23 posts tagged "Chrissie Miller"
Getting Into “Club Chrissie”
In every group of friends, there’s the individual whose home becomes the go-to crash pad. For a certain subset of New Yorkers, that spot has long been Chrissie Miller’s apartment, a.k.a. “Club Chrissie,” which is also the name of Miller’s new Web series, a talk show that is “part Wayne’s World, part Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” she told Style.com. “Cory Kennedy came up with the name ‘Club Chrissie,’ and it’s been one of those things I can’t get away from,” she explained. “I didn’t even want it to be called that, but it has just stuck. I’m like, that’s so embarrassing. Can’t it be something chic?”
Each seven-minute-long episode features a special guest who stops by to hang out with Miller (and her curious cast of puppets including Pidgey the Pigeon and Cory the Fish) and try a different craft or DIY project—”kind of like a downtown Martha Stewart,” she said. For example, Miller brought Pamela Love on to make jewelry together and Reece Hudson designer Reece Solomon to create a handbag. Other visitors dabbling in all forms of studding, tie-dyeing, and embroidering include Miller’s pals Drea de Matteo, performer Maxine Ashley, Mickey Boardman, and Pharrell Williams, whose virtual platform/YouTube channel I am OTHER is hosting the program.
“I’ve wanted to do something like this for a while, but I didn’t want it to be on TV TV. Previously, I had this idea to do something like ‘In Bed With Chrissie’ where I was just talking in bed with someone and that was the show,” she said. Miller went to film school, and cool visuals were always integral to the success of her cult T-shirt line Sophomore NYC, which she has put on hold for the moment to focus on projects like this. “I watch tons of YouTube videos, and my boyfriend [artist Leo Fitzpatrick] knows every single funny video out there. He’s basically finished the Internet, finding weird shorts that have like 100 hits. Hopefully ‘Club Chrissie’ is a bit more popular,” she laughed. Based on the show’s fun promo, debuting exclusively here on Style.com, we’re betting it will be a viral success.
“Club Chrissie” premieres on Monday and will be airing weekly at I am OTHER.
Byrne Baby Byrne
The Byrne Notice—a brand-spanking New York lifestyle site—may be monikered after Fiona Byrne (pictured, left), but it’s not another personal branding exercise. “I don’t want to put my diary on there,” says Byrne, the British expat journalist whose last project was Naag.com, which she launched with Agyness Deyn. “It’s for me and my friends and people who are growing up like us, but it’s also authoritative. We say ‘we,’ not ‘me.’ “
Judging by the flock at last night’s Byrne Notice launch, co-hosted by J Brand, it’s a very royal “we” as far as downtown sovereignty goes. The designer posse that turned out to Acme for the fête included Eddie Borgo, Chrissie Miller, Rebecca Minkoff, and Christian Siriano, whose Chelsea lodgings were just featured on the site. “I didn’t mean it to be as fashion-y,” Byrne said as Jenne Lombardo and Opening Ceremony’s Kate Foley passed by, “but it just seems to come to me.” Though good old fashion makes up the bulk of the content, Byrne seeks to make the site a comprehensive guide to the styled life. Of her epicurean philosophy, she said, “If you have a salted caramel anywhere on your menu, I will go there. I like Laboratorio di Gelato, I love Miss Lily’s. But I’ll also go to Starbucks and get one of those caramel iced things—I’m not a Blue Bottle snob.” Swag aspirations tempered with populist good humor? Noticed.
Karaoke With Chrissie
Leave it to New York cool girl Chrissie Miller to turn her Fall ’12 collection video for her line Sophomore into a party. For the short film, she enlisted her friends, including Jessica Stam and Cory Kennedy, to sing Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams,” wearing Miller’s latest tees and maxi dresses. Watch the video (and sing along if you like), above. Click here to read our review as part of Video Fashion Week.
Two’s Company
“I didn’t think I’d ever have a store,” Sophomore’s Chrissie Miller says. “I thought, crazy people shop and I didn’t want to be involved in that. But I did it in L.A. and I loved it—that lifestyle, being there and talking to people about the clothes. As soon as I got back, it’s all I was thinking about.” So when a small shop space opened on Ludlow Street, Miller (above right) and friend and fellow designer Lindsey Thornburg (above left) pounced. Just one month after signing on the space, their new collaborative store, 143 (named after the building number, though Miller notes it’s also pager code for “I love you”), the first permanent retail space for either designer, is set to open this Friday.
143 will be divided between the Sophomore collection, which Miller designs with Madeleine von Froomer, and Thornburg’s cape-heavy namesake collection. (Both designers have also moved their studios to the building as well.) But it will also feature new and vintage pieces from a network of friends and the likeminded, including clothes, books, art, and jewelry. “The neighborhood is super vintage-heavy; I think people go [here] looking for vintage,” Miller says. “So I found the best vintage dealers I could, rather than go to New Jersey and try to buy a bunch of stuff myself.” She’s been following the Texas-based dealers Sisters of the Black Moon on eBay for years, for example, and L.A.’s Filthmart, at whose now-shuttered New York store she worked years ago, is supplying vintage menswear.
Shen Beauty will curate an assortment of beauty products, and Miller’s boyfriend, actor and artist Leo Fitzpatrick, will organize art and art books from the likes of Nate Lowman, Bruce Weber, Richard Kern, and Cass Bird. “Leo is obsessed with art books, and we don’t like keeping them in the house after we’re done with them,” Miller says. Retail, the broom of the system! By the same token, shoppers can expect to find Sophomore and Thornburg samples and one-offs on the racks.
143 opens Friday, November 18, at 143 Ludlow St., NYC.
The Digital Reformation
“I like to look cool but like I didn’t try too hard—that’s what I live for,” Zoë Kravitz told Style.com last night at the newer and bigger Reformation outpost in the Lower East Side. “I shop here just about everyday.”
What Kravitz was describing was the very aesthetic Reformation, a collection made from mostly vintage materials, has made its name on: cool and effortlessly chic. One glance at the hip crowd that had turned out for the evening celebrating the launch of TheReformation.com, including Lake Bell, Chrissie Miller, and Chelsea Leyland, reflected just that. Many of the guests were sporting Reformation’s latest collaboration, T-shirts designed by artists Nate Lowman, Leo Fitzpatrick, Hanna Liden, and Adam McEwen, advertising phrases like, “I hate you because you make me hate you” and “Ludes make better lovers.”
“These artists come as a group,” said founder and designer Yael Aflalo, formerly of the Ya-Ya clothing label. “You get one of them to do the collaboration, you get them all.” This is the first of many collabs Aflalo has in the works. Up next: photographer-turned-graffiti artist Curtis Kulig (who was there last night). “We are planning to do collaborations with different people every month and Curtis is doing one next, but I can’t tell you the details yet,” Aflalo said. Until then, stay tuned.