The mission: attend “Style Across the Aisle,” a Fashion Week spectacle wherein local politicians walk the runway wearing clothes mostly made by up-and-coming designers from their districts, and determine which of the models exhibits the most diva-like behavior. Which official, be they elected or appointed, is most likely to throw a phone at an assistant while screaming, “I am not wearing more khaki!”? Who, in short, is the civil-servant Naomi Campbell?

“I think there’ll be many models with diva behavior,” Joann Ariola, the City Council minority leader, said the week before the event, which benefitted Witness to Mass Incarceration, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering economic independence for formerly incarcerated people. Yet, leading up to the show, the squawks from the models sounded more

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