Fashion photographer Steven Meisel’s latest cover and fashion editorial for Vogue Italia “interprets” the BP oil disaster through the lens of haute couture and cadaverous models draped across tarry shores. Fashion blogger Verena von Pfetten writes, “If this isn’t art, we don’t know what is,” while Fashionlvr.com lauds the spread as “a thoughtful gesture by Vogue Italia.”

ABC26 graphic artist and photographer Chet Overall executed a similar photo shoot in June. In contrast to Meisel’s wan, waxy models, Overall’s wear defiant expressions along with their faux oil. “I’m glad someone is doing this for a national audience,” Overall says. “The media (attention) is slowly going to fade, but people should still be payinig attention to it six months after it happened.”

Ro Mayer, costume designer and founder of Krewe of Dead Pelicans, agrees that any controversy incited by Meisel’s editorial will help keep media attention on the oil disaster. “It’s attention, and [attention] is good. [The editorial] is ugly. But the oil spill is ugly. It’s fashion, art and performance, which is exactly what I was doing (with the Krewe of Dead Pelicans), so rah rah.”

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Residents in New Orleans East and the Ninth Ward expressed concerns to Mayor Mitch Landrieu and city officials about their communities’ lack of resources at a budget meeting last night.

At a standing-room only meeting at the Household of Faith church near the I-10 freeway, 50 people asked questions about the lack of a hospital, blight, lack of community resources like parks and retail, and shuttered high schools in the area.

There was plenty of emotional testimony about the problems being faced, but the most newsworthy exchange came toward the end of the two-and-a-half hour meeting, when Mayor Mitch Landrieu directly addressed his race in the context of the city repossessing blighted properties from black property owners who have failed to return to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Roughly 1,000 people packed the church for the budget hearing last night.

“I want to talk about race,” said Landrieu, responding to the testimony at the end of the evening. “You start taking people’s homes, people start asking ‘why you trying to stop people coming home, Mr.Mitch, looking the way you do’ — do I need to say it?”

The crowd murmured support for Landrieu.

“The question is is this about race? Or is about the city?” Landrieu asked. “And when is the day when we start focusing on these properties? Is it now? Is it September? Is it November? Or yesterday?”

The crowd cheered when he said “yesterday.”

“I’m just asking, I just want to make sure I heard you,” said Landrieu. “Because I promise you as soon as I lay it down, somebody’s going to lay it down, and there’s going to be a march.”

“We got your back, Mitch,” shouted several people in the crowd.

The idea of repossessing vacant properties in New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward has been increasingly on council’s radar over recent months. At a meeting of the council recovery meeting on June 30, consultant Greg Rigamer told council that of 52,800 New Orleans applicants to the state’s Road Home program, 34,921 applicants have closed on their homes and are moving forward, but about 14,000 are showing no sign of progress after having received the money.

“There is a colossal compliance issue in front of us,” Rigamer said, urging the council to look into donating out-of-compliance properties to the Louisiana Land Trust.

First Deputy Mayor Judy Reese Morse addresses the crowd, watched by Councilman Jon Johnson, Chief Administrative Office Andy Kopplin, and Mayor Mitch Landrieu last night.

Mayor Landrieu demonstrated remarkable communication ability throughout the hearing last night — for example, he offered at one point to stay all night, listening to residents’ concerns, and the crowd responded by asking en masse for him to please bring the evening to a close. In the public relations playbook, this seemed to be a new twist on the so-called “Iron Man press conference,” where a politician simply responds to questions on a controversial subject until the crowd exhausts itself and goes home. Employed by Landrieu last night, it appeared sincere, as though he were eager to do the crowd a favor. Almost.

More on the testimony and the meeting after the jump.

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A reason to go to Kenner: Target, retail behemoth and bastion of local recycling efforts, will soon have a 138,000-square foot location in the area’s Esplanade Mall. Simon Property Group sold the land to Target in a deal that closed July 1, and the store is projected to open in 2011. Now Kenner can have inexpensive and adorably packaged things, too.

Sunglasses often meet any number of grisly fates. Whether they end up hurled from vertiginous roller coaster heights, lost at sea or just plain mangled, one constant is that sunglasses’ life expectancy rarely extends past hurricane season. Which is why I’m normally reluctant to shell out for a nice pair. If you’re the type to drop a few Benjamins on designer shades, though, you may be interested in a trunk show tonight at Loa hosted by St. Charles Vision and SALT from 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

“They’re going to have a free fitting for the SALT frames, and people can also get a 20 percent discount (on SALT frames) at the event,” says St. Charles Vision publicist Erica Normand. “There’s going to be a complimentary Summer Sensation cocktail that Loa is putting together.”

On a related note, the Uptown St. Charles Vision location recently unearthed a selection of absolutely bad-ass vintage designer sunglasses. They have that angular, the-future-as-envisioned-from-the-80s vibe, and they’re as cheap as $50 a pair. I’m really proud of my vintage shades and swear they won’t suffer the gruesome fates of their predecessors and have developed a Gollum-level fixation on them, sedulously polishing the lenses and storing them in their sleek little coffin when they’re not in use.

In a week that seemed to bring nothing but bad news comes this new sadness: The Verti Marte, the legendary grocery and takeout spot on Royal Street in the lower French Quarter, burned last night. (Pix of the destruction taken by French Quarter blogger Bigezbear here, here and here.)

“Real Food for Real People at Real Prices” was the motto, and that was the truth; if you lived in the Lower Quarter — as I used to — you depended on the Verti Marte for everything: take-out plate lunches and bags of chips, BC headache powders and Dr Pepper, Hubig’s Pies and ice cream bars. It was the place you went to get a bottle of water on a hot day or a bottle of wine to carry across the street to Mona Lisa.

You never knew who you’d be pressed up against in the Verti Marte’s impossibly crowded aisles: laborers and drag queens, wide-eyed visitors and crusty locals, rich folks and poor folks. Brad and Angelina bought smokes there and took their kids there for treats. I’ve waited on line there with Harry Shearer, Henri Schindler and Hoda Kotb (who was returning from a morning jog in pants so tight that every man in the store burst out laughing when she left). And behind the counter, nearly always, was Sam — Sam, I’ve never learned your last name — who had an Elvis quiff and the patience of a saint, no matter what was transpiring on the other side of his register.

And the food — getting a butcher paper-and-masking taped po-boy or a Styrofoam container of entree-plus-two-sides from the deli workers was as quintessential a New Orleans experience as eating at Commander’s or Dooky’s. Who hasn’t had an “All That Jazz” (ham, turkey AND shrimp, topped with “WOW” sauce) or my favorite, the “Royal Feast” (”cheese capped grilled and stacked roast beef, turkey & ham complimented with hot pepper cheese, black olives, grilled onions and our original “WOW Sauce”)?

The phone at Verti Marte has been busy all morning, but one of our readers who’s been over there sent us this Flickr photo set (it’s heartbreaking). If there’s any good news in this, it’s this caption on one of his her photos: “I talked to the owner and she said they will definitely rebuild. And she wouldn’t give up the WOW sauce recipe.” (Thanks for sharing the photos, Rebecca.)

Sam and our Verti Marte friends: if you need any help, you’ll have hundreds of hungry friends waiting to lend a hand.