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Prism Break
An international crew of young art appreciators descended on Los Angeles yesterday for the opening of
PC Valmorbida and
Jared Najjar‘s
Prism gallery.
Theodora Richards,
Margherita Missoni,
Devon Aoki,
Jeremy Scott,
Rachel Zoe,
and
Heidi Mount were just some of the revelers who crammed—and we mean crammed—into the debut show of artists
Barry McGee and
Phil Frost.
“I was hoping for a good turnout, but not this good,” Valmorbida sighed around midnight, when the 1,000-plus crowd, which ended up including street performers and hippies who wandered in off Sunset Boulevard, finally started milling out to the valet.
Admittedly, some guests were more concerned with the photo ops than the art. Peaches Geldof headed straight for the rooftop, where the bar and dance floor were located. “Oh, there’s art here?” she joked. “I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ll come back.” Frost seemed pleased with the festivities, despite the fact that he was up all night with Valmorbida pals like
Stavros Niarchos and
Dasha Zhukova touching up his trademark “Wite-Out” sculptures. And as for his part, McGee said, “I couldn’t have asked for a better opening or a better crew of guys. I think L.A. needed something like this. There’s lots of galleries here, but this place has a group dynamic.” Group may have been an understatement.
—Derek Blasberg Continue reading
Expatriate Games
Tatler stoked the society engine a bit more than usual last night, drawing a transatlantic mix of boldfaced names for the New York celebration of its 300th anniversary. Co-hosted by
Tina Brown and
Diane von Furstenberg at the designer’s Meatpacking District HQ, the soirée gave new editor in chief
Catherine Ostler an excuse to talk up a publication that came into existence around the same time as Ben Franklin and the piano. “I’ve been blithely telling everyone we’re the oldest magazine in the world, so I hope it’s true,” Ostler confessed. “No one’s contradicted me yet!”
Either way, the magazine’s got legs. What’s the secret? “It’s a chronicle of its time,” von Furstenberg suggested.
Zac Posen had another theory: “English people are very old.” Of course, the media landscape has shifted since Tatler began life as a pamphlet circulated in chic London coffee houses, but
Georgina Chapman,
who grew up reading it, said she expected to be flipping through the magazine for years to come. “Forever—or as long as England’s around,” she predicted.
“Society will always want to be covered, and Tatler is the only real social magazine left in the world,” offered Brown, whose revamp in the early eighties transformed Tatler into the more irreverent glossy it is today. With the likes of
Tory Burch and
David Lauren joining David de Rothschild,
Nicky Haslam,
Jazzy de Lisser, and other familiar faces from across the pond, there were a few more Yanks at this party than there were at the London version a month ago. Still, expat Luke Parker Bowles was gratified—and a bit proud, even—to be in the same room as so many of his fellow countrymen. “To see such fabulous, beautiful people and to realize they’re not all American is reassuring,” he said.
—Darrell Hartman Continue reading
Dalí Good
With Surrealism the theme at this year’s Apollo Circle Benefit, the mood inside the Met last night was a dreamy mix of glamour and whimsy. Bartenders serving Champagne against a backdrop of avant-garde films by Luis Buñuel and Maya Deren had painted-on Dalí moustaches, and maybe it wasn’t too much of a stretch to see the light reflecting off moats and the Temple of Dendur’s Egyptian columns as a nocturnal, high-society take on de Chirico.
Carolina Herrera,
who sponsored, looked very satisfied with the whole scene during her walk-through. “The museum is one of my favorite places, if not my favorite place, in New York,” she said, surveying a crowd that included her daughter
Patricia Lansing,
Amanda Hearst,
Eleanor Ylvisaker,
and Vogue‘s
Meredith Melling Burke and
Lauren Santo Domingo.
“Tonight, with all these young girls, I love it.” And their dates? “Very good-looking men, all of them,” Herrera cooed. As for Dalí: “He painted my father-in-law, and I met him. It was fantastic.”
—Darrell Hartman Continue reading
Sweet Fifteen
Models, drag queens, and makeup lovers lined up at Industria Superstudio last night to fête
François Nars and his new tome 15×15. The face painter-cum-photographer’s third picture book stars a bevy of his
friends—Olivier Theyskens,
Amber Valletta,
and Isabella Rossellini, among them—each of whom models a particular Nars product to showcase an iconic moment in time. “It’s the same idea as my other books,” the makeup artist said. “Taking people and transforming them.”
Marc Jacobs and
Daphne Guinness co-hosted the evening, and it’s hardly a surprise that their portraits were crowd favorites. No, the designer wasn’t wearing Nars’ Dovima red nail lacquer and matching lipstick like he does in his sixties-era Richard Avedon-inspired picture (instead, he was sporting eyeliner, mascara, and bronzer), but Guinness did pluck look 24 and a pair of sky-high lobster-claw platforms straight off Alexander McQueen’s Spring runway for the occasion. “You can’t take your eyes off her!”
Phillip Lim said as the heiress made her way around the crowded party. “Are those hard to walk in?” we asked. “Not for me,” she said coolly. “I’ve had years of practice.”
—Celia Ellenberg Continue reading