Gossip Central

Happy Art

How to say this without sounding sappy? In fashion, the trend is away from black, that thinning and existential hue that has dominated the New York hip look for decades. Color works on people for spring, as the style meisters tell us pushing kelly green, canary yellow, and Barbie pink. And so too in museums and galleries where vivid color now holds sway: in “Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today” at MoMA, featuring work by Ellsworth Kelly, John Chamberlain, Jim Dine, Frank Stella, and others, a show  guaranteed to swing your mood upward. Color even works in absentia, as in the Metropolitan Museum's exhilarating Jasper Johns's Grays. But nowhere does it pick up the inner child with Disney-esque cutesy characters, the spirit of round-faced Hello Kitty, the uplift of effective retail therapy-the possibility of unloading a month's wages on a Louis Vuitton wallet, the subversive thrill of adult themes-pastel figures spouting jism from sexual organs, and the sheer pleasure of ecstatic flower-lined environments as in the Murakami retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum. Much has been made of Murakami's reputation as the Japanese Warhol-and, by the way, for a view of this master's commercial portraiture of prominent Jewish art and political figures like Golda Meir and Franz Kafka, Albert Einstein and Sarah Bernhardt, catch the exhibition, “Warhol's Jews: 10 Portraits Reconsidered” at the Jewish Museum. The extensive Takashi Murakami show with his signature DOB's, Super Novas, variations on Chaos, ko2s, and Jellyfish Eyes, finally explained to me those bewildering and kitsch dancing cherries on brown that distinguished the Vuitton luggage and bags in luxury shops and street vendor fakes in 2002, as in “Life is just a bowl of . . . .”

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Fashion Week

Are designers merely modest or timid? After the shows, where a half year's hard work is paraded in front of celebrities, photographers, Bloomingdale's buyers, etc., the custom is to venture out for a nanosecond, air kiss the applauding crowd, and quickly retreat behind a curtain. Betsey Johnson is of course an exception with her signature runway cartwheel, and Maggie Norris simply entertained off site with her model Keira Chaplin (yes that's Charlie's granddaughter) prefiguring the red dress debut inside the tents the next morning featuring surprise model Laura Bush. But what about Joanna Mastroianni, Charlotte Ronson, Lela Rose, Erica Davies of Development, whose exceptional shows were the highlight of my fashion week? How do they remain demure after displaying their gorgeous wares? Memorable were Mastroianni's Morocco inspired lapis/alabaster embroidered silk organza hooded robe, pomegranate strapless dress with fan bodice and asymmetric hemline, and black lacquered silk “croc” used on a number of ultra chic ensembles.
Eschewing that Ozian don't pay attention to the man behind the curtain, you can count on the Blonds, Phillipe and David to take the catwalk. That's because their show defines drama. Fashionistas Patrick McDonald and Kenny Kenny supplied high wattage from the front row, both impeccably accoutred for the occasion, Patrick in what I could describe as embellished fox hound hunter and Kenny in a jacket that looked like vintage Thierry Mugler accessorized with black rabbit ears cocked to the side just so. No, he told me, the jacket came from a former Marc Jacobs designer. The Blond's collection went from black lipsticked monster haired women in leather spiked corsets encrusted with Swarovski crystal to bare gloss lipped fairy goddesses in blond tresses in white silk chiffon with ostrich and pearl detail. “Le Blond Angels” mugged in pink, canary, and turquoise sequined jumpers. But nothing, not even the Barbie corset dress with blue fox Marlene coat could not top the Blonds themselves walking the walk--Phillipe especially styled as Gwen Stefani. Illustrator Robert W. Richards whispered, “It takes a special woman to wear these clothes,” to which I replied with an eye on Patrick and Kenny seated in front of us. “No, it takes a special man.”

