Gossip Central

Remembering Halston in a New Documentary

Fashion designer Halston was a presence in Montauk in the heady 1970’s, renting from Andy Warhol on an oceanfront property east of town. One of the joys of Frederic Tcheng’s documentary Halston, produced by Roland Ballester, is seeing Halston at leisure with family seaside. Like Warhol’s estate, co-owned by filmmaker Paul Morrissey, Halston eventually went corporate, taking his Bergdorf Goodman pedigree to the masses in an ill-advised deal with J.C. Penney. For Halson’s A-list career, this was the beginning of a down journey. Yes, all of that is explained in the film, in the cocaine fueled, wild parties seen in archival footage. Using interviews with Pat Cleveland and Joel Schumacher, Halston’s unique moment in fashion is illuminated. His models, known as the Halstonettes, worshipped him. Looking movie star elegant, hair slicked back, impeccably groomed, he was in his heart, a Midwesterner, and wished most of all to re-establish his American roots.

“Camp” at the Metropolitan Museum: Susan Sontag as Metaphor

The sound of typewriter clicks permeates “Camp: Notes on Fashion” the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute’s extravaganza exhibition, relieved only by a recording of Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow,” from The Wizard of Oz. The MET gala, its yearly benefit this week, may only exist as a distraction from all that the “Camp” show shows, with un-wearable art on celebrities devised to do and outdo the “camp” theme, dressing up itself as camp. But the exhibition, taken from Susan Sontag, the twentieth century diva of cultural dialogues, is a cerebral tour de force.

Woman’s Day Red Dress Awards: Seeing Red on Heart Disease

“I see a sea of red,” became the cliché of the night at Lincoln Center’s Appel Room for the Woman’s Day Red Dress Awards. Indeed, red was encouraged for stars on the red carpet, Angela Bassett, Susan Lucci, and everyone else, and it seemed a giant homage to Valentine’s Day and the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration all wrapped in one. But the unifying image was the heart, meaning heart health for women. Lucci, the queen of soap operas, told a story of being the picture of health and suddenly feeling pressure in her chest in October, averting a heart attack. Bassett, the queenly Ramonda in Black Panther, lost her mother in 2014 to heart disease. She wanted to create awareness for the link between Type 2 Diabetes and heart disease. Each speaker, and including doctors Dr. Sharon Hays and Mary N. Walsh, had a message: these episodes are preventable.

A Jason Wu Fashion Show at the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation Annual Luncheon

As noted in the past: It is a truth widely held, that ladies who lunch are wont to shop. And so a fashion show to benefit the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation has become an annual luncheon event. The options for lavish spending were displayed at Susan Gutfreund’s apartment in May, featuring models wearing Jason Wu’s dresses and gowns currently available on Bergdorf’s third floor. While the designer was not present, his assistant assured everyone he sincerely wished he could be, but was mid-air en route to Asia, launching a new fragrance. We would all get one in a goody bag, along with a cupcake from Magnolia. For guilt free spending, the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation benefits from a portion of the sales. Dr. Samuel Waxman, formidable and inspiring, spoke to the rapt crowd, many women beautifully dressed for the occasion.

Heavenly Bodies: The Metropolitan Museum’s Religious Commitment

To say the latest MET Costume Institute exhibition, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” is up there, as gorgeous, generous, and sumptuous as these yearly shows get, is to flirt with the ethereal. The Catholic imagination, as His Eminence Timothy Michael Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, stated in his remarks at the MET’s Temple of Dendur, where divine cookies and coffee approached the sacrament, is testament to Christ’s art. The church is about truth, good, and beauty in praise of God, he said. One part Vatican, and another Versace, with gem-stones and jewels, capes threaded in gold juxtaposed with modest peplum monk-styled couture and almost no skin-revealing gowns and wedding dresses, the fashion inspired by Catholicism is a revelation.

