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The Wait Is Over
When Paris-based designer Isabel Marant‘s obsessed-over New York boutique finally opened at 2 p.m. last Friday, a line of eager shoppers stretched down the block. Not long after, the scene inside was so intense, “it was as if someone had stood on the corner and shouted, ‘Everything’s free inside!’ ” one eyewitness remarked. As for the guests at last night’s Kenmare dinner party celebrating the opening? If they hadn’t participated in the shopping madness over the weekend, it was only because their closets are already stuffed with Marant’s clothes.
Stylist Samira Nasr claims to have at least 20 of the designer’s T-shirts and almost as many of her pants. Actress Amanda Peet said, “Tina [Chai] comes back from Paris with dresses for me and my mom. I tell her, ‘Get whatever you want and I’ll write you a check.’ ” Chai, a popular stylist, joked, “They see me at the store, and they say, ‘Oh, here comes the lady who spends a lot of money.’ ” Model Kasia Struss, who already owns about five or six things, told us, “I wanted to buy the whole Fall show. You know it’s a good show when you want everything.” And when we asked Teen Vogue‘s Gloria Baume about her Marant collection, she said, “I’d say about a dozen, but it’s not how many I have now; it’s how many I’m going to have now that the store is open.”
Marant herself is thrilled about the opening in general and one element in particular. “This afternoon we saw this really gorgeous tall guy in my trousers,” she noted. “Quite a lot of guys wear my clothes in Paris, but I was surprised to see it here.” After dinner she was presented with a giant cake covered in candles, and everyone sang Happy Birthday. “Thank you so much,” she said. “I’m going to say something stupid now. I love you, America.”
—Nicole Phelps Continue reading
“The Most Glamorous Open Studio Ever”
There were plenty of scantily clad models at last night’s Tribeca Ball, but not necessarily of the fashion variety. While most of the students at the New York Academy of Art’s annual fundraiser merely showed their work, others were busy making it—hence the models—and for extra fun, guests were invited to insert themselves into a tableau vivant of Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe for a photo op.
Helena Christensen, no stranger to baring flesh, took a moment on her way in to recall the time she sat for Francesco Clemente. “He did a watercolor portrait of my face, and I looked eerily like my mom.” Posing for Irving Penn, she added, was like having an old-fashioned portrait done. “He would get you in a position that you kept for so long that your muscles ended up trembling—and that’s when he shot it, when you were literally about to collapse,” Christensen said. Then she was off, joining the likes of Parker Posey, the Richards sisters, and Beatrix Ost (the German artist who inspired the Olsen twins’ latest collection) for a haphazard tour of the school’s five floors of artist studios.
Later on, dinner was served atop swatches of pinstriped suiting fabric from Brooks Brothers, which co-sponsored with Van Cleef & Arpels. Most everyone stole a glance at Jennifer Connelly, who was seated in the middle of the room with husband Paul Bettany. The whole thing was enough to impress painter Rosson Crow, who’s got a foot in the fashion world thanks to her collaborations with Zac Posen and knows a good soirée when she sees it: “This is the most glamorous open studio I’ve ever seen!”
—Darrell Hartman Continue reading
An Education
Mayor Michael Bloomberg made a cameo appearance at Turnaround for Children’s first-ever fundraising benefit last night at the Plaza, providing moms like Tory Burch, Uma Thurman, and Emily Mortimer with a couple of different talking points during the speech he gave while appetizers were being served: He’s an avid sports fan, and he’s extremely dedicated to New York City’s public schools. While the Boston-born New Yorker was cagey about his favorite hometown baseball team (“I’m a Celtics fan,” he teased), he wasn’t playing around when it came to education. “It’s not the kids that are failing in our schools,” Bloomberg stated. “It’s the schools that are failing our kids.”
Turnaround’s tagline is “Transforming the Most Challenged Public Schools,” and the guests of honor—Merryl Tisch, Perri Peltz, and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein—were all recognized for their contributions to the cause. Klein, who grew up in public housing in Queens, made this analogy: “It’s been said we’re not going to fix education until we fix poverty, but I say we’re not going to fix poverty until we fix the educational system.” Hopefully, last night’s dinner and live auction, which raised $1.1 million, is a step in the right direction.
