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Fashion Clicks
In the time between the arrival of the cryptic invitation—promising a fusion of high tech and high fashion—and last night’s party, the cat was not only out of the bag, it had been written about extensively. Yes, Google has gotten into the fashion business with Boutiques.com.
To celebrate, the company’s executives re-created the site in festive, physical form at Skylight Soho in lower Manhattan, with various boutiques set up in thematic vignettes. You could saunter through the beaded curtains of the Boho section to have your palm read, and then pop over to the Romantic area to watch an aerialist in its softly lit, boudoir-ish environs. Taking it all in were the many celebrities (Carey Mulligan, Claire Danes, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen), designers (Rachel Roy, Tory Burch, Catherine Malandrino), and bloggers (Sea of Shoes’ Jane Aldridge, Bryanboy’s Bryan Grey-Yambao, Fashiontoast’s Rumi Neely) that Google has tapped for the project, the idea being that they’ll weave a taste-making network by curating their own boutiques.
“It’s smart on so many levels,” said Roy, who revealed that she does most of her shopping online. “We like seeing what other people are wearing and buying.” Unsurprisingly, Neely and her date for the evening, Grey-Yambao, also proclaimed themselves advocates of clicks over bricks, but couldn’t contain their excitement for the other big event during their New York visit: tonight’s Lanvin and H&M show. “I went to the Lanvin store today to find things to wear, and it’s just so expensive,” said Grey-Yambao. “So for me, it’s a dream that Lanvin would collaborate with H&M.”
Style Bubble’s Susie Lau also came in for the double event. As for her assessment of the site, the blogging veteran mused, “I think this being a Google project, it will evolve. It’s not just one launch and that’s it.” Some in the crowd said that they found the site’s ocean of product a bit overwhelming. To remedy that issue, Judy Aldridge, mom of Jane, had the best bit of advice: “You have to ‘Hate’ a lot to get the stuff you want on there.”
—Meenal Mistry Continue reading
Style Hunter: Denim
—Brittany Adams Continue reading
Punk’s Not Dead
—Marina Larroude Continue reading
Charity Circuit
Not just any organization can shut down Manhattan’s Four Seasons Restaurant for an evening, but the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s Associates Committee, which threw its annual fall fundraiser at the power eatery last night, has more than a few not-just-anyones pulling for it. The dinner drew some of uptown’s swellest—including co-host Ferebee Bishop Taube, despite the fact that she’s expecting her third child on Friday. “I made the decision to come last night,” Taube explained, before adding that she was prepared for an emergency. “My husband’s here. He won’t know what to do, but he’s on hand.”
The Society got some help in its push to raise $2 million for pediatric family housing from Gucci, which sponsored and put racy looks on a bevy of pretty young things. Dree Hemingway, who arrived in a showstopping green python dress, reported she’d just wrapped a movie. “I play this quirky, free-spirited girl named Rhonda,” she said, pulling back a wisp of hair. “I look like a Rhonda, no?” Across the room, Amber Heard was encased in black leather from the waist down. “It’s hot, huh? Or is it just the pants? It’s the pants,” she decided.
Meanwhile, at a studio party in the West Village, Project Paz, in conjunction with Amor Por Juárez, was raising money for community development in Juárez, the Mexican city that has been devastated by drug wars. Supporters—including Thakoon Panichgul and jewelry designer Monique Péan—squeezed in between 32 commissioned works of art for the silent auction and, if Christian Cota is to be believed, a hundred or so girls in his dresses. “We went into the archives, because we needed extra ones,” Cota said, adding: “The thing about Mexican women is that when they wear the dresses, they really wear them. They seduce the men. With all this passion, I’m seeing a lot of dresses maybe not coming back in the best condition.” The Mexican designer seemed happy to contribute a few extra threads to the cause.
—Darrell Hartman Continue reading
Royal Affair
Jake Gyllenhaal makes a hard, fast sell in his role as pharmaceutical sales representative Jamie Reidy alongside Anne Hathaway in their new film, Love and Other Drugs. But Hathaway’s Parkinson’s-afflicted young artist has a transformative effect. It’s not long before Gyllenhaal’s Casanova becomes a one-woman guy. “The fact that he’s kind of unconscious and not very thoughtful at the beginning was very different for me,” the actor said at last night’s Quintessentially- and Valentino-sponsored screening. Explaining his attraction to the role, he invoked some of his character’s questionable charm: “I love the world of pharmaceutical sales and Viagra.”
