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The Big Chill
—Marina Larroude Continue reading
Game Time
“I had to go to boot camp,” Naomi Watts said of her marinelike preparation for the role of covert op Valerie Plame Wilson in the film Fair Game. Like the Pilates version? “Actually, it was the same kind of training that CIA operatives go through,” the gorgeous actress said at last night’s Cinema Society and Giorgio Armani-sponsored screening. “I had just had a baby, so I had this weight. It was very tough.”
The Doug Liman-directed flick—which premiered at Cannes earlier this year—is based on Wilson’s memoir of her exposure as CIA during the Bush administration. Then, Wilson and her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, were the ultimate Beltway insiders; now, on film, they’re played by the ultimate Hollywood elites. (Model Fernanda Motta cooed that she “was there to see Sean Penn” play the ambassador.) Michelle Monaghan—a Liman alum from The Bourne Supremacy—on the other hand, was in it for the action. “Who doesn’t like a good spy movie, the twist and turns?” cooed Monaghan. “It’s very sexy.”
Despite a boot camp-chiseled figure, sexy isn’t how the real-life Valerie Plame Wilson would describe the job—though she did add a stylish flourish when she donned Armani for her testimony to Congress at the time. “Oh yeah, we always wear high heels and we always wear designer clothes,” Plame joked on the spy game, before the crowd, including Julian Schnabel and Christie Brinkley, headed to Armani/Ristorante for the after-party. But as for how intelligence is actually gathered, there are more effective tools than heels. “Hollywood, of course, has to glamorize things, but I have a particular pet peeve with how women are portrayed,” she said. “There’s always this sexuality, physicality, guns. The truth is, your brain is your best weapon.”
—Bee-Shyuan Chang Continue reading
Pointe Taken
With Darren Aronofsky’s upcoming thriller, Black Swan, garnering lots of early buzz—and all those glorified tutus on the runways at Chloé and Valentino this week—it’s a good moment to be a ballerina. Then again, when is it not?
“I fell in love with one when I was a kid,” Gossip Girl‘s Matthew Settle said at last night’s New York City Ballet Fall Gala. “I snuck backstage for this Nutcracker performance in Tennessee, and that’s when I saw her.”
A black-tie audience including Candace Bushnell and Black Swan‘s Natalie Portman descended on Lincoln Center to take in a special program that featured Jerome Robbins’ Fred Astaire tribute and the New York City premiere of Plainspoken, a Benjamin Millepied-choreographed original. And Settle clearly wasn’t the only guest with a soft spot for toe shoes and leotards. “I don’t wear a tutu [anymore],” Sarah Jessica Parker said, referring perhaps to the old Sex and the City ads. “But I do often wear the silhouette.”
It looks like there may be more dance costumes in Gilles Mendel‘s future. The designer, who collaborated on the company’s spring program earlier this year, told us he’d love another go. “Peter Martins [NYCB’s ballet master in chief] mentioned that he wants to talk with me again,” Mendel confided before the post-show gala dinner. “Who knows? Maybe it’ll be a surprise.”
—Bee-Shyuan Chang Continue reading
Celebrating Africa in Paris
As if the vibrations weren’t positive enough with legendary African singer and activist Angélique Kidjo performing at Louis Vuitton’s Rue du Pont-Neuf store, it was a positive love fest when she asked her “dear friend” Bono to join her onstage. “She’s a queen of Africa,” boomed the U2 front man. “We are your servants, servants and fans.”
The swaying crowd, which included Naomi Campbell, Ali Hewson, Luc Besson, The Edge, Elisa Sednaoui, and LVMH power siblings Delphine Arnault Gancia and Antoine Arnault, definitely counted as fans, even if a few were newly minted. All gamely clapped hands above heads at Bono’s behest and sang along. “I was floored,” said Noisettes lead singer Shingai Shoniwa afterward. “I mean, no one was expecting Bono to come on.”
The real love fest, though, is between Hewson, Bono, and LVMH, which last year took a minority stake in Hewson’s sustainable label, Edun. The fashion behemoth has put its considerable weight behind Hewson’s line, now designed by Sharon Wauchob. The co-sponsored event was part concert and part exhibit, with a selection of striking black-and-white Seydou Keita photographs from Jean Pigozzi’s personal collection serenely sharing space with manic little groupings of smiling elflike creatures by contemporary pop Tanzanian sculptor George Lilanga.
“Us and Louis Vuitton, we just wanted to do something together to celebrate Africa,” said Hewson, wearing a tribal-printed minidress from Wauchob’s Spring 2011 Edun collection. (Other guests were mostly in Edun or, bien sûr, Louis Vuitton.) “It came out over many discussions about the ad.” Said ad would be the “Core Values” campaign shot by Annie Leibovitz, featuring husband and wife Bono and Hewson in an African savanna. A wall-sized print hung on the store’s second floor.
That’s also where many partygoers retired for a moment of relative quiet. (The space even included a reading corner with little stools and books on artists like the British-Nigerian Yinka Shonibare and the Kenyan-born Wangechi Mutu.) While there, Alexa Chung took a moment to talk about her day, which included attending Chanel, lunch with Isabel Marant, and the Valentino show. She promptly pronounced the latter “the best thing my eyes have ever seen in my whole entire life.” And the good fashion vibrations just kept on coming.
—Meenal Mistry Continue reading
Think Ink
In the world of perfume, the image usually follows the juice. But when the men behind the scent are art directors—specifically, Michaël Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak of world-renowned M/M (Paris)—all bets are off. For their first fragrance, M/Mink, a collaboration with Sweden’s Byredo Parfums, the duo began with a triptych of inky images. But seeing the much-tattooed arms of Byredo maestro Ben Gorham pushed them even farther. “Ben’s tattoos gave us this idea of ink on the skin and what that might smell like. It was a starting point,” Amzalag said. The resulting eau debuted yesterday at Colette.
To celebrate, Byredo, Amazalag, and Augustyniak hosted dinner for 100 at Thoumieux, the legendary Paris cantine M/M recently revamped for new owner Thierry Costes. Among the well-wishers: Erin Wasson, Pat McGrath, Opening Ceremony’s Humberto Leon, Pierre Hardy, and Kanye West, who arrived with an entourage (including is-she-or-isn’t-she-girlfriend Selita Ebanks). West passed up the shows this week; he’s in town, rather, to preview his film Runaway, co-starring Ebanks and the rapper himself. (The 40-minute feature, billed as the longest music video in history, includes songs from West’s upcoming album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.) “This is the mecca of creation, so I had to preview my film in Paris,” said West. But, he added with a wink, he was also in town “just to chill out.”
—Rebecca Voight Continue reading