The prettiest girl in the room is on the decks. Leigh Lezark, 22, DJ, model and designers’ muse, the reigning queen of the feckless, fickle world of New York cool, is choosing the music. We are at Santa’s Party House, the razziest new club in downtown Manhattan. This place is a proper disco, where the lack of seats is designed to get people dancing, not just drinking. It’s perfect Lezark territory, and it’s where we shoot her for Style the next day.

Later, behind a sheet of black hair hiding her fine bone structure, Lezark sits down for a chat. She has a tiny body, alabaster skin and the enigma and understatement of a glamorous star of the silent screen. Paris Hilton or Britney Spears she isn’t. Not because she isn’t already an old hand — at 14 she was skipping school and riding the bus into town to go to gay bars and CBGB (the famous, now defunct, rock club at the centre of everything in the late 1970s and 1980s) — but because she doesn't care like they do.

“Oh, you know, it was just all of our friends.” Leigh is telling me the story of the Misshapes, the DJ trio of which she is a member, who won the devoted loyalty of young New Yorkers with an eponymous club night that started six years ago. Legend has it that, in the era of Wall Street show-offs and £7,000 jeroboams, they threw a one-off house party that was such a radical success with the city’s trendiest wee things, it morphed into a regular weekly. Boy George DJed the second night. Yoko Ono, Madonna and Jarvis Cocker followed. When Madonna came down, Lezark and her two partners, Geordon Nicol and Greg Krelenstein, were bright enough to treat her like the authentic twentysomething hipster she wanted to imagine she still was, and she told all her friends.

The Misshapes night closed in September 2007 — “We knew it was time” — by which point it had a following far beyond New York’s city limits. Since then Lezark’s fame has grown. She and the boys are booked regularly for all the best international DJing gigs, and these days Lezark also has a contract with IMG models. She has already appeared in American Vogue and in ads for Roberto Cavalli’s range for H&M and Gap — the latter appeared on a giant billboard outside one of New York’s main train stations. I’m told that Karl Lagerfeld “loves her”. He gave her a pair of his gun-shoe stilettos, one of only 200 pairs made. “Someone said, isn’t Chanel an old-lady brand. I was, like, have you worn it, ever?” Lezark says.

The Misshapes are a now a regular feature at fashion weeks worldwide — they DJed at lots of shows in Paris this season, including Sophia Kokosolaki and Jeremy Scott. Lezark’s boyfriend is Max, the son of the late film director Anthony Minghella. Allegedly he turned up to the Misshapes night for a year in the hope of attracting her attention. According to her publicist (Thomas, previously door bitch at the Misshapes), the subject is strictly off limits. I’m not sure why. Perhaps being very fashionable is a bit like being a celebrity: you’ve got to keep something back.

Who needs words anyway? Image packs a bigger punch than soundbites. And after all, that’s what DJs do: cast spells over the crowd without speaking.

The DJ booth is becoming quite the spot for shy girls who fancy the spotlight now and again. Sam Ronson — who has always taken her tunes seriously — was one of the first. Now Alexa Chung, Daisy Lowe and Pixie Geldof are all regulars on the circuit. Pixie’s big sister Peaches and her best friend have been working it as the Trash Pussies since Peaches was 17. For those who are there for a laugh, there is a crucial distinction between going to a party with a job to do and being a party girl. The latter no longer counts as an occupation (actually it’s hard to believe it ever did).

Meanwhile, New York nightlife, as in London, is reinventing itself. Bottle service is on the wane and girl DJs are a 2009 antidote to its macho ways. And it helps that would-be girl DJs can now move around more easily because they don’t have to lug big bags of records around when an iPod or a book of mix CDs will do.

“It’s the best job ever,” says Hanna Hanra, whose DJ career has taken her to many of London’s clubs and parties in the past eight years. “You get paid to go to a pub and listen to your own music, with the high of being a rock star. You get your own private cloakroom, free drinks for you and your friends, who all get in free, and you don’t have to queue for the lavatory. You’re controlling the room — 400 people all going mad to a song they didn’t know they wanted to hear.”

And if you’re the right girl spinning the right tunes, there is plenty of moolah to be had. Chung was reportedly paid £4,000 to DJ for half an hour at a corporate do the other day. That means Ronson was getting anything up to £15,000 per set (plus travel and accommodation) for the appearances she made in London last month. Obviously the foxy A-list girlfriend and catfight were part of the package.

Then there is Lezark. There has been a backlash to her froideur (which a good friend attributes to shyness) and relentless hipness. One blog gleefully counted up 21 event appearances last Paris Fashion Week, adding a nickname: haute whore. And then there is the one that has stuck: Princess Coldstare. There have been comparisons with Anna Wintour, but perhaps Lezark would prefer to be compared to Edie Sedgwick, whose picture she has on her MySpace page. She isn’t the new Sedgwick, or even the new Chloë Sevigny — where Sevigny prefers to glide around in the shadows at parties, Lezark and her two DJ friends still inspire a frenzy and, you suspect, rather relish it. “We hosted an art-magazine party in June and there were queues down the block at 9.30pm,” she says. “It was crazy. People were going nuts.”

Tonight New York’s coolest girl is off to see Madama Butterfly, choreographed by her boyfriend’s mum, Carolyn Chao, and she will be wearing a floor-length “crazy beautiful” dress by, yes of course, Chanel. She tells me that she is inspired by Warhol and the Factory, because “they made it their own and made it last. They kept moving forward”. Now it’s her turn.

SHEJAY: THE GIRLS SPINNING IT UP

By Ruby Warrington

SAM RONSON The sister of Mark and main squeeze of Li Lo, Ronson is the It-girl DJ of the moment, mixing up a blend of hip-hop, pop and rock. She is co-owner of the New York nightclub The Plumm.

PRINCESS JULIA She got her first taste of nightlife as part of the 1980s Blitz Kids scene. Julia has since collaborated with Kylie, helped to put BoomBox on the map and is still one of London’s busiest DJs.

SMOKIN JO One of the most prolific DJs of the UK rave scene, she has played every big club in the world in her 18-year career, including Space Ibiza’s We Love . . . night, where she has been a resident DJ for 15 years.

SARAH MAIN Born in Sydney, Main is the first female DJ to come out of Australia. She has been the resident DJ at Pacha Ibiza for six years, and even had a cameo in the classic Ibiza flick It’s All Gone Pete Tong.

ANJA SCHNEIDER Big on the Berlin dance scene since the mid-1990s and a Love Parade regular, Schneider was recently profiled in the German edition of Vanity Fair and has released an album, Beyond the Valley.

HANNAH HOLLAND One of the founders of all-girl DJ collective Girlcore, Holland is also the resident DJ at east London’s Trailer Trash. Her new night, Bastard Batty Bass, has spawned a record label.

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