Gossip Central

“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.

Isaac Mizrahi at the Café Carlyle: A Gift That Keeps on Giving

Calling his Cafe Carlyle show, “Does This Song Make Me Look Fat?” Isaac Mizrahi signals surreal leaps of fancy from music, to looks, to insecurities. Who could ask for more from an evening? Multitalented, the fashion designer/ entertainer croons cabaret standards backed by a great band, his act sprinkled with self-mocking quips recalling Joan Rivers at her most cheeky! Really, what’s not to love?

Danny Meyer Talks Tipping and the Economics of Shake Shack at Guild Hall

Refusing to call his many restaurants a vast empire, Danny Meyer in conversation with Florence Fabricant last Sunday at Guild Hall, referred to his Union Square Café, Gramercy Tavern, Untitled at the Whitney, The Modern, Blue Smoke and Jazz Standard, Marta, Maialino, and the popular Shake Shacks, to name a few, as his collection. This talk was part of a series called “Stirring the Pot,” featuring famous chefs, in a program curated by The New York Times food writer Florence Fabricant for Guild Hall.

Anderson Cooper’s Anxiety of Influence: Gloria Vanderbilt

Depending on what era formed you, you can relate to a piece of Gloria Vanderbilt. If you are old enough, it’s the “Poor Little Rich Girl” headlines, or maybe it’s her dating Frank Sinatra, or the designer jeans with the swan logo. Women wore her name across their derrieres. She’s lived every era fully, and as her son Anderson Cooper maintains, she’s still looking for the next great love, just around the corner. Anything can happen, of course, but at 92 no one is taking chances: Mother and son have co-authored a book, The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss. Vanderbilt will have a show of her art, paintings, drawings and dream boxes, and Cooper and Vanderbilt star in a documentary by Liz Garbus called Nothing Left Unsaid, which brings her complicated story line into a coherent narrative. To air this weekend on HBO, Nothing Left Unsaid is a portrait of an American original. Introducing at the Time Warner Center, HBO’s Sheila Nevins said, “It’s beautiful. And if I haven’t called all my films beautiful, it’s too bad. This one really is.”

Bettye Lavette: Worthy at the Café Carlyle

Wiry and wise to life’s vicissitudes, soul singer Bettye Lavette took the stool at the Café Carlyle, commanding from that small perch a powerhouse of songs featuring her new album, Worthy. Building up to the title song, Lavette’s set included tunes from Bob Dylan (“Unbelievable”), Mick Jagger and Keith Richards (“Complicated”), John Lennon and Paul McCartney (“Wait”), not one of them a hummable known despite the fame of the songwriters, which made the evening a treat of discovery, providing a glimpse into some soul-searching moments in those artists’ careers. Another tune was inspired by Lucinda Williams: “Don’t Count Me Out Just Yet;” her “Before the Money Came” caused her to admit, “I have the worst time remembering the words because I wrote them.” Bettye Lavette explained her choices: “I recorded these songs because I liked them. They didn’t sell.”

Hamm-Strung at the Gotham Awards

The annual celebration of indie films kicking off the vibrant awards season every year gets more glamorous, honoring the outstanding and risk-taking films that are going to make it to Oscars—like Boyhood and Birdman, as well as those that are just great, likes’Laura Poitra documentary Citizenfour, Ira Sachs’ Love is Strange, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, and other exceptional films that do not fit any Hollywood formula. This week at Cipriani Wall Street, the sponsor Calvin Klein’s Euphoria embellished the stage, the fragrance’s name perhaps a metaphor for the high spirits: Bennett Miller was feted alongside Ted Sarandos and Tilda Swinton, the crowd of film insiders included Rene Russo in a French twist, and Scarlett Johansen in a short, smart do—it was decidedly downtown and chic.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Eyes in Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal’s Leo Bloom in Nightcrawler is as creepy as the movie’s title suggests. A bug-eyed loner who preys on the misfortunes of others, Bloom’s very language appropriates television-speak with information garnered on the Internet to make him reptilian. Negotiating his way through interactions, he acquires a camera and means to follow disasters, and finds a career as a videographer filming beyond the scope of decency: a man with gaping wounds after a car crash, a family shot in their mansion, their plush white carpets soaked in blood. Racing around in a beautifully shot L.A. in a red car, he doesn’t just follow crime scenes, he creates them.

Helena Rubinstein at the Jewish Museum: Mascara for the Masses

In a week when talk focused on the revamping of Renee Zellweger’s face, whether or not the Oscar winning actress went generic with plastic surgery, a voice from history affirmed choice for women of all ages and economics when it comes to feminine enhancement: “Beauty is power,” said Helena Rubinstein at a time when makeup was only associated with showgirls and prostitutes. A canny businesswoman, as a splendid new exhibition at the Jewish Museum establishes, the four foot ten inch Polish-born Rubinstein led the cosmetics field in face creams, and reinvented mascara wands; a rival to Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein surprisingly kept her Jewish name.