Gossip Central

Out to Lunch with Charlize Theron

It is hard to feel sorry for Charlize Theron. The Academy Award winning actress, for the role of Aileen Wuomos in Monster when she famously puffed up and made up to emphasize the serial killer’s tough look, is in fact very pretty, like the most popular girl in your high school. The gorgeous blond of your fantasy who has everything, is exactly the role she plays as Mavis Gary, a writer of young adult fiction loosely based on her memories of teen glory in Mercury, Minnesota in Jason Reitman’s Young Adult, script by Diablo Cody. And yet, her behavior trying to snatch back her happily married boyfriend is so unspeakable, you find her a pitiable, abject, lonely, delusional masochist and alcoholic who self-mutilates pulling out her hair. Ech!

Hamptons Journal: A Day at the Beach Minus the Beach

The Ross School gym was decked out as a lounge with plush sofas as “The Diva of Haiti,” Barbara Guillaume took the stage singing in jazzy Creole. The well-heeled crowd swayed enjoying quail eggs and grilled cheese washed down with fine champagne. Liev Schreiber, Fisher Stevens, and hosts Maria Bello and Mariska Hargitay shook hands and posed for photographs at this elegant fund-raiser brunch hosted by WeAdvance.org, GlobalDirt.org, and Plum Hamptons Magazine. “The Hamptons for Haiti Brunch” was dedicated to filling the enormous gap for medical aid, education, and other humanitarian causes for the people of Haiti. 

L'Amour Fou: The Fashion of Yves St. Laurent and Alexander McQueen

In a new documentary L'Amour Fou about the iconic Yves St. Laurent, it is hard to tell just what is the object of that besotted state: his work, his substantial art collection, his posh homes in Paris, Marrakech and Normandy, opulently decorated with antiques and woven fabrics. From the perspective of Pierre Berge, St. Laurent's lifelong companion, the film is perhaps an expression of the businessman's own mad devotion to the bespectacled designer who defined fashion in the mid century. In his view, YSL was an aloof workaholic, obsessed with sex and drugs, ambivalent to fame, and mainly depressed. Berge's own place in YSL's life comes off as more business than pleasure. This is not the ebullient Valentino and Giancarlo Giametti. 

Fashion Week: Night Out with The Blonds

Fashion shows are theater, and some are more theater than most. No Fashion Week is complete without the runway extravaganza presented by The Blonds. Last night at Milk Studios in the meatpacking, a pair of Chinese dancing dragons opened a show that featured the designers' signature corsets bespangled and beaded, sequined and jeweled, tube dresses, cat suits, cinchers and capelets; a black and white “poncho” would be fabulous on say, Liza Minelli. One model sported a gold pagoda headpiece to match her gold corset, a spectacle that is only matched by the attending audience who seize the occasion for theater of their own. 

Trends included faux fur headpieces complete with animal ears pointing up, and layers of eyelashes-mainly on men, as well as an array of thigh high platform boots. Kenny Kenny was perhaps the most demure I've ever seen him wearing hats piled on one another. “I couldn't get the right height,” he explained of the fedora styles that gave him extra brims as well. Amanda LaPorte is styled as Marilyn Monroe, except the deep dip of “her” red, sheer cocktail sheath revealed several inches of ass cleavage. You could see a lot of “work” was done. 

My favorite outfit was a total python look, boots, pants, corset, worn with great style by Andrea, a stockbroker by day, and a collector of the The Blonds' designs. Each piece is hand crafted, a one of a kind. Where could you wear such an ensemble? By day I wear business suits, she said. I wear this to clubs, to dinner with my husband on the weekends. I was delighted to see The Blonds' art so tastefully put together on a real woman, because it matched my own fashion fantasies. Corey Grant, an interior designer with partner Christopher who has a preppie look except for his necklace, big fans of the Blonds, explained, unlike the shows now in tents at Lincoln Center, “There's not one buyer in the room. This is uptown coming downtown.”  

