14 posts tagged "Andre Saraiva"
Le-Tan’s Library
“I like being obsessed,” said Olympia Le-Tan on Thursday night as she welcomed visitors to the special project she had created for Pitti in Florence. And with an opening line like that, it was almost impossible to resist the web that Le-Tan had woven in the Museo Bellini, yet another of the jaw-droppingly beautiful Renaissance venues that seem to be ten-a-penny in Florence. When the Pitti organizers invited her to participate in this year’s event, it took Le-Tan mere minutes to decide that she would celebrate her favorite Italian films and books and, by extension, their directors and authors in the idiosyncratic medium that she has made her own—immaculately embroidered “books” that are actually handbags. The museum was draped in red silk curtains with the OLT logo, pink roses trailed over banisters, candles flared in the dusty air…atmosphere for days. Every shadowy room had vitrines displaying Le-Tan’s chosen 36 titles, precisely duplicated in thread as they would have appeared on the original book cover or movie poster. They covered a very comfortable waterfront from Visconti, Fellini, and Antonioni (her favorite of favorites) to Moravia, Machiavelli, and Pirandello.
But Le-Tan’s stroke of genius—as far as the Pitti exhibition went—was to persuade a game handful of friends to be photographed by Max Farago as a character from each of the 36. Olympia herself was the apogee of lush sensuality, posed as Silvana Mangano from a 1949 movie called Riso Amaro. Jennifer Eymere, editor of Jalouse magazine, made a very convincing Giulietta Masina from Fellini’s La Strada. Nightclub impresario André Saraiva was a plausibly penitent Jean-Louis Trintignant from The Conformist. As for Victoire de Castellane as Anita Ekberg in full clerical garb from La Dolce Vita? The success of that image was in inverse proportion to its unlikeliness. Poles apart were Hamish Bowles as Martin von Essenbeck, the cross-dressing Nazi from Visconti’s La Caduta Degli Dei (more familiar to English-speaking aficionados of early-seventies cinematic decadence as The Damned) and the ubiquitous Olivier Zahm, posed stark raving naked as a misbegotten extra from Pasolini’s terrifyingly transgressive Salò.
Later that same night, a handful of Le-Tan’s cast of characters regrouped on the Borgo San Jacopo to reflect on their re-conceptualisation of Italian culture. Most of them were French. You can imagine what they talked about.
The Doctor (And Her Bags) Are In
For her latest collection, Olympia Le-Tan checked herself into Paris’ Museum of the History of Medicine, a nineteenth-century gem tucked upstairs at the Descartes Medical School in Saint-Germain, the site of her presentation Thursday night. It was a telling venue. “People around me were taking strange medications and I sensed a disease vibe in the air,” Le-Tan said. So she and her team set to work assembling first-aid-kit carrying cases, and copying classic-edition covers of psychology tomes and the great novels of madness, drugs, and disease, including Wuthering Heights, Mrs. Dalloway, Valley of the Dolls, and Erich Segal’s tearjerker, Love Story. She called the collection Still Ill, after a song by her beloved Smiths. But if she lamented the persistence of sickness, she offered a few palliatives, too. There were pillbox clutches of “Brozac” (“Which will help your friends put up with you,” she wrote in a collection statement) and “Wiagra” (you can imagine), as well as for Olympia-brand petroleum jelly. And she couldn’t resist styling a few syringe hair clips and nurse uniforms her first foray into clothing. (Her sister, Cleo Le-Tan, modeled one.) These were tucked in between the antique scalpels and other strange tools of medicine’s past in the museum’s display cases as André Saraiva, Olivier Zahm, Garance Doré, and Catherine Baba nibbled Red Cross cupcakes and took each other’s temperatures.
Vive Monsieur André
French nightlife impresario André Saraiva has his hands full these days. Last month, he made his directorial debut in Paris with his short film The Shoe, starring girlfriend Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Leo Fitzpatrick, Poppy Delevingne, and Josephine de la Baume. Last week, as he celebrated the launch of his collaboration with Saint James, the heritage brand that has made its name with the Breton striped shirt) at Le Bain, he opened up on another project he’s digging into. (Aside from the big one, of course: the eagerly anticipated New York location of Le Baron, which he confirmed will open in Chinatown during New York fashion week in September.)
“I’m filming another movie with a good friend in just a few days,” Saraiva, who will direct the film, told Style.com. “It’s called A Frenchman in New York and it’s kind of my tribute to the city—I love New York.” (His favorite hangout in the city: his Chinatown apartment, of course.)
The friend, he revealed, is French actor Melvil Poupaud, and the duo will be shooting around the city at various locations, including the famous Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal. As for the supporting cast members, he would not share the details just yet, but it’s likely we will see a few of his Shoe stars make an appearance in this film as well. “It makes sense; I like to work with my friends,” he added, smiling.
London Parties For Fashion Week, With Dinner, Drinks, And A Few Well-Placed Torsos
You don’t get to much shopping in the course of a busy day of London fashion-week shows. But last night, two of the city’s marquee boutiques found another way to welcome fashion weekers to town: Over in Chelsea, Joseph was hosting dinner at the store’s Joe’s Café, and back in the center of town, Browns had set up shop in the Royal Academy vaults to celebrate the store’s launch of Club Monaco in the U.K.
First, dinner. Joseph served up a nicely British repast of beet carpaccio and sea bream, one partaken of by Charles Anastase, Pat McGrath, Tamara Mellon, and Katie Hillier, as well as acclaimed chef and British-cuisine cheerleader Mark Hix. Meanwhile, over at Browns, where the likes of Tracey Emin and Sophia Hesketh could be found, Hix’s team of mixologists from his pop-up Speak Easy were treating guests to high-class cocktails, including a dangerous dark-cherry-flavored concoction. The spirit at Browns was a bit more Frenchified: The party’s host was Lou Doillon (left), and Le Baron’s André Saraiva had hopped the Channel to deejay. Or perhaps the mood was more transcontinental, what with Club Monaco being an American-owned brand, and the after-party going down at London’s recently opened outpost of the Box. Welcome to the global village.
Best to down another cherry cocktail, stop thinking about geography, and start looking at the art decorating the scene. The Royal Academy vaults had never before been opened to a private event, and the sculpture-strewn space may have been the real star of last night’s party. Vaguely creepy and seriously cool was the general verdict, and designer Saloni Lodha, who had presented her collection the previous day, was already making plans to relocate her show to the Royal Academy next season. “You think they’d let me do it?” she mused, staring up at a bank of muscular stone torsos hanging off one wall. “I mean, I don’t even know how Browns managed to pull this off. I didn’t even know this was down here!” As Doillon might have noted, après moi, le deluge.
True Love, Now In 20/20
It wasn’t, perhaps, the likeliest coupling in the world, but artist/DJ/Le Baron impresario André Saraiva and model/Ronsonite Annabelle Dexter-Jones have emerged as one of the fashion world’s cuter couples after appearing on the scene together late last year. Multi-hyphenates as they both are, no surprise to hear they’ve extended themselves to yet another project: eyeglass designers. The duo has collaborated with Jus Ske and Daniel Silberman’s Illesteva line on a limited-edition pair of specs hitting Colette and Opening Ceremony just in time for Valentine’s Day. The two-tone acetate frames are made in France, limited to 80 pieces, and inscribed on the arms with André’s signature Mr. A and, in the man’s own handwriting, André + Annabelle = ♥.