High Times With DVF, Chelsea Clinton, and Ethan Hawke
The Friends of the High Line’s spring benefit drew a colorful mélange of donors and supporters to Hudson River Park’s cavernous—but intimately candlelit—Pier 57 last night.
The evening celebrated the community-fueled organization that has overseen the transformation of an abandoned rail line into an immensely popular elevated urban park. Cofounders Robert Hammond and Joshua David traded hearty hugs and handshakes over gin gimlets and champagne before the crowd was ushered into a dining hall, which boasted garlands of snapshots from the High Line’s history.
As guests nibbled on green-market-fresh fare, presenters Diane von Furstenberg, Amanda Burden, and Chelsea Clinton heaped praise on the 1.4-mile stretch of greenery nestled high above Manhattan’s streets. “Wherever I go in the world, people talk to me about the High Line,” said von Furstenberg, who together with husband Barry Diller—also in attendance—has contributed more than $35 million to Friends of the High Line. “And why did the High Line happen? Because the dreamers wanted it.” One such dreamer is Ethan Hawke—a former Chelsea resident (he recently decamped to Brooklyn) and one of the evening’s honorees. “It’s always fascinating when someone makes something beautiful when they don’t have to,” he said. “They could have easily torn the High Line down, and instead, they made something wonderful for the city.”
Hello, IRO
Those of Lower Manhattan love their leather jackets. And now, thanks to the new IRO boutique, there’s one more place they can find them. The Paris-based streetwear label, which celebrated the launch of its first New York City flagship last night over cocktails, offers, for lack of a better descriptor, a damn near perfect Perfecto. “It was what originally made us famous,” cofounder Arik Bitton told Style.com.
Of course, leather jackets aren’t all IRO offers. Just ask Coco Rocha. “This place has everything a model’s wardrobe should have. If you don’t have it, come here and get it!” gushed the catwalker, who attended the opening with her husband, James Conran. When pressed as to her energy level post-Met Gala, Rocha laughed. “We were debating going to the after-party, but then we were like, No, we’re going home. We made some Bolognese and went to bed.”
With Harley Viera-Newton on the decks, guests such as Eniko Mihalik and Adrian Grenier perused IRO’s his and hers wares and minimalist, well-lit space. Following cocktail hour, the label hosted an intimate dinner at the Crosby Street Hotel’s private dining room—where Viera-Newton and Leigh Lezark played cat’s cradle, Mia Moretti chatted convivially with friends, and the brand’s other cofounder Laurent Bitton (yes, they’re brothers) offered an idyllic New York reprise: “When I’m here, the best thing to do is stay in Soho, go to The Mercer, and have a coffee.”
Rebel Rebel
There were plenty of quasi-rebellious aesthetics at last night’s Met Ball, like bleached, black, and safety-pinned hair (from Anne Hathaway, Karlie Kloss, and Giovanna Battaglia, respectively), torn-fishnet looks (Miley Cyrus and Madonna), and dangerous hardware (Joan Smalls had a razor-blade earring, and ear cuffs and cage rings abounded). But as Anthony Vaccarello put it, “Punk is an attitude,”—that’s to say, starlets can wear all the ripped gowns and goth makeup they’d like, but if they don’t have that hard-edged “who cares” demeanor, they’re just another chick in a punk costume. While on the red carpet, we gave the Met Ball’s sartorial stars a chance to earn some cred and asked them about their most rebellious moments. Here’s what they said:
Greta Gerwig: “Last year at the Met Ball, I fell down an entire flight of stairs. I won’t do it this year. I’m trying to not drink as much. There’s something about well-behaved starlets that makes me just want to burn something.”
Kate Upton: “I don’t really know that I went through a rebellious phase. Maybe it was starting as a swimsuit model and going into high fashion.”
Joseph Altuzarra: “I used to wear one long, dangly earring. It was very ‘gay pirate.’”