Regina Weinreich             

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Kazuko

Perhaps you've walked past the two vitrines at Barney's entranceway: displayed in gossamer clouds of white fabric stones and crystals of all shapes and sizes wound up in gold wire are jewels to be worn or collected. Oftentimes their creator, a Japanese woman in layers of white gossamer, would greet customers and make them her friends. This was no ordinary retail experience in one of the most luxurious and potentially stuck up stores in the world. At yesterday's memorial service for Kazuko, a photographer/ filmmaker/ actor who came to America from a prominent Japanese family on a Fulbright scholarship and who died this past August 27, the actor Matthew Modine attempted to explain that special Kazuko karma, her goal to close the gap that separates people with her art. The crowd attending at Zankel Hall, including filmmaker Paul Morrissey, film documentarian Albert Maysles and his family, listened to a piano performance of selections from Mozart and Schubert by Mitsuko Uchida and eulogies by Maureen Orth, Robert Frank, and Simon Doonan who likened Kazuko's frenetic energy to that of a dragonfly. Having created the veil worn by Madonna in her “Like a Virgin” video, performed in John Guare's “Six Degrees of Separation,” and Frank's “ Candy Mountain,"Kazuko's varied career was shown in photos and clips. Anecdotes about her dancing in the streets, burying her bird in Central Park after a memorial at Petrossian, and her effusive emails emboldening friends to be inquisitive, open, and compassionate added to the portrait of a unique bohemian the likes of which we will not soon see again. Everywhere at the cocktail reception Kazuko crystals could be seen hanging from pins or wire chains.

Regina Weinreich             

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Blogging at the Metropolitan Museum

When the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute announced their new show, “blog.mode: addressing fashion,” my thoughts went to Cher Horowitz in the movie “Clueless,” taking Poloroids of herself in every outfit, to see how she looked. In a ploy that beats asking one's husband, a second opinion from the blogosphere makes sense. On the day the press was invited to view the exhibition, no one could quite explain how all the computers set up for commentary actually worked, but it didn't seem to matter. The fashions, recent acquisitions of haute couture, spoke for themselves. Many genres, eras were represented: Paul Poiret's 1913 “Theatre des Champs-Elysees” time to undergarments of the 19th century to 2002 go go style polka dot boots, a collaboration from the minds of Manolo Blahnik and Damien Hirst. My personal faves came all in one gallery (1921-99): Coco Chanel's embroidered ensemble illustrated an early shift from hand-done needlework to machine work, detected (with, I could only imagine an imperious sniff) by Karl Lagerfeld when he first lifted the garment's hem. A 1947 dress made of a fabric printed in a Dali motif, light blue rayon crepe with pink, black, and gray references Elsa Schiaparelli's collaborations with the famed Surrealist, but Gilbert Adrian gave it a signature twist, inserting an inverse dark profile at the gown's left shoulder. Schiaparelli's multi-colored felted wool coat from her spring 1939 collection, titled “A Modern Comedy” after the 18th century commedia dell'arte, was a gift from the actress Ruth Ford, the sister of poet, painter, “the first American Surrealist,” Charles Henri Ford. Having had a long career in theater and film, originating the role of Estelle in “No Exit,” for example, she still resides at the Dakota. And me, what could I wear? Paul Poiret's 1913 “Theatre des Champs-Elysees” gown with its ivory silk damask, ivory silk tulle, ivory China silk with double bands of lead-crystal rhinestones at the waist and asymmetrical hem. If possible, I'd like to wear it to a ball on the Champs Elysees.

Regina Weinreich                            Graphic Design: SalpeterVentura

Fall Fashions

Never mind that they didn't have runway shows in the 1600's. At the Metropolitan Museum's impressive new exhibition of Dutch paintings, The Age of Rembrandt, fashion trends abound. A1665-67 study of a young woman by Johannes Vermeer, probably a portrait of the painter's daughter, accentuates the latest 17th century trend in plucked eyebrows and forehead. Yikes! Fortunately such fashion risks didn't make it to the recent shows at the Bryant Park tents, although the skeleton-revealing silhouettes of most models would have certainly raised a few eyebrows in Rembrandt's time.

