THAT $5,000 Chloe Edith bag you’re starving and sacrificing for? That – just like every other “it” bag that has been or ever will be – costs no more than $95 to produce.

Then there’s the high-profile designers who buy vintage pieces and copy them wholesale – or the super-young B-list runway models who wind up farmed out as highclass hookers on the yachts of international businessmen.

Since its publication in the U.K. this summer, “Fashion Babylon” – a novel juiced with tabloid-ready true stories and oft-repeated rumors – has supplanted “The Devil Wears Prada” as the fashionista’s trashy read of choice.

Narrated by a fictional Brit designer who uses drugs, other designers’ work and her best friends while struggling to launch her first show at New York’s Fashion Week, “Fashion Babylon” (available at amazon.co.uk) is, fittingly, the perfect thing to read in the tents (sans book jacket, of course).

In honor of Fashion Week’s kickoff tomorrow, here are a few choice excerpts:

* “Remember that Vogue cover [Kate Moss] did when she was dressed in a crown, holding a sceptre? Well, rumor has it that she was so out of it for that shoot they had to prop her up, and the people supporting her were airbrushed out of the picture.”

* “A few years back when Tom Ford was still at Gucci, he allegedly called up his p.r. in London demanding to get ‘that woman’ out of his clothes,” because he considered Victoria Beckham too tacky.

“The p.r. is supposed to have said she couldn’t as Posh was buying their clothes. And Ford is said to have paused and then shouted, ‘How can we stop her?’ ” *”There are really only 10 women in the world who can actually [sell dresses]: Nicole Kidman, Gwyneth Paltrow, Madonna, Kate Moss, Cameron Diaz, Sarah Jessica Parker, Sienna Miller, Uma Thurman, Scarlett Johansson and then, in a league of her own, Paris Hilton.

Because of the amount of free press she generates, it is always worth shoving a few things on her back. . . . The likes of Rachel Weisz and Keira Knightley might be spotted wearing the Roland Mouret Galaxy dress, but they’re trend helpers rather than starters.” *”As soon as an editor walks into your show, their fashion antennae are on red alert. Where your show is and at what time will either stand for or against you. The atmosphere you have created. The goodie bags that are on the chairs. Who is doing your makeup. Your hair.

Your music. It is all noted and added together. You get points for the celebrities who attend.

Technically, your show could be deemed a failure even before the first frock has gone down the catwalk.” *”[These clothes] go from model to model, and shoot to shoot, in the same day. Five at a time when the dress is hot.

Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue . . . you’re always catching stuff. My mate Natalaya got lice from some $60,000 dress last year. Models are filthy bloody things.” *”All these [Middle Eastern women] sit in the front row of couture and they buy these dresses they can’t wear. Or actually sometimes they don’t even see the show; they send someone in their place. Anyway, they buy these dresses, which they can’t wear in public because their religion forbids it, and they take them back to their palaces and exhibit them . . .

their mates come, drink tea, and take a peek at what a $60,000 Dior dress looks like.” *”The Russians always have weird relationships. There’s that one model whose husband/manager follows her everywhere with a video camera. He’s about 40 years older than her and films her backstage getting dressed and undressed, and coming down the catwalk on the monitor . . .

he’s a bit scary. There are lots of those young girls who arrive in the West and think they’ve made it because they have some old bloke looking after them.

But you know, they’re only model/whores. There’s a whole load of them who are run by gangs in Paris. They do the runways during Fashion Week and then they are farmed out to rich businessmen on yachts in the Riviera.” *”Honestly, [Heidi Klum] is worth 10 times more than half the other models who in my opinion are prettier than her. Talk about working it. She must sit back and think, ‘What am I famous for? Oh, I know, I’m German, I’ll bring out a line of diamante Birkenstocks. Or, I know, I’ve got nice t – – – s, let’s do some bras.’ God, she’s annoying.” *”What about that fabulous story of the model who shot the Italian prince in the hotel room? Not because she found him in bed with her best mate but because they had finished her coke.” *”You have to feel sorry for the [models] who starve. You can always tell who they are.

They get these blue/red Nicole Kidman hands because they have starved so much that their circulation is so poor. They then get this thin layer of hair all over them, like a gerbil, because their body has gone into shock and it’s trying to keep warm. Then they get covered in bruises because their nutrition is bad. It is always the downy anorexics who are being touched up by makeup before they go onto the catwalk. . . . I remember a designer going up to a mate of mine and saying to her she looked so much better since she’d lost her puppy fat. The girl had been in hospital with dysentery. He turned and said, ‘Doesn’t matter. Whatever it takes, that’s what I say.’ ” *”Hollywood stylists are universally disliked by most of the fashion industry and they make a lot of money putting people in other people’s clothes.

They can charge up to $20,000 a day for advice . . . I know of two stylists who were given BMWs by one fashion house because they got their client to wear their dresses to the Oscars . . . One stylist received full-body lipo.”