New York, February 2, 2007 – We were inside this billowing white tent, and Kim Cattrall walked by wearing a bright red dress. Then Kelly Ripa walked by, also wearing a red dress. And First Lady Laura Bush was there too. This wasn’t some weird dream – it was the Heart Truth Red Dress fashion show, a star-studded benefit bright and early Friday morning, kicking off New York’s Fall 2007 fashion shows. This isn’t the first time Mrs. Bush has lent her presence at the Bryant Park tents to call attention to women’s heart health, and that explained the show’s delayed start while Secret Service agents painstakingly swept the venue before she arrived.

The Red Dress show is always a lot of fun because the models are all high profile women who smile and wave and have normal body mass. The biggest cheers came for pint-sized actress Kristin Chenoweth, who walked her little white dog, also dressed in red, down the runway with her. But the crowd went crazy when the next model, tennis legend Billie Jean King, in a shiny red pant suit, vogued and vamped her way through Michael Jackson’s hit song, “Billie Jean”. Rachael Ray is not as clumsy on the runway as she is in the kitchen - she didn’t trip over her way-too-long Donna Karan gown.

We caught up with American Idol alum Katharine McPhee backstage after the show, and she said she was nervous at first. “It was so fun. I thought I would be really nervous, but once I got out there, it was like, this is fun”, she said. McPhee told us about her Daniel Swarovski mini dress: “It’s 7 lbs., over 79,000 crystals. So I got my cardio doing the Heart walk.”

30 Rock star Jane Krakowski said that she hadn’t even seen her dress until late the night before, and the experience of walking in the show was “Exhilarating. Terrifying. It seemed like a really long walk.”

Angela Bassett, Marlee Maitlin, Phylicia Rashad, and racecar driver Danica Patrick were among the catwalkers.