8 posts tagged "DvF"
DvF: Fashion’s Fairy Princess
Camilla Morton’s new book Diane von Furstenberg and the Tale of the Empress’ New Clothes landed on our desk today, a holiday gift from von Furstenberg herself. And what a tale it is! Morton is well practiced at translating fashionable lives into fairy tales—she’s already done it with Manolo Blahnik and the Tale of the Elves and the Shoemaker and Christian Lacroix and the Tale of Sleeping Beauty—but von Furstenberg’s fairy story needs less fictionalizing than most. Consider the evidence:
The heroine’s royal pedigree: von Furstenberg is actually a princess, thanks to her previous marriage, to Prince Egon of Furstenberg.
The heroine’s trial and triumph: She did, as a young woman, consider and then reject a rival suitor: Fidel Castro. (“I didn’t,” she insisted at a talk this fall at the 92nd Street Y, “have an affair with him. I had this incredible idealistic image of him. And he was quite good looking. But after two days I must say I was very disappointed.”)
The happy ending: von Furstenberg has earned not only the keys to the kingdom—at least the kingdoms of New York and fashion, as the president of the CFDA and a friend of Mayor Michael Bloomberg—but also the crown jewels: She revealed at the 92nd Street Y talk that husband Barry Diller proposed with 26 diamond wedding bands—one for each year they weren’t married.
She also exhibits fairy-princess generosity: “Whenever a friend of mine is sad, I give her one,” she said.
Marina Larroude’s Holiday Packing List
This holiday week, I’m looking forward to spending as much time as I can outside by the pool with my daughter, playing ping pong, and enjoying a night out with my husband and friends. When it comes to bikinis, black is my go-to color, but this summer I want to try something different and fell in love with this Mara Hoffman tribal-inspired set. To top off any summer look, Dezso by Sara Beltran offers the coolest jewelry and printed pouches. The pouches can be used as a beauty bag for the beach or pool, and for the evening, they can be worn as clutches. Also, for my time spent poolside, I use tanning lotion from Ligne St. Barth—it’s an old favorite. A friend introduced me to this line and I’ve been obsessed by their entire range of products ever since.
For those hot summer nights, T by Alexander Wang has the dress shape of the season, the slipdress, in a variety of neutral and bright colors, but for now, red feels like the appropriate way to go. To turn it into an office-appropriate look, I’ll add my Current/Elliott denim jacket and I’ll be good to go. Find all of the items I’ll be packing for my holiday getaway, here.
From top left to right: Mara Hoffman triangle bikini, $195, available at www.net-a-porter.com; T by Alexander Wang V-neck slipdress, $295, available at www.kirnazabete.com; Dezso by Sara Beltrán bracelet, $1,350, available at www.dezsosara.com; Ligne St. Barth tanning oil, $48, available at www.lignestbarth.com; DVF ping pong set, $95, available at www.dvf.com; Dezso by Sara Beltrán bag, $65, available at www.dezsosara.com.
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.”
At DVF: From Wall Street To Walken
Visitors to the New York Stock Exchange probably wouldn’t assume that, among the horde of red-faced traders on the floor, there was an aspiring painter or two. Well, consider John W. Codling, and think again. Codling didn’t work on the trading floor itself, but as the head of his own institutional brokerage, he had front-row seats to the last year’s financial meltdown. “When you work on Wall Street, you’re used to a certain level of intensity,” Codling says. “But after the crash, I mean, that was a whole other level. And it wasn’t like you could go home and zone out watching TV, because everyone on television was talking about the economy.” As a means of therapy, Codling turned to art—a pastime he had last indulged back in grade school.
For reasons that are a little obscure, even to him, he began painting images of Christopher Walken, and tonight, he opens Sundays With Chris, a show of that work, at Diane von Furstenberg’s gallery on West 14th Street. “He’s just an amazing character,” Codling said, when pressed on his choice of subject. “Christopher Walken could read a brownie recipe and it would be entertaining. If I’d been painting trees, I wouldn’t have gotten as much out of it.” All told, Codling has painted 57 Walken images—which averages out to about a canvas a week since the fall of Lehman Brothers. Sales of the paintings will benefit Team Continuum, a nonprofit organization assisting cancer patients and their families. In other words, painting is not yet Codling’s full-time job. “Nah, I’m still working on Wall Street,” he says. “I’ve got no big plans to become a starving artist.” The show opens to the public tomorrow.
John W. Codling: Sundays With Chris at DVF Gallery, 440 West 14th St., NYC, October 23 to November 1
DVF Talks Shop At FIAF
At last night’s closing installment of the French Institute Alliance Française “Fashion Talks” series (Donna Karan and Catherine Malandrino preceded), Diane von Furstenberg related a memorable dinner-table remark from Christian Lacroix. “I make costumes,” he told her. “You make clothes.” The queen of the wrap dress more or less agreed with the assertion, lamenting the fact that unlike their wearability-minded female peers, male designers have yet to really embrace certain forgiving fabrics. “Women designers like jersey. Men don’t. But,” she added, smiling, “if they wore it, they would.”