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subscribe to style file blog via RSSSpring Rolls With Warhol, And More From Indochine
October 29, 2009 1:40 pm
The first time Jean-Marc Houmard waited on Andy Warhol at Indochine, he accidentally brushed his hand while serving a pot of tea. This anecdote, one of many included in the new book Indochine: Stories, Shaken and Stirred (Rizzoli), edited by Houmard and Maer Roshan, sums up the place’s enduring appeal: glamorous enough that the famous go there to rub shoulders, mellow enough that they do so over tea. (And spring rolls, usually.)
Houmard co-owns the restaurant now, and has kept it as congenial to boldfaced names and bohemians as it’s always been. There’s certainly a healthy mix of them among the book’s contributors, from Salman Rushdie and Susanne Bartsch, who contributed reminiscences to the oral history, to artists Kenny Scharf, Ruben Toledo, and Ross Bleckner, who chipped in new work inspired by the restaurant. Indochine comes out next month; tonight, it will be fêted at Bergdorf Goodman at an event co-hosted by Linda Fargo, Richard Johnson, Narciso Rodriguez, and Veronica Webb. Here, Houmard talks to Style.com about Indochine’s quarter-century as a hot joint in town.
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tags: Andy Warhol, Bergdorf Goodman, Linda Fargo, Narciso Rodriguez, Richard Johnson, Salman Rushdie, Suzanne Bartsch, Veronica Webb
Ruffian Gets Guy-Friendly
October 28, 2009 12:43 pm
Ruffian’s Brian Wolk and Claude Morais have been busy lately—designing both their ready-to-wear collection and Mise en Scene, their secondary fashion and housewares line for Anthropologie—but the duo is adding yet another line to their mix: this one for the boys. “All our friends who are boys had been asking for it, and all our women who are clients are always asking for their husbands,” Wolk says. Well, guys, ask and you shall receive. When Macy’s came knocking with a proposal, Wolk and Morais jumped at the chance. Threads & Heirs, their first men’s line since their small collection of ties in the early aughts, will hit Macy’s locations nationwide for Spring 2010. We rang Wolk and Morais at their studio to chat about the looks, the influences, and their belief that the department store’s founder, R.H. Macy, was a tattooed hipster.
Tell us a little bit about your entry into menswear.
When we first started, we started with men’s, which not too many people know. We did ties using only women’s couture textiles and sold them to Barneys. It’s kind of funny how we came full circle and are doing men’s again. We’re really excited.
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tags: Ruffian
Devi Kroell’s Madison Avenue Dream Comes True
October 28, 2009 11:40 am
Devi Kroell made her first metallic python hobo bag five years ago. It wound up on the arm of Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Simpson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and just about every fashion editor in town, and Kroell hasn’t looked back since. The Austrian-born, New York-based designer introduced footwear, including a very early take on the now omnipresent over-the-knee boot, in 2006, and her Swarovski Award for Accessories Design came that same year. A ready-to-wear collection followed in 2008. Today, Kroell is still in her early thirties and opening a 3,000-square-foot, two-floor boutique in a landmark building at 717 Madison Avenue designed by Space 4 Architecture, the same firm that worked on the Jil Sander store on Crosby Street. Jewelry and sunglasses are in the works; beauty and fragrance may not be far behind. We sat down with Kroell in her new boutique to discuss the virtues of Las Vegas, working with men, and the power of python.
How does it feel to be celebrating your fifth year as a brand?
Opening this store is exactly what I wanted; it’s a dream come true. And having made it this far in times like this is a big feat, I think. So I’m very proud of that.
It must be a difficult time to be opening a store. How are you responding to the challenges of the new economy?
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tags: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Devi Kroell, Jessica Simpson, Jimmy Choo, Lindsay Lohan
Blasblog: The Story of Mrs. O
October 26, 2009 9:26 am
Even before Michelle Obama moved into the White House, publishers were scrambling to meet with the public’s demand for books on the new First Family. But while some of those books now seem slapdash or rushed, next month will see the release of Mrs. O, a colorful hardback written by blogger Mary Tomer, dedicated to Mrs. Obama’s style from her early days as a student to her role as the first African-American First Lady in the nation’s history. Tomer explains her project as a labor of love, one that began when she first clocked Mrs. Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, joining the president on stage after the speech that vaulted him into the collective consciousness.