—Derek Blasberg Continue reading
An Education
Mayor Michael Bloomberg made a cameo appearance at Turnaround for Children’s first-ever fundraising benefit last night at the Plaza, providing moms like Tory Burch, Uma Thurman, and Emily Mortimer with a couple of different talking points during the speech he gave while appetizers were being served: He’s an avid sports fan, and he’s extremely dedicated to New York City’s public schools. While the Boston-born New Yorker was cagey about his favorite hometown baseball team (“I’m a Celtics fan,” he teased), he wasn’t playing around when it came to education. “It’s not the kids that are failing in our schools,” Bloomberg stated. “It’s the schools that are failing our kids.”
Turnaround’s tagline is “Transforming the Most Challenged Public Schools,” and the guests of honor—Merryl Tisch, Perri Peltz, and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein—were all recognized for their contributions to the cause. Klein, who grew up in public housing in Queens, made this analogy: “It’s been said we’re not going to fix education until we fix poverty, but I say we’re not going to fix poverty until we fix the educational system.” Hopefully, last night’s dinner and live auction, which raised $1.1 million, is a step in the right direction.
—Derek Blasberg Continue reading
Frock Opera
Inside Lincoln Center last night, it wasn’t your typical night at the opera. With Yves Saint Laurent sponsoring the Met’s gala premiere of Rossini’s Armida, girls in gowns lit up the cocktail hour, and the show itself (which stars Renée Fleming as a Syrian sorceress who puts an army of Crusaders under her spell) got a bit of a glamour boost from the stars in the audience.
One of them was Camilla Belle, who apparently feels right at home in the box seats. She’d spent the weekend seeing Broadway shows (In the Heights, Red) and grew up listening to Mozart (“he inspired me to play the piano”) and singing in her high school choir. “It was a really respected group at my school. Luckily, we weren’t made fun of at all,” Belle assured us. “And my choir director was obsessed with Renée Fleming, so he’s going to have a breakdown when I tell him that I watched her.”
Meanwhile, Chloë Sevigny chatted with her Big Love co-star Ginnifer Goodwin, Maggie Gyllenhaal paired off with Patricia Clarkson, and Bette Midler explained that she was one of very few guests at the pre-show dinner to have played the Met before. “I sang for a private individual—a man with a lot of money,” she recalled. “And exquisite taste!”
—Darrell Hartman Continue reading
Decade Hopping
The Art Production Fund hit a milestone on Monday night: its tenth anniversary. To celebrate, founders Yvonne Force Villareal and Doreen Remen threw themselves a birthday party on the top floor of the Standard Hotel, a party that doubled as the organization’s first-ever fundraising benefit. “It was important for us to source our own funding in the beginning, to be independent and be obliged only to our own projects,” explained Remen, who accessorized her leopard-print gown with temporary tattoos created by the artist Kiki Smith (take that, Chanel). “But tonight is more of a celebration than anything, and we’re going to have fun.”
She meant it. APF organized a slew of art carnival activities, including performance pieces from Kembra Pfahler and Terence Koh, “Personal Genius” sessions in which Linda Yablonsky answered questions about absolutely anything, and one-of-a-kind body scans courtesy of Steven Klein. But the highlight for many was a set from Janelle Monáe, whose ability to wow the crowd was particularly impressive when you take into account her diminutive stature and the preponderance of statement headwear on the guests: Baby Jane Holzer sported a splashy blow-out, Pfahler’s troupe wore giant black Afros, and one ambitious cross-dresser had affixed a suction cup complete with feathers and Christmas lights to their head. “That’s one good thing about the art world: the personal style,” Arden Wohl noted. “You don’t get many borrowed dresses or personal stylists in this crowd.”
—Derek Blasberg Continue reading
Test Red Carpet
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Aenean a hendrerit purus. Nam placerat, nisl id sodales dictum, tortor est sagittis mi, vel sodales nisl augue eget eros. Donec eget quam enim, ut dictum elit. Maecenas fringilla, velit in dictum tristique, magna lacus congue elit, eget semper augue lorem non sapien. Praesent urna turpis, ullamcorper ut luctus ut, tincidunt nec nisi. Curabitur tellus nunc, venenatis non aliquam sed, blandit quis erat. In facilisis, mi eu sodales rutrum, orci neque sodales tortor, quis hendrerit tortor massa cursus massa. Quisque posuere mi eget odio aliquet id ultrices libero aliquet. Sed ultricies posuere felis sed aliquam. Ut tempor placerat risus, vitae suscipit diam luctus vitae. Maecenas purus libero, fermentum ut vestibulum id, laoreet sed velit. Aliquam quis risus sit amet nulla dictum pharetra id eu lacus. Cras a urna at mi laoreet porta.
—Johnny McWeaksauce Continue reading