At Joanna Mastroianni's show for spring, a dragonfly motif dominated the embroidered mostly evening dresses and ensembles. Mastroianni, one of the most wearable of designers, claims to have been transfixed by the incidence of one gossamer-winged creature perching itself on her hand while she was working in her New York studio during a torrential rain: “That very moment I was enamored with its mystical and spiritual symbolism.” So much so that the final model carried Mastroianni's dog wearing the motif on an evening capelet. This is a designer who appeals to every age and while I cannot see either Iris Apfel (85) or Zelda Kaplan (91) in any of the mini-dresses, these women were attentive to the work as worn by the girls parading before them with their melancholy pouts. If you really want to see a fashion challenge, however, go immediately to the Jewish Museum. Along with a fine exhibition of 50 paintings and works on paper by the impressionist Camille Pissarro, a new show features Bruce Davidson's photographs of writer Isaac Bashevis Singer and the Lower East Side. A video of a 1972 play starring Singer's infamous character, Mrs. Pupko, sporting her even more outrageous full-length, stringy beard, loops on a monitor. Now that's what I call a transgender look. May it never hit the Fashion Week catwalks.

                                                                                                                    Regina Weinreich

Poiret, the Met, and Me

At what point does an impassioned clothes horse with taste and money cross into haute couture collector? The New York Times Style section reports on a Chilean scion of a banking family who is driving up the prices of “vintage”-- causing some consternation among curators at the Met and Boston Fine Arts where such things are collected-- I wondered why Jorge Yarur could be so inspired by his mother as to create a museum in Santiago that will showcase the likes of Jean Paul Gaultier's conical bra designed for Madonna's “Blind Ambition” tour, Nolan Miller's wardrobe for Joan Collins on “Dynasty,” as well as frocks from the 1930's. I guess to collect and exhibit is not the same as to covet and self-adorn.
         Jorge Yarur has been collecting fashion for his Museo de la Moda for the past decade. He was a player at the May 2005 auction in Paris of the wardrobe of Denise Poiret, the designer Paul Poiret's wife and muse, where the Costume Institute at the Met acquired many of the pieces in the current show of Poiret's work. In fact, the Met show is based on this important sale of Denise Poiret's presumed lost cache of costumes. What makes it art? Craft, construction, cloth, dazzling threads, beads, leather cut to look like lace, all inspire the fantasy of a bygone world, I suppose. At his famous “Thousand and Second Night” party, June 24, 1911, where Denise wore bejeweled pantaloons evoking a harem dancer, he gave perfume flasks to his guests. Talk about swag! The Met's fine catalogue explains Poiret's innovation: he was the first to offer with his dresses, décor, perfume, an entire lifestyle, the first to be inspired by painting as in his Raoul Dufyesque prints. Even before Chanel, he eschewed the bustle, bustier, and tight tailoring for loose, draped shapes, freeing us up for good. He called his 1930 autobiography, King of Fashion. He knew his worth. But, as Harold Koda pointed out, “He had the ideas, but he just didn't have that sense of business to make it last” and so therein lies the poignancy of Poiret's narrative; in a riches to rags romance, he died a pauper in 1944. Still, when I see the gowns, day dresses and coats in Berber patterns, they may be in a museum but in my mind's eye I see them on me.                                                                                                                                                Regina Weinreich

Ageless and Baring Tit

You think colorful to the point of madness, cute to total distraction, flouncy, bare, inappropriate at the suggestion of Betsey Johnson’s clothes. Adolescent fare, nothing more. Think again.

Yesterday’s show of her Fall line had more panache and wearability than much I’ve seen all week from far more conservative designers.