Allison Williams: “When glitter was really big, I wasn’t allowed to wear it. But I’d steal it, put it in my backpack, and put it on, on the bus. Once, my mom surprised me at school and found me covered in glitter and was very angry. I also lied that my grandmother was dead once. She wasn’t. That was pretty rebellious.”
Jimmy Fallon: “I taped posters on my ceiling when my parents really didn’t want me to do that.”
Anja Rubik: “The most rebellious thing I’ve ever done is I snuck backstage [at a] Marilyn Manson [concert] many, many years ago. I was a huge fan of his. It was cool.”
Anthony Vaccarello: “The most rebellious thing I’ve ever done? That dress for last year’s Met Ball.”
Tom Ford: “I don’t drink anymore. I can’t tell you.”
Matthew James Thomas: “I did graffiti, lots of graffiti, when I was a kid. I had my own tag word that I used to use. I can’t tell you [what it is]. I’ll have the police knocking on my door.”
Jason Wu: “I dyed my hair every color when I was young.”
Mindy Kaling: “I’m a friendly person. The most punk thing about me is that I’m friendly, so I’m like, Oh, I guess that’s a subversion.”
Travel Tales From the Style Set
Summer is around the corner, which means vacation time is nigh. And those in the market for an extravagant jaunt might want to pick up the latest addition to Assouline’s Hotel Stories series. Written by Francisca Matteoli, the limited-edition tome details Luxury Collection escapes in far-off places such as Santorini, Sevilla, and Venice, and offers personal travel tips from the such stars as Susan Sarandon, Coco Rocha, Emily Mortimer, Stanley Tucci, and more. “We didn’t want to do a banal, boring book about hotels and where to go. You can find that information on Google. We wanted to make people dream,” offered Martine Assouline during a dinner she and her husband, Prosper, hosted at Geoffrey Zakarian’s Lambs Club restaurant at the Chatwal Hotel last night. The occasion, of course, was the release of the book, and the likes of Dree Hemingway, Helena Christensen, and Catherine Malandrino (who, speaking of travel, is just back from a trip to Beijing) all came out to toast it.Waris Ahluwalia, who contributed a section about India to Hotel Stories, conceded that he never boards a plane without a portable leather backgammon set. “I bring it because the places I go don’t always have power,” he explained. Case in point? His latest adventure—a trip to Kalahari, Africa. “There’s only one way to describe it,” he said before pulling up a BlackBerry snap of him sitting on the ground next to a wild zebra.
Meanwhile, Hemingway, whose favorite destination is Tulum, Mexico, admitted that she always travels with her stuffed rabbit in tow, and Mrs. Assouline explained her habit of wearing giant sunglasses on transatlantic flights. “I hide behind them on the plane so I arrive fresh. They’re good in all circumstances.” Zakarian divulged his own jet-setting must-haves: Ambien, multiple phone chargers, and his wife’s Tata Harper face cream. “If you have cream and phone chargers, what could possibly happen to you?”
The Luxury Collection Hotel Stories is available now at www.assouline.com.
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Fact: Kids tend to be embarrassed by their parents. However, when your mother is a supermodel, it changes things a bit. Or, at least, that seems to be the case with Georgia May Jagger and Jerry Hall, who hosted a tea party at the Sunglass Hut’s Fifth Avenue flagship yesterday in celebration of their new Mother’s Day-themed campaign. “She’s my style hero,” said Jagger of her glamazon mom. “My sister has great style too—all the women in my family do, actually.” It’s no surprise, then, that the leggy blonde twosome mirrored each other—with Hall sporting a leopard-print dress and Jagger in leopard-print platforms. As for raiding her daughter’s closet? “I certainly do for sunglasses,” Hall admitted. In fact, a sunnies-fueled spat unfolded before our very eyes. When Hall couldn’t find her favorite black cat-eye shades, she realized that her daughter had been holding them. “Those ones are mine!” Hall said, smiling. “Oh, we’re just fighting over sunglasses.”