As Leelee Sobieski, Alexa Chung, Peter Som, and Zac Posen emptied out of the theater, one moviegoer commented, “There was a lot—like, a lot—of nudity and sex in the film.” The love fest continued (in a PG manner despite the Viagra) at the Rouge Tomate after-party, where the stars held court. A group of pretty young things waited patiently at the reserved Gyllenhaal table, but their hopes were dashed; he chatted with Hathaway all night.
Nearby, Valentino offered his thoughts on the real-life love story of Prince William and his fiancée, Kate Middleton. “I’m very happy for them and I would love to do the dress, but I can’t, obviously,” he said. He might not be British, but the designer still had advice for the royal bride. “She has to do something with this long hair, because that is very important. To be a future queen, she can’t keep her hair this long.”
—Kristin Studeman Continue reading
Well Funded
If the ten CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalists weren’t anxious before Diane von Furstenberg took the stage at tonight’s ceremony, they were afterward. The CFDA president announced that she and Vogue‘s Anna Wintour had decided to increase the prizes to $300,000 for the winner and $100,000 each for the two runners-up, up from $200,000 and $50,000, respectively. “The main prize is the mentoring we provide,” she said, “but a little cash never hurts.”
The higher stakes seemed well-suited to the caliber of this year’s nominees. Earlier at cocktail hour, von Furstenberg said, “It was a very hard vote,” and her fellow judge Reed Krakoff agreed: “it’s one of the best crops we’ve ever had. I think anyone can win.” During his lightning-speed keynote speech, Karl Lagerfeld talked about the sketch contest that launched his own career before getting a big laugh for suggesting to 2010’s up-and-comers that “It’s a good thing to have money problems, to struggle, [even if] I’m somebody who’s not very good at it.” His secret: “Young goes. But good? If you’re good, it may all last.”
Then the actress Carey Mulligan joined him on stage to announce the winners: Jewelry designer Eddie Borgo and Nepalese-born ready-to-wear talent Prabal Gurung were named runners-up, and the grand prize went to Billy Reid, a relative veteran. Along with the aforementioned cash, all three will take home a specially commissioned bronze award created by the artist Rachel Feinstein. The results, which leaked on Twitter before being announced inside Skylight Studios, were something of a surprise (many in the audience had pegged Gurung and French-American designer Joseph Altuzarra as the front-runners). But no one was quite as shocked as Reid himself, who had already received recognition of his talents when he was named the CFDA/GQ best new menswear designer earlier this year. “I’m at a loss for words,” the well-liked double winner remarked from the dais. “This is a long way from Amite, Louisiana [his hometown].” Later he said, “I want to find all the nominees and just squeeze and hug them. We were all in this together, and each one of them deserves this.”
Last year’s winner, Sophie Théallet, had a piece of advice for Reid and company: “Keep your head on your shoulders. Before and after, you need to be the best you can be.”
—Nicole Phelps Continue reading
KAWS for a Cause
A handful of New York’s coolest artists were doing something cooler than usual last night—supporting RxArt, a nonprofit devoted to livening up children’s hospitals. It was the kind of evening that had Nate Lowman on DJ duty and KAWS (a.k.a. Brian Donnelly) watching one of his own über-hip art toys spur a heated silent auction.
Will Cotton was keeping a safe distance between himself and the lithograph he’d donated to the cause. “The having-my-own-art-auction thing always makes me nervous,” he confessed. Cotton’s hospital spruce-up is in Memphis; the organization unveiled a cheery Jeff Koons installation in Chicago this summer, and has a Chris Johanson project in the works there that is slated to open in early 2011.
Ryan McGinley was circulating inside the Art Directors Club in a dapper Calvin Klein suit. Aaron Young and Terry Richardson hadn’t made quite the same effort, nor had the evening’s late-arriving host, James Franco—but it’s hard to blame a guy who made the trip all the way down from Yale.
Just last Friday, McGinley hung a dozen photographs from his Olympics series in the children’s psychiatric ward of a Brooklyn hospital. “It’s all people underwater, flying through the air, because I thought that would get the kids most inspired,” he reported. “Hospitals are the scariest and most sterile environments, so if you can have something really beautiful to look at, even if it’s just for a few seconds, I think it’s served its purpose.”
—Darrell Hartman Continue reading
Lose the Dress
Recently, Elettra Wiedemann reached out to a bunch of fellow models and asked each to part with a designer dress. “With Iman, who’s friends with my mother, it was a very formal e-mail,” she told Style.com. (Mom is Isabella Rossellini.) In other cases, her tactics were more direct. “Shalom [Harlow] is my friend,” Wiedemann continued. “So with her, I was like, ‘Give me a dress, girl!’ ” Whatever the approach, Wiedemann (who enlisted her stylist, Nick Steele, in the effort) was very successful, in part because it’s all for a good cause. Her charity, One Frickin Day, is raising money for solar-powered health clinics in Haiti and Rwanda.