My table mate, the fabulous London Times reporter, Sarah Nir, (we won’t go into the age gap) and I were gasping with desire for the baby doll dresses; at knee length, they can be a grown up look after all, can’t they? Opening with two models in maid outfits reminiscent of Jennifer Aniston’s kinky bedroom getup in the film Friends with Money, the collection was represented by 59 looks paraded through crisp white curtains.

I for one was most pleased to see the return of navy blue, in satin evening looks as well as wool knit dresses and skirts—with wide brim hats, starched blouses and white anklets. Lacy dresses were tiered like wedding cakes. I guess I should have realized the theme for afternoon tea would be formal, lady-like, and oh so British when white gloves accompanied the invite. Seated ringside, New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham garnered a kiss from baby Layla who accompanied Johnson ageless--in blond hair extensions--grandmother down the runway, before she handed her over to mom and took her traditional cartwheel. Joan Jett was there in her signature punk leathers. Was she as entranced as we were?

Is baring tit decadent or defiant? When the first model at Douglas Hannant’s elegant and otherwise uneventful show at Gotham Hall emerged with her top exposed on one side, I thought it was a mistake, then the next model had the same mishap suggesting that playing peek-a-boo was part of the plan. Then it happened again at Jackie Rogers’s show at Scores West, “A Gentleman’s Club,” where you might expect such acts of audacity.

Think twice before you take on this trend. The trick is, you’ve got to be flat-chested and cheeky.

Regina Weinreich

Betsey Johnson, Fashion, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, New York Fashion Week, Fall 2007 Collections, Mao Mag, Fashion Designers

Stilettos and Spandex

More was more at last night’s launch of Mao’s Mag celebrating those who march to a different drummer fashion-wise: The large glossy semi-annual, its cover a signature psychedelic dreamscape by Peter Max gorgeously printed, begs the question: where have all the Originals gone? Brothers Roger and Mauricio Padilha noted a paradox: while we live in an era where individuality is encouraged, everyone looks pretty much the same. Bored of being bombarded by images of gaunt movie stars donning the same designer gowns picked out by stylists, they want to bring attention to those who have created their own style by being brave enough to be themselves. And so their spotlight shined on counter-culture celebrities in the “History of Cool:” Deborah Harry, Brigid Berlin, Michael Musto, Marisa Berenson, Jane Forth, Ann Magnuson, Norma Kamali, Kenneth Jay Lane, Kenny Scharf, Julie Newmar (“who will forever remain the original and best Catwoman to us”), and others, in photo spreads and interviews.

The Broad Street Ballroom was abuzz: dancing in between its early 20th century mosaic columns were a chandelier headed man in baroque, women in outsized wigs in bubble gum pink and tutti frutti, Jayne Mansfield blonds, the usual dandies in tweed waistcoats over leopard ballet flats and small brimmed befeathered fedoras, someone tall in a suit elegantly coiffed with bull horns—these looks suggest that massive amounts of mascara and sequins do not alone make the man. A hybrid gender now marks the official start of fashion week, neither fish nor fowl, even though some were distinctly wearing stuffed birds. Hard to say how “Original” this remix really is, in its borrowing from a vaguely defined past of camp meets colossal, sort of John Waters dressing Divine. Or an evocation of the Metropolitan Museum’s “Glitter and Gloom” exhibit of German portraits of the 1920’s redubbed “Glitter and Glee.” A dapper gent asked me the question of the night, are you Old School? I countered, are you? Oh yes, I’m ‘80’s and ‘90’s, he said. Amazing what is nostalgia for NOW! Meantime projections of the original Originals flickered overhead. Onstage, defying the anorexic aesthetic of runway models, large women in scanty retro bustiers and gartered nylons draped their round rippled rears over a couch. Odalisque, anyone? Proudly they mugged for the crowd who mostly had eyes for one another, snapping shots during sets of naked painted performers in blues and grays with cat’s eyes in the image of Karen Black.

Regina Weinreich

Fashion, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, New York Fashion Week, Fall 2007 Collections, Mao Mag, Fashion Designers