The word is that green, though not "in" for years, will be a major color for this fall's fashion scene. This calls for another look at Vanity Fair's "Special Green Issue," now that the reviews are in.

That issue, readers will recall, took alarmist ideas and attempted to make them fashionable with celebrity endorsements. The poster child was movie star Julia Roberts, resplendent in a green dress by Bill Blass, and hair styled with John Frieda Brilliant Brunette Full Shine and Starlit Waves. Not to be forgotten is Hollywood actor George Clooney in a green Brooks Brothers suit, his face treated with Origin's for Men Fire Fighter Plus.

And so on for Robert Kennedy, Jr., another member of the "Eco-Power Pin-Up" along with Al Gore. More about him in due course. The message was that readers can look like Big Stars, theatrical and political, and in so doing merge fashions in clothing with fashions in ideas. How did this clever gambit work? The letters in response were dominated by those already on board.

"I was impressed with your first-ever Green Issue, especially the pieces by Al Gore and Mark Hertsgaard," wrote Alice Waters of Berkeley, California. "But of all the ways to save the planet, how could you leave out food?"

Majora Carter, executive director of Sustainable South Bronx, complained that the Green Issue perpetuated the stereotype that "environmentalism is something only the affluent and the overwhelmingly white can do." The magazine thereby "lost an opportunity to support comprehensible change everywhere." She wants the publication to "make sustainability sexy by helping us fight for environmental justice."

Nell Newman, co-founder and president of Newman's Own Organics, was delighted with the Green Issue but noted that the Fig Newman, one of her most popular cookies, does not gross $20 million a year as the issue stated.

Nicole Edmonds of Seattle applauded the piece about the inundation of Washington D.C. "Until the United States adopts a culture of prevention and accepts science for science and not politics," she says, "it will lag farther and farther behind the rest of the world in changing things for the greater good."

The most revealing note, however, came from editor Graydon Carter. Vanity Fair, he says, will produce another Green Issue next year and step up coverage of environmental issues with such evenhanded pieces as Michael Shnayerson's story on "the Bush administration's assault on our national parks." Here is the approach:

"'Green' does not have to mean the sort of hair-shirt, wood-burning stove sensibility of the 70s," Carter explains. "Green can and should be sleek and modern. There is a new generation coming into the workplace who may not be terribly political, but the smart ones care a lot about environmental issues, especially global warming. The children of a number of prominent families I know in America and Europe are committing their professional lives to the issue. I can see a time in the near future when environmentalism will be the hot career path, much like advertising was in the 50s and 60s, investment banking was in the 80s, and simple greed in the form of hedge-fund management is now."

A pity that the supposedly sleek and modern scientific standards of Vanity Fair center on global warming fundamentalism from Al Gore. Carter further explains that he would like to see Al Gore on the top of the Democrats' 2008 presidential ticket with Hillary Clinton. I take this as a confession that the Special Green Issue was, at heart, political ad copy.

Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, says Mr. Carter, "may be the most important movie of the year." PRI's Amy Kaleita, our policy fellow in environmental studies, who knows a great deal about environmental hydrology, didn't think so. She found that the film not only failed to connect the scientific dots, it left many out.

I have no quarrel with fashion and no objection in principle to Kératase Paris Nutri-Sculpt Mousse. I hope that green is indeed the "in" color this fall. It's fine with me if women dedicate their professional lives to the environment — but they should beware of slick propaganda that purports to speak for science, but in reality is only a campaign commercial.

Sally Pipes is President and CEO at the California-based Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. She can be reached via email at spipes@pacificresearch.org.