When the couple began to campaign, Tomer became so enamored with Mrs. Obama’s wardrobe that she started a Web site called Mrs-O.org, chronicling everything from the Donna Ricco dress she wore on The View to the Thakoon and J.Crew pieces we’re now so familiar with. Mrs-O.org laid the groundwork for Tomer’s book, which boasts not only the back story behind many of her famous appearances, but also interviews with some of the designers and fashion personalities that have become synonymous with the First Lady’s style, including André Leon Talley, Isabel Toledo, Jason Wu, and Michael Kors. Here, we talk to Tomer about whether Mrs. O is like Jackie O, what she’d do if she ever met the First Lady, and just how she scored all those interviews.
Is there a power to Mrs. Obama’s wardrobe that might not have been recognized in a First Lady of years past?
Dress is a means of visual communication, and I think it’s a language that Mrs. Obama speaks well. When the First Lady of the United States wears a dress from Target or cardigan from J.Crew, real women from around the country relate to her. When she wears ensembles from Rodarte or Thakoon on an international stage, she elevates the perception of American culture and sophistication. Certain looks can even convey different moods. When Mrs. Obama chose the lemongrass Isabel Toledo dress and coat worn for the inauguration, she projected a definite sense of optimism to the American people. Certainly, style has become a powerful, positive part of Michelle Obama’s image. I think it’s an asset that shouldn’t be overlooked or undervalued.
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tags: Mary Tomer, Michelle Obama, Mrs. O
Rags Time: Marc Levin On HBO Doc Schmatta
October 19, 2009 3:41 pm
Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags, Marc Levin’s history of the Garment District, airs tonight on HBO. After tracing the origins of the New York City rag trade back to immigrant-staffed sweatshops like the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, Levin proceeds to track the rise of the Garment District—those mid-century decades when approximately 95 percent of the clothing sold in the United States was made domestically, making it the number one employer in New York City. Times, needless to say, have changed. Today, close to 95 percent of the clothing sold in the United States is made abroad, making the Garment District so much a shadow of its former self that a fight to save it from extinction is currently being waged. Schmatta tracks that devolution, as well. In so doing, the film raises important questions about how the fashion industry infrastructure we currently take for granted will be forced to adapt in the post-recession, post-Inconvenient Truth era. Here, Levin talks to Style.com about fashion as microcosm, his own rag trade genealogy, and the fact that he’s not trying to be Michael Moore.
You’ve got a lengthy filmmaking résumé, and nothing on it indicates an interest in fashion. What made you want to tell this story?
It was a curveball, actually. I went to Sheila Nevins at HBO with an idea for a documentary about hedge funds, and while we were sitting there, brainstorming, she brought up the fact that her blouse was made in China, her pants in Bangladesh, and so on. She thought there was a story there, and she suggested I go check out the Garment Center. I said, “You want me to do something on the schmatta business?” And she said, “Schmatta. Great title.” That’s how things get done, sometimes. Read the rest of this entry >
tags: Anna Sui, HBO, Marc Levin, Schmatta: Rags To Riches To Rags
Talking Bourdin and Film With Shelly Verthime
October 12, 2009 6:10 pm
Legendary Paris department store Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche is currently playing host to Guy Bourdin, Ses Films, an installation of 15 clips from films Bourdin shot from the 1960’s through the 1980’s. According to Shelly Verthime, who curated the show with Bourdin’s son Samuel, the films operate as both a time capsule and a window onto Bourdin’s creative process. “Making these films, I believe, was part of his obsessive search for the perfect image,” Verthime explains. “You see him experimenting with different angles, different lighting. What we see in those famous photos is the end result of this process, involving so many tiny adjustments.”
Verthime worked with Le Bon Marché to make sure that visitors to Ses Films felt that they were entering Bourdin’s world. The exhibition, which runs through October 29, is housed in a discrete area within the store. Visitors pass through a series of immersive spaces, catching glimpses of video on mirrors, or finding their own shadows reflected on the screen. That experience will surely whet fans’ appetite for the upcoming documentary on Bourdin that Verthime is working with the photographer’s estate to produce. The release date on that film is undecided, but in the meantime, Verthime tells Style.com about entering the mind of fashion’s surrealist master.
