19 posts tagged "Catherine Malandrino"
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.
Browne’s Back in the Spotlight
From Michelle Obama wearing his jacquard coat on Monday at the 57th Presidential Inauguration to the debut of his latest menswear collection in Paris last Sunday, Thom Browne’s name is on everyone’s lips. And it looks like we won’t stop talking about him anytime soon. Today, WWD revealed that Browne will be awarded Pratt’s Fashion Visionary Award during a ceremony at the Top of the Standard on April 25. And he’s in good company, considering Narciso Rodriguez, Diane von Furstenberg, and Catherine Malandrino are all former honorees. The event will also serve as a stage for Pratt’s senior fashion students to reveal their collections—who knows, maybe a future MObama favorite will be in the bunch.
Street Lady
Catherine Malandrino’s pretty cocktail dresses and polished separates seem an unlikely backdrop for an installation by street-inspired artist Curtis Kulig, but that’s the just kind of pairing you’ll find at the designer’s Soho store. After a renovation of the boutique, Malandrino gave Kulig free rein to create—in this case, artwork is on a variety of media including Plexiglas and freestanding sculptures, and will debut via a cocktail party tonight.
The French designer first came across Kulig’s work in the office of Paper magazine’s Kim Hastreiter. “She had these skateboards and I just loved this one by Curtis that said ‘Love Me,’ ” the designer tells Style.com. “Then a few months later I happened to meet Curtis at an event through a friend.” The two became friends, and the installation sprung from a few conversations the two had a couple months ago. “I love this idea of the boutique, which started 12 years ago, having different chapters in its life,” she says. As Malandrino’s first retail store, the Soho location holds special meaning. And as for how her ladylike customer might react to Kulig’s bold work, the designer is quick to point out: “My customer is polished and likes refinement, but she’s also very audacious.”
The Love Oui series is on display April 20 to 27 at Catherine Malandrino, 468 Broome St., NYC.
Shining Stars
“At least it’s not snowing this year” was a phrase heard repeatedly at Fashion Group International’s 15th Annual Rising Star Awards luncheon, held today at Cipriani 42nd Street. There were several FGI veterans in attendance, including Catherine Malandrino and past winners Thom Browne, Christopher Coleman, and Monica Rich Kosann (all three were also presenters today), who could remember prior years when the event was held on an especially chilly day. For the Rising Star nominees, however, it was a day full of firsts.
“I have been nominated for a few awards and not ever been in this situation,” Simon Spurr said, sounding quite surprised, as he collected his menswear award from Browne. “Obviously, this one is very special because, well, it’s my first one.” Before Nonoo designer Misha Nonoo picked up her womenswear award (she and Wes Gordon both won in the category in a tie), Nonoo joked, “If I end up having to give a speech, I am not nervous—I just had three bellinis,” she said. “Plus, they e-mailed us last night saying we absolutely had to keep our speeches under one minute.”
She might not have been nervous, but keynote speakers Isabel and Ruben Toledo were feeling the heat before they spoke (maybe that’s because they had more than 60 seconds to talk). “You know, we don’t do this [give speeches] for a living,” Ruben told Style.com as he snagged a bite of cake before heading to the stage. Meanwhile, his wife had lost her appetite for the moment. “I can’t eat now, but when I get back, I hope this steak is still waiting for me.” They had no reason to fret—they had plenty of wise words to offer the group. “When you have no budget, you learn to create out of thin air. Pragmatism becomes your best friend and you learn to do very much with very little,” Isabel said. “Whatever you love about what you do, keep on doing it. Don’t lose sight of that, no matter how hard things get.”
Space Invader
Marie Steiss—née Marie de Villepin—has bona fides any of her fellow Euro socials would kill for. The daughter of the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, Marie modeled for seasons using the name Steiss, gracing runways for DVF, Catherine Malandrino, and Givenchy and eventually becoming the face of Givenchy’s Ange ou Demon fragrance.
Her absence from recent runways can be attributed to other irons in the fire—lots of them. The 24-year-old actress recently donned a spacesuit for the new art-house film Baikonur. In it, de Villepin plays a tourist wealthy enough to spend $20 million for a week in outer space, who then falls from the sky and embarks on an amnesia-induced cross-cultural romance. The part involved weeks of training at Star City outside Moscow and the Cosmodrome centrifuge in Kazakhstan, zero gravity flights, and diving bells—an adventure the actress rapturously describes as “intense”—not to mention packing on an extra few kilos (director’s orders!) for her big love scene.
Back on planet Earth, when she’s not zipping around the globe to events like the Busan film festival in Korea, de Villepin works with her band PinkMist, whose name was lifted from a gruesome military term. Their sound, she says, is “tricky, sort of dense and layered, like some Velvet Underground or the Feelies.” There, too, she is nearing liftoff, with concerts in Paris and London early next year as well as a gig lined up for London fashion week.
But she’s not dropping “Steiss” or exiting modeling just yet. Shoots are in the works with Steve Hiett and David Hamilton, and she’s in negotiations for a major contract. And although for now her whole world boils down to a suitcase and her guitar, increasingly New York looks like home, not least thanks to her brand-new apartment. “I prefer New York to Paris,” she says. “Maybe it’s like Roland Barthes says, travelers who love foreign places more than their home towns prefer the ‘other’ in themselves. For me, New York is about Patti Smith, the Factory, and the Chelsea Hotel. I feel freer living among New York’s ghosts.”