan and Jack Nicholson.

Before sitting down to lunch, we asked De la Renta his thoughts on Ralph Lauren being found guilty in a Paris court of copying Yves Saint Laurent’s tuxedo gown. De la Renta--whose fall collection contained nary a tuxedo dress--just shook his beautiful balding head and laughed. “Ridiculous!” he said. Then he turned to greet the carefully groomed, exquisitely exercised members of the Blue Ribbon. Many had worn their Oscars for the occasion--and, if all went as planned, would head for Saks Fifth Avenue after dessert to buy more.

We jetted off to the kosher butcher.

Out of Italy: The buzz in the fashion world this week is over the defection of Giorgio Armani’s right-hand woman, Gabriella Forte, to Calvin Klein Inc. By all accounts, Forte’s hiring is a Calvin Klein dream come true. He is said to have admired the well-oiled Armani empire for a long time, and not only hired away Armani employees but at one point designed similar men’s suits. According to the controversial new Klein biography, “Obsession,” the silhouette of Klein’s 1984 line of suits was so much like Armani’s that the Italian designer, on seeing Klein’s suits in the window of Saks Fifth Avenue in New York, said, “I didn’t know I had windows at Saks.”

Apparently, Forte’s move came as a surprise to Armani. “I don’t know anything about it,” he told Women’s Wear Daily on Sunday night. But by Monday the designer was well-informed and issued a memo publicly thanking Forte for “her 15 years of collaboration” and graciously wishing her “every success in the world.”

In her newly created positions of president and chief operating officer at Calvin Klein, Forte will oversee the marketing, retailing and licensing operations. But it is her proven skills on the international market that likely made her irresistible to Klein and partner Barry Schwartz.

“Calvin is on a roll this year from a financial and credibility standpoint, and this is a real coup for him to steal away one of Armani’s key people,” retail consultant Alan Millstein told the Wall Street Journal.

On the down side, the Klein organization is known for its high executive turnover and the hands-on--some might say interfering--management style of its two top bosses. Forte, Millstein said, is “walking into one of the hottest snake pits on Seventh Avenue.”

Stay tuned.

Words to Live By: If only we’d read the chapter on “Male Makeovers” in Anka Radakovich’s new book, “The Wild Girls Club.” We might have known better than to raise our eyebrows at Mr. Inside Out’s weekend party outfit of Topsiders, a plaid shirt and a camel-hair jacket. Alongside our cheap rayon cocktail dress and Eva Peron pumps, he looked, well, like Father Knows Best--not entirely unappealing, but still. . . .

Radakovich, who counsels hapless hunk wanna-bes each month in Details, knows the score on such matters. As she shrewdly observes, “any suggestion that he is less than dashing will be taken as an indictment of his whole existence.”

Good advice, but too late, we fear.

“This shirt is not plaid,” said Mr. Anderson, er, Mr. Inside Out, still smarting from our smirking. “It’s checked. “

And What About My Hem Length?: An actress friend went to the DMV to renew her driver’s license. Her picture was snapped so quickly, she asked, “Is that it?” “Yes,” said the middle-aged woman who operated the camera. “And it’s gonna come out cute. But you should get your ears pierced.”

Off With Their Ball Gowns: Instead of black-tie, invitations to the June 8 benefit for the American Foundation for AIDS Research in New York suggest that guests wear anything appropriate to a “summer block party.” What makes this a bit surprising, we suppose, is that the down-to-earth dress code was the idea of Gayfryd Steinberg and Carolyne Roehm, who once personified the ballgown-wearing socialites of the ‘80s.

“We wanted to attract a broader constituency than would normally come to one of our benefits,” Roehm, a fashion designer, told the New York Times. Besides, you can’t very well listen to an evening of rhythm and blues, as the invitation promises, in a crinoline, now can you?

Charity Begins at Home: Speaking of AIDS fund-raising efforts, Elizabeth Taylor sank her tiny little feet into a square of cement mixed with her signature White Diamonds perfume this week as part of shoe- meister Kenneth Cole’s campaign to raise money for the Pediatric AIDS Foundation. The ritual was performed at the recuperating actress’s Bel-Air home with doglet Sugar by her side. The imprint of Taylor’s tootsies joins those of Richard Gere, Rosie O’Donnell, Kenny Loggins and Patricia Arquette already in place at Cole’s Sunset Boulevard store.

Next to sink into the mud? Madonna. And don’t say she already has!