Meditating with Naomi Watts at Saks Fifth Avenue

Amidst the racks of multi-colored Missonis on Saks 4^th floor, Shiva Rose led a meditation, a prelude to a panel featuring Naomi Watts, cover girl on the winter issue of Purist, the wellness themed brainchild of Cristina Cuomo. Just sitting with eyes closed, to a guided breathing contrasted with the commerce, bright lights and bustle of the store. And the event, to promote Onda, Watts’ all-natural beauty brand with her Australian friend Sarah Bryden-Brown and New Yorker Larissa Thompson, is also an attempt for Saks to offer something more in the shopping experience, in the age of online expedience.

Daniel Day-Lewis’ Kinky Pleasure in Phantom Thread

A dressmaker’s model can be erotic, or comic. Just look at the women who wear the extravagant frocks designed by Reynolds Woodcock as played to austere perfection by Daniel Day-Lewis in Paul Thomas Anderson’s film Phantom Thread. You have Barbara Rose, a wealthy rotund patron with the great Harriet Harris in the role, and you have Alma, a young Vicky Krieps, a waitress Woodcock brings into his life, who seems quite malleable until she learns how to take charge. House of Woodcock runs with efficiency, led by Cyril, Woodcock’s sister. In this role, the elegant Lesley Manville turns icy and knowing commanding seamstresses, fitters, and her brother, while understanding his whimsical needs. Set in London’s couture world of the 1950’s, Phantom Thread starts as a period drama, a love story for a character ruled by aesthetics. This tale—with its domestic detail-- turns kinky and subversive without becoming perverse. Yeow!!!!

“Fly Into the Sun:” Cocktails at the Watermill Center

The grounds at Watermill Center, Robert Wilson’s art retreat on the east end are always difficult to navigate, what with slippery grasses and rock paths. It would have been good to follow Daedalus’ flight, as the evening’s theme suggested, flying high—but not too high-- into the sun. Alas in myth, the sun’s heat melts his wings and he perishes. That’s what happens when you soar too high. Evoking this myth as well as Lou Reed’s lyric, this year’s pre-gala cocktails had hubris galore on the paths through the woods. And there, in the large courtyard, a wall boasts, “SHE OUTWITS HIM/ SHE OUTLIVES HIM.” On its other side, artists, formal in black suits, one from Lithuania, graffiti with spray paint, the art called “Too M@ch Talk.” These days, walls say much.

A Carolina Herrera Fashion Show at the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation Annual Luncheon

As noted in the past: It is a truth widely held, that ladies who lunch are wont to shop. And so a fashion show to benefit the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation has become an annual luncheon event. The options for lavish spending were displayed at Andrea Stark’s penthouse apartment last Wednesday, featuring models wearing Carolina Herrera’s dresses currently available in her Madison Avenue boutique. While the designer was not present, her right hand man Rudy was, with Emily Rubenfeld, president of Carolina Herrera. For guilt free spending, the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation benefits from a portion of the sales. The doctor’s wife Marion was particularly pleased with this effort in helping the foundation grow in its efforts to fund researchers worldwide. And William T. Sullivan, the newly appointed Executive Director, assured everyone, the doctor, a consummate practitioner, was where he’s needed most, working.

Dinner with Georgia O’Keeffe at the Brooklyn Museum and Beyond

Exhibitions featuring the life and art of women abound in New York at this time, a happy coincidence. Especially fine is the Brooklyn Museum’s “Living Modern,” devoted to the oeuvre and style of Georgia O’Keeffe. The artist had her first solo exhibition at the museum in 1927, organized by Alfred Stieglitz and featuring 15 paintings. The current show, consisting of paintings, sculpture, and photographs of O’Keeffe by some of the most well known photographers of the twentieth century, Stieglitz, Richard Avedon, Bruce Weber, Ansel Adams, Cecil Beaton to name a few, also displays her clothing. An excellent seamstress, as the accompanying catalogue makes clear, she made her own dresses, blouses, shirtwaists, and coats, and also collected simple, architecturally structured designs from the Japanese. Her Lee overalls and plaid shirts are fashionable today. Maria Chabot’s photo of the artist has her posed on a dusty road at Ghost Ranch, hair pulled back, in a woven checked shirt and loose jeans. In Andy Warhol’s silkscreen of O’Keeffe from 1980, she looks stern, her face naturally wrinkled as would befit a woman of unselfconscious, ageless beauty, at 92.