One of the things you always hear about Guy Bourdin is that his work is “cinematic.” Even when he was shooting an ad campaign, like Charles Jourdan, his photos seemed like stills from a strange movie. There is an implied narrative that you can’t quite figure out. It’s interesting to discover that Bourdin actually shot film as well, but, interestingly, he didn’t seem to use that medium for telling a story.
No, not at all. He wasn’t a “filmmaker,” per se. There’s no artistic ambition. What he liked to do was use the film as a kind of visual notebook. We have two kinds of video in the show: footage he shot on the set, and footage he shot on his journeys, in Martinique, going from London to Brighton, and so on. On the set, you see him taking stills, adjusting the backdrops, working with the models. It’s very intimate. The traveling footage is closer in spirit to what he would do with Polaroids. You see croppings of landscapes, people shot from the legs down. All these angles and compositions he used later.
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tags: Guy Bourdin, Shelly Verthime
Blasblog: Rufus Wainwright May Let Karl Lagerfeld Make Him Over
October 3, 2009 8:08 pm
I’ve seen Rufus Wainwright perform in all sorts of places: the great outdoors over a year ago at the Last Song of Summer fundraiser for Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, and then an elementary-school gymnasium a couple months back for the same benefit. There was the rousing revival of Judy Garland hits at Carnegie Hall, and then a gay piano bar on the L.E.S. In each one, the singer-songwriter and, as of this summer, opera composer, was the same: engaging, funny, and truly terrific. Tomorrow night, Wainwright returns to Carnegie Hall with a group of musicians including sister Martha Wainwright, Courtney Love, and Scarlett Johansson for a Gavin Friday and Friends concert to benefit (RED). On his playlist will be many of the songs from Milwaukee at Last!!!, his recording of a live performance in the Midwestern town, released last month. I sat down with Wainwright to talk about that concert, the Albert Maysles documentary that coincides with it, and, of course, his relationship with fashion.
On October 4, you’re back at Carnegie Hall. I saw you in your Judy Garland tribute there a few years ago. Do you particularly like that venue? Or do you just like Judy?
No, no. I am so proud to have called Carnegie Hall my New York home for many years now, whether it’s my Judy tribute, the Christmas shows, assorted benefits, and so forth. It’s a dream to many to play the venue. And before anyone asks me, I do know the way to get to Carnegie Hall: “Practice! Practice! Practice!”
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tags: Albert Maysles, Karl Lagerfeld, Martha Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright, Scarlett Johansson, Viktor & Rolf
Sitting Down With Gareth Pugh
September 30, 2009 4:09 pm
Before Gareth Pugh was Gareth Pugh, he was faced with a choice: to study sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art or enter the legendary fashion program at Central Saint Martins. As you know, Pugh chose fashion. But in the years since, the designer has made a routine of conflating art and fashion, to his own surreally idiosyncratic ends. Treating the catwalk as gallery space, he’s shown collections intended only to be seen, never sold. Experimenting with material and volume, Pugh crafted a catsuit out of balloons, plaster of Paris, and Saran Wrap, and wired a giant coat with tiny lights. He set up his first studio in the squat occupied by the members of the club-kid artists’ co-op !WOWOW!, and embarked on an ongoing collaboration with the filmmaker Ruth Hogben. Their latest video project, an installation of four films based on the elements fire, water, earth, and air, debuted last month at MAC & Milk during New York fashion week. The short provided what Pugh describes as a preview to the Spring 2010 collection he showed earlier today in Paris. Here, Pugh talks to Style.com about stealth bombers, brand strategy, and why the fast-fashion-eers should keep calling.
You’ve been cast as a fashion wunderkind pretty much from the day you presented your degree collection at Central Saint Martins. But were you actually a fashion prodigy?
