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“Still Rocking ‘n’ Rolling”
Seeing Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning dolled up in their Young Hollywood best before the screening of Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways last night made it tough to think that they could accurately portray two queens of early L.A. punk. But we’re happy to report that their heavily styled red-carpet looks were deceiving. On screen, in Joan Jett‘s black mullet and Cherie Currie‘s feathered blowout, respectively, Stewart and Fanning convincingly snorted drugs in airplane bathrooms, made out together, and danced around in leather trousers and bikini bottoms.
The two still-teenage stars holed up on an outdoor patio at the Tommy Hilfiger-sponsored Bowery Hotel after-party behind a pair of security guards. Of her turn as a gritty, bi-curious rocker, all we could get out of Fanning was that she had fun playing the part. Chloë Sevigny was much more chatty, talking hair with Currie herself, who’s now a chainsaw artist working in the San Fernando Valley. Turns out that in the 1997 film Gummo, Sevigny based the blown-out mane of her character, Dot, on the Runaways’ album covers. Flattered, Currie asked: “Can I put that on my Facebook page?” And what of Currie’s cohort Joan Jett? “I’m still rocking ‘n’ rolling,” she told Marika Thunder, artist Rita Ackermann’s 11-year-old daughter, who was wearing a Runaways T-shirt and had asked for an autograph. “It’s what I do.”
—Derek Blasberg Continue reading
United Women
Diane von Furstenberg and Tina Brown celebrated International Women’s Day with the first-ever DVF Awards on Saturday night, decorating the United Nations’ fifties-era cafeteria with low-lying black and white graphic-print sofas and hot pink throw pillows. “I transformed the U.N. into a nightclub,” the designer joked. She also recruited bossa nova queen Bebel Gilberto to perform, but the evening attracted no ordinary crowd of night crawlers. Christiane Amanpour and Meryl Streep were presenters, while Charlie Rose, Iman, and NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly numbered among the guests.
Streep presented Ingrid Betancourt, a former senator of Colombia who was kidnapped by FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas during her presidential bid and held captive for over six years, with a $50,000 grant. “You know, I used to be a cheerleader,” the actress said. “I wish I could still do a double flip and a Chinese split, because I would cheer for these ladies.” Accepting her award, which will help her foundation fight social injustice, Betancourt replied, “I don’t know who’s more distinguished, the presenters or the winners.” Earlier, in the green room, she related a bit of her ordeal: “When I was abducted, one of the things that amazed me, even in that place in the jungle, was that the girls who were my guards managed to have their fashion. Fashion is very cultural, and it’s a way of expressing yourself. It’s one of the important things to get people together.” You don’t have to tell that to von Furstenberg and her hot pink pillows.
—Bee-Shyuan Chang Continue reading