The dresses, most of which have been worn just once, are on auction until December 7 at Charitybuzz.com. Friday night, they were on display at Christie’s, where Wiedemann and her fiancé, James Marshall, co-hosted a cocktail party to help get the word out. It didn’t take long for a little black Louis Vuitton number with a rosette shoulder (Natalia Vodianova’s contribution) to catch Lauren Remington Platt‘s eye. “That’s the dress I want to wear when my first husband dies,” she decided.
Over by the bar, Arlenis Sosa was breaking in a form-fitting Hervé Léger cocktail dress for the auction block—and, considerately, ordering sparkling water. (The legendary couture menders and cleaners at Madame Paulette donated their services to get all the frocks in tip-top shape.) Karolina Kurkova‘s contribution was the dress Richard Chai designed for her for the 2009 Costume Institute Gala, when she was five months pregnant—”not because I couldn’t fit into dresses, but because we wanted to make something special,” she clarified. Anja Rubik, meanwhile, had donated a floral-print number by Matthew Williamson she’d worn in the designer’s show. “It was a bit difficult [to part with it],” Rubik admitted. “But if it had been the shoes I wore with it, I would be crying.”
—Darrell Hartman Continue reading
Lose the Dress
Recently, Elettra Wiedemann reached out to a bunch of fellow models and asked each to part with a designer dress. “With Iman, who’s friends with my mother, it was a very formal e-mail,” she told Style.com. (Mom is Isabella Rossellini.) In other cases, her tactics were more direct. “Shalom [Harlow] is my friend,” Wiedemann continued. “So with her, I was like, ‘Give me a dress, girl!’ ” Whatever the approach, Wiedemann (who enlisted her stylist, Nick Steele, in the effort) was very successful, in part because it’s all for a good cause. Her charity, One Frickin Day, is raising money for solar-powered health clinics in Haiti and Rwanda.
The dresses, most of which have been worn just once, are on auction until December 7 at Charitybuzz.com. Friday night, they were on display at Christie’s, where Wiedemann and her fiancé, James Marshall, co-hosted a cocktail party to help get the word out. It didn’t take long for a little black Louis Vuitton number with a rosette shoulder (Natalia Vodianova’s contribution) to catch Lauren Remington Platt‘s eye. “That’s the dress I want to wear when my first husband dies,” she decided.
Over by the bar, Arlenis Sosa was breaking in a form-fitting Hervé Léger cocktail dress for the auction block—and, considerately, ordering sparkling water. (The legendary couture menders and cleaners at Madame Paulette donated their services to get all the frocks in tip-top shape.) Karolina Kurkova‘s contribution was the dress Richard Chai designed for her for the 2009 Costume Institute Gala, when she was five months pregnant—”not because I couldn’t fit into dresses, but because we wanted to make something special,” she clarified. Anja Rubik, meanwhile, had donated a floral-print number by Matthew Williamson she’d worn in the designer’s show. “It was a bit difficult [to part with it],” Rubik admitted. “But if it had been the shoes I wore with it, I would be crying.”
—Darrell Hartman Continue reading
It Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon
You only turn 30 once, so why not take over Indochine and have an A-list designer make you a dress for the occasion? That’s what Julia Restoin-Roitfeld did in New York on Friday night. When you’re fashion royalty, you can pull some strings—like those of Pucci creative director Peter Dundas. “He was the first one I asked, and he said yes right away,” the birthday girl explained, as the initial round of Belvedere shots (it was that kind of party) was poured. “I said, I want red and I want lace, and I want it very short—the rest, do whatever you want.”
Dundas, who reckoned he’d never designed a custom birthday dress before, turned up and stayed a while. “To me, a woman in red is the only woman,” he said, moments before Sophia Hesketh waltzed over and snatched his glasses off his face. The Euro-flavored crowd was feeling mischievous—at one point later in the evening, Joseph Altuzarra lost his shirt.
A cheer went up as the clock struck midnight, and waiters sought takers for chocolate cake. In addition to Restoin-Roitfeld’s brother, Vladimir, and mom Carine and dad Christian, an impressive crowd of well-wishers turned up from various corners of the fashion world—including Caroline Sieber, Helena Christensen, Giovanna Battaglia, and erstwhile Pop editor Dasha Zhukova.
The celebration lasted well into the night, and it isn’t over. “My boyfriend [Robert Konjic] is taking me away on Monday; I don’t even know where,” Restoin-Roitfeld said. Had he been aware of that, jewelry designer Eddie Borgo might have brought her a vacation-worthy bauble: “It said on the invite, no presents!”
—Darrell Hartman Continue reading