26 posts tagged "Julie Gilhart"
Riding The Fashion Wave
“It has nothing to do with drugs or money,” insisted Argentina-born Tin Ojeda, the designer behind Drug Money Art, as he organized a rolling rack of his colorful, handmade T-shirts in a NYC studio. “I just spray painted ‘Drug Money Art’ on a surfboard for fun one day and then took it to the beach—people were tripping on it.”
The Montauk-based surfer-turned-designer came to fashion serendipitously. Ojeda’s friends raved about his accidentally paint-splashed T-shirts (“Classic artist with paint all over him, I know”), and then, after a day of surfing two years ago, a woman on the beach stopped him to offer her compliments, too. That woman was Julie Gilhart, then the fashion director of Barneys New York, and she wanted to find out where he had bought it. “I told her I made it,” Ojeda told Style.com, at an appointment to preview his new collection this week. “It was an old one, with holes and a worn neck, but she loved it and wanted to order them for Barneys.” Today, D/M Art’s hang-loose unisex shirts, featuring funky screen prints with phrases like “Beauty Is Boring” or yogis on surfboards, are sold in Barneys stores around the country and worldwide in major cities including London, Berlin, and Toronto.
Now, word is spreading far and wide. Fellow Montauker Cynthia Rowley is planning an event with Ojeda for this summer, where she hopes to release his hand-printed “limited-collection books of nonsense photographs and words” along with the debut of his summer collection. And rumor has it Reese Witherspoon’s a fan, too—she’s reportedly wearing one of Ojeda’s shirts in an upcoming movie.
Drug Money Art tees, $80 to $85, available at Barneys stores nationwide; for more information, visit www.drugmoneyart.com.
Lingerie Photographer For A Day?
Well, If You Insist…
Araks lingerie already has plenty of famous fans, Sarah Jessica Parker and Scarlett Johansson (who wore Araks in Lost in Translation) among them. But for her latest look book, designer Araks Yeramyan enlisted a few famous collaborators, too. “The thought of shooting a look book with makeup and hair, that kind of irked me,” she admitted last night at a dinner to celebrate the finished product. “I wanted to find someone who’s not a photographer to shoot.” Yeramyan ended up reaching out to a group of friends, fans, and supporters, including Julie Gilhart (until recently, the fashion director of Barneys), T‘s Sally Singer, menswear designer Robert Geller, The Last Magazine‘s Magnus Berger, and stylist Heathermary Jackson. “People who understood the brand enough that I could give them no direction and they would get it,” she said.
The result ranges from intimate tableaux (Geller shot his designer/showroom owner wife, Ana Lerario, in bed) to staged still-life scenes (Gilhart’s pics, above, of Araks lingerie on walls and fences). And though she’s pleased with the results, letting go of creative control wasn’t easy. “Oh my God, I was so nervous,” Yeramyan said. “I couldn’t fail people! What if they came back with a bad photo, what am I going to tell them?” Luckily enough, no one did. To celebrate that achievement, Gilhart hosted a dinner at The Smile, with Singer, Berger, and Geller (just off the plane from Brazil, where he and Lerario christened their baby daughter) all in attendance.
We had to wonder: Did her long experience in lingerie design (she began her company in 2000) give Yermyan a sixth sense about people’s undergarments—X-ray vision, if you will? “I can’t tell what people are wearing,” she admitted with a laugh. “But I can tell what size they are—I don’t know why lingerie stores have to measure, you can just look and tell. And you can tell if they’re wearing the right type of bra or not.”
Dare we ask? “Mostly they’re not.”
Surfing Into Winter
A Sports Illustrated model turned swimsuit designer isn’t the first person you’d expect to be collaborating with Damien Hirst, but truth is stranger than fiction. Tori Praver snared the Y.B.A. for a still-unannounced project, but as for what, keep guessing. “That’s a secret!” Praver said. “I actually can’t talk about it.” What she could talk about was the silent auction she hosted with Arc New York and Barneys last night, with proceeds going to the Surfrider Foundation’s programs to keep beaches and oceans clean. And who should be included on the block but Hirst?
His piece All You Need Is Love Love Love went for $12,900, and naturally was the talk of the night. “I’m completely the underdog here,” New York-based artist Todd DiCiurcio said with a laugh. (Underdog in good company—his pal Ed Westwick was by his side.) “But see, Damien’s is a print and mine’s an original, so that must count somewhat, right?” DiCiurcio’s ink, charcoal, and fabric piece, Into the Frying Pan, a Conversation, was a new work created specifically with surfing in mind.
“Surfrider is about the ocean and growing up in Hawaii. It was always such a big part of my life,” surf buff Praver (left, with Ed Westwick) told supporters, including Petra Nemcova and Barneys’ Julie Gilhart, at the dinner following at The Fat Radish. “I don’t surf, but I love to go to the beach,” Lorenzo Martone said. No gnarly wave stories from his native Brazil? “No, no. That’s exactly it! I’m Brazilian. I like to sun and lay out and just look good on the beach!”
From Richard Chai, A Cold-Weather Warning
Just in case you didn’t notice, the temperatures are dropping. Richard Chai, for his part, did. His new temporary pop-up shop, at the west Chelsea space under the High Line that played host to Waris Ahluwalia’s recent installation, is designed to be a glacial, Styrofoam-carved ice cave. For his first standalone store—albeit a temporary one—Chai was after the shock of the new. “I didn’t want a straightforward retail space,” he explained at the opening bash on Friday night, co-hosted by The Last Magazine. Mission accomplished.
Designed in collaboration with the architecture firm Snarkitecture, the space will sell Chai’s men’s and women’s collections until October 31. On Friday, Emily Haines and her band Metric toasted the chilly space with a short set (and a Strokes cover) that had Julie Gilhart, Jamie Johnson, and Last‘s Magnus Berger smiling. “I love and live for Metric—I’m a super big fan!” Chai explained, as the crowd headed for the after-party at Le Bain. Makes sense, that—after the ice, the poolside thaw.
The Richard Chai pop-up installation is located at 504 W. 24th Street, NYC.
Barneys Co-Op Turns 25
When Barneys New York founded its Co-Op levels and stores in 1985, they were, as Style.com editor in chief Dirk Standen put it to the store’s Julie Gilhart, “in the vanguard of the mix-and-match approach.” “We never thought of Co-Op as a place where you find secondary collections,” Gilhart demurred. “It’s a place where you find something different.” Different as in not seen before (but almost always seen after) in other stores—and different, according to many designers whose careers Co-Op has nurtured, as in making all the difference to the fledgling businesses. “We are so happy the Co-Op exists to expose small brands,” Vena Cava’s Lisa Mayock and Sophie Buhai said recently. They’re not so small anymore. Phillip Lim agrees. Co-Op, he enthuses, “is like the A&R people of the fashion industry: They are the first to discover and support young talent.” That young talent is giving back for its 25th anniversary, offering exclusive products in stores and online. They include (left to right) a soft cowl-neck dress from Wayne, a cloud-print shirt dress from Vena Cava, and a fur-hood anorak from Theory that’s perfect for the cold weather soon to come.