Other fans included singer Kerri Hilson, Nigel Barker, Miss J, and Jay Manuel, stars of America's Next Top Models, as well as dandy Patrick MacDonald, and Larissa in her very own signature cheekbones. I caught up with Justin James, a long drink of water, elegantly attired in gunmetal silk suit and high heels. He had done the show's wigs, glittery head dresses inspired by Japanese anime. Show over by 8:15, he was outside grabbing a cigarette: “Now I can go home to bed.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

Vidal Sassoon: The Movie on a Bad Hair Night

On a frigid Wednesday last week, an inexplicable friction left my hair standing on end. Good thing I would be meeting Vidal Sassoon tonight, for the premiere of a documentary Vidal Sassoon: The Movie. I could ask this artist whose shapes defined the look of the '60's about the electric gravity defying moment, about the taming of frizz, about my lifelong obsession with hair. 

Directed by Craig Teper, the documentary did not feature curls, alas, except maybe Vogue's Grace Coddington, a radiant redhead whose bob in Sassoon's '60's heyday molded well under his expert heated direction. Rather, it offered glimpses of this American success story: A Jew from England, who never really connected with his father, spent many early years in an orphanage, who sang in synagogue, rose to fame as an artist haircutter, a television personality, and a businessman with a well-known product line. The film limned his fitness regime, work ethic, first marriages, and the tragic overdose of his daughter Catya. Impeccable demeanor intact, he is now happily married to Ronnie, a dark haired woman with bangs, 30 year his junior. 

“We both finally got it right,” Ronnie said of this successful marriage at the party at Michael's where cocktails made with Cointreau and Remy Martin were the drinks of the evening. Marisa Berenson said because she keeps it long, Sassoon never styled her hair, but back in the day, she did wear a lot of wigs inspired by his asymmetrical designs. Stylist Phillip Bloch contemplated his murderous Fashion Week schedule. The film's producer, Michael Gordon, founder of Bumble & Bumble, said he wanted to document Sassoon's remarkable career in a book and movie because hair dressers, often embarrassed to say what they do, get no respect. 

Now 83, Sassoon looks at the exceptional trajectory of his life with pride. He did not tell me much about how to solve my hair issues, but did say that at age 79, when he was approached to make the movie, he demurred, “Don't you think I'm a bit young?”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

At the Brooklyn and Metropolitan Museums/ IFP Gala

When last I ran into her, Diane von Furstenberg was photographing an antique shoe with curlicue heel-I imagine for inspiration-- at the Brooklyn Museum's excellent new “American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection.” Sibling to the Metropolitan's “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity,” viewed this week, the show features masterworks from the Brooklyn Museum costume collection: fashion as fine art in the work of Charles James, Charles Frederick Worth, Madeleine Vionnet, Steven Arpad, and many others. 

The shoe collection is one of the most unusual, with Ferragamos, Delmans and Valentinos. And a display at the Met features a rack of extraordinary lacy footwear. But as anyone-even the likes of Anna Wintour who wore a Proenza Schouler day dress to the press conference, posing for the discerning lens of Bill Cunningham-- will tell you, women do not live by shoes alone.

Wednesday night in the DVF Design Studio in the meatpacking district, Diane von Furstenberg hosted the annual Independent Filmmaker Project gala in honor of daughter Tatiana von Furstenberg and Fransesca Gregorini's movie “Tanner Hall” to open this fall. Sipping champagne and red bull cocktails, New York's downtown film community and well wishers including Blythe Danner, Mamie Gummer, Uma Thurman, Ed Burns, Mira Nair, Alexander Olch, Jean Doumanian, Christine Vachon, Cynthia Rowley, to name a mere few, watched clips of the film. Patricia Clarkson and Amber Tamblyn wore hot pink look alike sheaths and first mocked shock and dismay and then a forgiving embrace. Anthony Bregman came from the Westchester shoot of his new movie “Oranges” starring the winning “Please Give” actors Oliver Platt and Catherine Keener. 

