Move over, Madonna

Of all the pop-culture sensations trembling on the brink of London icon status, no one has more So Now potential than Chelsea Clinton. The girl who once looked like she'd been tailor-made to make the least popular kids on the fringes of every birthday party feel better about themselves has reinvented herself as the most essential social element of the moment. Compilers of guest lists bicker over her. Event organisers woo her.

Consider the evidence. Over recent months, Clinton has swung by The Groucho and Noble Rot. She has posed for the paparazzi with Kevin Spacey, Sophie Dahl and Britain's thespian elite at a charity gig at The Old Vic. She's done dinner with Bono and Ronan Keating at the Conrad Gallagher restaurant. She's been photographed in the arms of an unspecified man outside the 10 Room, after being refused entry to Chinawhite. (Know this: it's terribly louche, in a Freddy Windsor kind of way, to be turned away from certain places.) She's partied with Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, dined with Bianca Jagger after attending a lecture on human rights, and landed a number-six rating in Tatler's top ten most eligible women list. As if that weren't enough, she's exchanged air kisses with party pro Nicky Haslam on at least three separate occasions.

Now, in a move that will surely facilitate her domination of London's social scene, the Oxford postgraduate has started making noises about ditching her current provincial base and relocating to the London School of Economics. Aides claim Oxford is too cliquey and anti-American for her tastes - but it's hard not to suspect that her head's been turned by recent forays into the glittering Bacchanalian furore of the West End after dark.

To deconstruct Clinton's arrival on the London scene is to become acquainted with a new breed of social animal. In these It Girl fatigued times, it's tricky to be a socially significant twenty-something woman without being dismissed as a vacuous piece of post-Palmer-Tomkinson trash. It's been a good two years since anyone suggested that the fame-for-fame's-sake crew made an important statement about the nihilistic nature of postmodern culture, after all.

But according to Nicky Haslam - who's observed Clinton's ascent, and who has 'totally fallen in love with her' - she offers London's social set something fabulously novel. 'I don't think she's interested in being a social butterfly,' he says. 'She's extremely intelligent and it's more about heading up an intellectual crowd. She's very much been taken up by Sally Greene [behind-the-scenes theatrical power], and she's bringing her unknown intellectual mates along to these parties.'

Clinton's coterie of smart prot?g?s - the New Clinton Set - incorporates American Oxbridge contemporary Ian Klause, a man who, observers whisper, doesn't quite qualify as a boyfriend. Yet. To date, Clinton and her cohorts are most widely remembered for heckling at a Stop The War rally in Oxford - a controversial move, which adds to the power of Clinton's personal myth.

Ironically, Clinton's previously much-maligned look seems to be helping her in her pursuit of social supremacy. As London's hippest set tires of homogenous, over-groomed blonde loveliness, Clinton's plump-cheeked averageness begins to seem like a refreshing proposition.

Allegedly, Oxford freshers were falling over themselves to seduce her and, according to Haslam: 'She's got the most radiant smile. She's got that funny bun face, but she becomes the greatest beauty when she smiles. And she's very well dressed.' (Clinton was observed spending $2,500 in the Vegas Versace and Louis Vuitton boutiques shortly before leaving the States for Oxford.)

Of course, the truly spectacular thing about Clinton's So Now reinvention is that, ten years ago, she barely scraped a So Over rating. In fact, she's arguably the only individual ever to work her way backwards through the 'So' categories. The tweenager who defined awkward adolescence, who was nicknamed 'the White House Dog' by conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh, and who inspired a pity campaign to 'Leave Chelsea Alone', looked absolutely nothing like a Brit icon in training when she arrived at the White House in 1993. Things looked up when a hoax pirate tape of 15-year-old Clinton dissing Tipper Gore did the rounds of assorted media institutions. But when 'Chelseagate' was exposed, what looked like an insight into the darker side of Clinton's soul seemed instead to highlight her intrinsic lack of edge.

By the time she had hit her late teens, shed the puppy fat and become acquainted with the potential of frizz-smoothing serums, Clinton was insignificant enough to rate as So Then in the minds of those who cared about such things. As a prop in her philandering father's campaign to prove he was truly a family man after all, she looked more like a hapless afterthought than an empowered social force.

But that all feels like a bad dream now. The current, post-nine-eleven climate, Clinton's (former) presidential pedigree, and her intellectual leanings have conspired to make her definitively modern.

Haslam, who introduced her to the future King of Italy at the Hilton's Red Cross Ball because 'I found the idea of Clinton, Queen of Italy very amusing,' thinks she's a spectacular addition to the scene. And so all the signs are there. A 2002 party won't be a party unless Clinton's there.