I came to fashion through an interest in theater, actually. Where I’m from, Sunderland, there’s just not a consciousness about fashion. But I’d come down to London with my mother when I was about 10 to see The Phantom of the Opera. There was something about that experience, not just the play but also walking out of the theater and through these dark streets in Soho, that captured my imagination. So when I was 14, I applied for and was accepted into the National Youth Theatre’s summer program. I worked in their costume department for three years. But prior to that—yes, in fact, I did a fair amount of fiddling on the sewing machine.
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Victoria Bartlett Will Get Unhinged in Milan
September 24, 2009 4:45 pm
At the VPL show almost two weeks ago, many of the models came down the runway with abstract, hand-crocheted accessories by the young designer Aran Baik. Based on anatomical drawings, the accessories served to outline and extend the skeletal lines of the models’ bodies—ribcage, hip bone, shoulder blade. The pieces spoke to the collection’s theme, Atlas of Anatomy, but they also worked as an elegant summary of the obsessions VPL designer Victoria Bartlett has nurtured since she launched in 2003. Bartlett’s fascination with the body is frank. Her collections have often seemed like the product of a dialogue between a choreographer and an X-ray technician. Bartlett has opened that conversation up to a variety of collaborators. Baik was one of several designers who participated in VPL’s recent Spring show. And over the years, she has worked closely with many artists, most of whom delivered work to VPL UNHINGED, a retrospective opening on September 27 at the Dopolavaro Gallery in Milan. The show will feature new work from some—including Mark Borthwick, Jack Pierson, and Jessica Metrani—while others, like Steven Klein and Collier Schorr, are contributing iconic pieces from their archives. Here, Bartlett talks to Style.com about tap-dancing twins, time capsules, and exposing what lies beneath.
VPL UNHINGED opens toward the end of fashion week in Milan. Was that timing coincidental, or did the gallery intend for the show to find a place on the calendar?
Actually, they invited me to do an exhibition in June, around the time of the men’s collections in Milan. But I was just too busy, so we pushed it back. The intention was never to be part of fashion week, but more like something at the edges of it. We also felt like the show couldn’t just be about clothes. This is more like a dialogue with VPL, in different mediums—photography, painting, etching, sculpture, film. We’re going to have a performance, too, the night of the opening. Everyone in the group will be wearing one-of-a-kind showpieces.
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tags: Aran Baik, Collier Schorr, Jack Pierson, Jessica Metrani, Judith Eisler, Mark Borthwick, Steven Klein, Victoria Bartlett, VPL
Lori Goldstein Won’t Be A Train Wreck For Your Viewing Pleasure
September 23, 2009 5:09 pm
Lori Goldstein is the ultimate fashion insider. It’s not just that she’s outfitted Madonna or been the fashion whisperer to Donatella Versace or created to-die-for iconic images with Steven Meisel and Annie Leibovitz in the course of her career. (Though we still swoon over the Versace campaign from 2000 that Jay Jopling deemed gallery-worthy for White Cube.) It’s that in today’s full-exposure world, Goldstein plies her trade in an Oz-like, behind-the-scenes manner, backstage at Vera Wang or Carolina Herrera. That’s why I did a double take reading about her QVC line LOGO, a project started last season and now in very full swing. But if you ask Goldstein, LOGO isn’t about making her name but rather sharing the vast body of knowledge she’s amassed over the years. Trust us, it’s positively oceanic. Her collection, shown on the runway at Bryant Park on September 12, sold out in a mere 20 minutes, but Goldstein will be on QVC tonight at 8 p.m. Here, she talks to Style.com about reality shows, Jackie Susann, and fashion’s new frontier.
How would you describe the ethos of LOGO? It sounds like there are a lot of things with styling leeway, the jewelry and the detachable floral pins.
It’s really about having fun with clothes. We have to get dressed every day. It’s really not about price point. It really never has been for me. I happen to be obsessed with beautiful, expensive things. That’s always been my thing. Our aesthetic was never really available. So I just wanted to do that. It’s really how you put clothes together. It’s giving yourself freedom and permission to do different things, like mix print and color. And then the whole pin thing and the whole detachable thing, I love that whole two-fer idea.
tags: Jackie Susann, Lori Goldstein, Madonna, QVC, Steven Meisel, Versace