Dressed in hippie chic, DVF huddled in deep talk on a banquette with talented young photographer Francesco Carrozzini whose giant portraits of Keith Richards and Scarlett Johansson with Liev Schreiber hung over the elegant dinner.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Following my Nose to the Brooklyn Ball

The Brooklyn Museum has my number: fashion and food, making their Brooklyn Ball The Party of the Season.

The spectacle starts with an olfactory assault on the 5th floor for cocktails. Pursuing the nose-pinching yet oddly enticing stinky pong, we see yellow waxen masses hanging from the ceiling with heat lamps: an elaborate cheese drip is underway, eight feet above a monumental wooden crate festooned with Carr's crackers. 

Needing a drink immediately, we grab from an assortment of glasses on yet another crate and look for a bar, weirdly absent. Blandly monochrome canvases have spigots with wall text: screwdriver, lemonade, white wine, rum & coke. Filling up with dirty martini (sans olive), we find a side room, a slanted wooden floor with a small island of greens, a landscape out of Waiting for Godot. Plucking a parsnip, we enter another room with water basins and paper toweling to rinse. Chloe Sevigny is among the veggie washers.

This interactive dining experience, a combination of installation and performance art called “Icons,” is the work of Jennifer Rubell.

Descending the stairs to 4, for a preview of the exhibition “American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection,” is the Metropolitan Museum's Harold Koda. This show, presented in partnership with the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute, begins with footwear. A woman after my own heart, Diane von Furstenberg in a gold evening coat takes a shot of a 1939 Steven Arpad shoe, the curlicue carved heel forming a wedge. Zac Posen holds court near a trio of manikins in Schiaparelli and Charles James. He is celebrating his new collaboration with Target. Former hat designer turned photographer Bill Cunningham snaps the fashionable ogling fashion: Norell, Valentino, Balenciaga.

Next, dinner on 3 in the Beaux-Arts court: those massive crates: giant thighs of beef on one, a dozen turkeys, rabbit, whole pigs with tools for hacking off and slicing. Piled high accompaniment: romaine lettuce on one, asparagus, radish and bean combo on another, fava beans. Mario Batalli serves rabbit.

“Which are the best bits,” we ask. “Right here,” he says, pointing out the chest. “This is most crispy.” We fill our plates and join a museum-length communal table, seating for hundreds.

The after party on 1 features a tarot reader, an origami artist, the Bumby's, a masked couple who could tell you about yourself by merely observing, for example accurately saying a particular guest had a strict Catholic upbringing. A trio of drag queens beckons to tell me how to improve my look: six foot tall “Donatella” suggests I wear bigger shoes and dye my hair platinum (like hers?). 

Dessert is in the piñata of Andy Warhol's head, and promptly at 10, the most aggressive swing baseball bats. Out come Ring Dings, Snow Balls, Twinkies in their plastic wraps. Few scramble for these nostalgic sweets, what one curator called “the most vernacular of desserts.”

 

Regina Weinreich
Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura            

Photos Nina Salpeter

 

What I Wore to Love, Loss, and What I Wore

The wit and wisdom of Nora Ephron so deliciously displayed in the movies Julie & Julia, the classics Heartburn, and You've Got Mail, is served up warm and wonderful at the Westside Theater in the play, Love, Loss, and What I Wore. Five characters bond, bicker, and betray in a girl fest that extends to the actors themselves. 

On Thursday, Michele Lee, Debra Monk, Katie Finneran, Tracee Ellis Ross, Casey Wilson, all chicly attired in black, ably juggled the script from an original book by Ilene Beckerman and ushered in a new batch of jokes, jabs, and cartoons of key clothes. 

The play opens with a Proustian conceit minus the madeleine: memories can be triggered-not by the taste of that infamous cookie-but by the outfits one wore: Brownie uniform, tutu, prom dress. The women riff on black, as in, let's admit it, black is the new black. Says one, when I wear something else, I regret it. Or the figure camouflage of the voluminous Eileen Fisher look that fools no one. Even the men in the audience got it. 

And the women: You could see they were having a great time in that intimate theater. Michele Lee said she learned something new: at a critical point, she draws herself in her own outfit. I especially loved the way she got the lapels of her jacket. Pretty good for a non-artist.

At the afterparty at Marseilles, Delia Ephron, Nora's sister and writing partner, noted, each new set of actresses changes the play, adding story lines as when Rosie O'Donnell told, from her mother's life, of having cancer at 39. The role has changed hands a few times, but the story line stayed in. 

A poignant account of childhood pain, shtick on dating, or shopping for the perfect purse, each vignette hits a consummate urban nerve. Of course, I wore black.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

NYWIFT Honors Designing Women

NYWIFT's annual Designing Women event to honoring behind the scenes artists in makeup, hair, and costumes for film and television is traditionally warm, informative, with a lot of laughs. This year, John Turturro, proclaiming himself a woman in film trapped in a man's body, presented an award to his Yale Drama School classmate, Donna Zakowski, Sam Waterston to Marianne Skiba, and Gossip Girl'sBlake Lively amidst a sea of screaming girls gave the plaque to Jennifer Johnson, whose hairstyles-up, down, or with a strand of pearls woven through-- then become a world wide trend. All are extremely talented women who work in this tough business, often having to be on the set at 4 A.M., to make the glamorous look even more so. Donna Zakowska said that for her work on the HBO miniseries John Adams, she had to find the hero in the unattractive, referring to the title role, the complex character played by Paul Giamatti. And, their job does not end with the flourish of a blush brush. So much depends upon person-to-person chemistry, preparing actors psychologically to shine. Sam Waterston quipped, “hair and makeup should be called the mental health department.” Saturday Night Live's Ana Gasteyer hosted the Q&A announcing how hard it was to prepare for this particular evening. As an actress she often takes free-bees and said she was wearing 6-year-old foundation from SNL, and now worried that her face was caking. But not everything was free. She assuring the amused crowd, her blowout cost plenty.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

The Model as Muse at the Metropolitan Museum

Uber-designer Marc Jacobs, in his signature kilt and Doc Martens, took the podium at the Costume Institute’s opening press conference on Monday morning, winging it, as he said he had not prepared a speech to say how thrilled he was to be honorary chairman of the exhibition celebrating the Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion. According to Harold Koda who co-curated the MET’s show and co-wrote the smart companion catalogue along with Kohle Yohannan who also worked on the excellent Valentina show at The Museum of the City of New York, Marc had one criteria: make the exhibition lively. And they did. The first image: Dovima and the elephants, the Dior gown she wore on a mannequin for Avedon’s iconic photo. Moving historically from room to room, with a soundtrack introducing each era: “C’est Ci Bon,” “Talking ‘Bout My Generation,” the show starts with the 1940’s featuring the photography of Irving Penn, Cecil Beaton, Charles James, and their muses including Lisa Fonssagrives, Suzy Parker, Sunny Harnett. And then moving on to “Youthquake,” with Jean Shrimpton, Twiggy, Marisa Berenson, Veruschka and Peggy Moffit. Even the Sports Illustrated covers get a nod, with Christie Brinkley, Cheryl Tiegs--and then Jerry Hall, Patti Hanson, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangilista in a photo by Steven Meisel. Kohle Yohannan said he loves what is happening now as a result of the awareness of these models’ role: women of all shapes, sizes, colors are celebrated on the current reality shows. Harold Koda recounted that on Friday night, when the creators saw the exhibit for the first time, Anna Wintour said of the “grunge” room, it’s not grungy. And so the creative team including John Myrhe and Julien d’Y’s spent the weekend painting the walls’ graffiti-like images. Seated in the front row, she was definitely this show’s muse: Anna Wintour

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura