4 posts tagged "Olivia Wilde"
Big Party, Small World
Invite-only social-networking site ASMALLWORLD is basically Facebook for well-connected frequent fliers. So for the platform’s party celebrating its relaunch as a travel and lifestyle club last weekend, the site and its CEO Sabine Heller flew a slew of jet-setters—such as Dianna Agron, Mamie Gummer, and Olivia Wilde—to party in Marrakech. New York deejay Chelsea Leyland was among the guests, and here she chronicles the Moroccan getaway via personal snaps with pals such as Lily Kwong, Theophilus London, Waris Ahluwalia, Ben Pundole, a couple of camels, and more.
I snapped this upon my arrival. Believe it or not, this was my bed for the weekend. INCREDIBLE!
Waris Ahluwalia and my boy Ben Pundole having what looks like a very important conversation in the swimming pool at the Taj Palace in Marrakech, which is probably one of the most amazing pools I’ve ever seen.
Theophilus London and myself having a little hug. Theo bought this outfit that morning and was pretty proud of it. I think his exact words were, “Doesn’t this look like it could be some Rick Owens shit?” Continue Reading “Big Party, Small World” »
Girl Power: The Fourth Annual DVF Awards
Friday night marked the fourth annual DVF awards, and newfangled British crooner Paloma Faith perhaps summed up the evening best. “It’s important that we as women get together and celebrate each other rather than what sometimes happens, or what is sometimes encouraged in the media—to be against each other,” said the singer, who accessorized her outfit with a statement-making necklace that read, “FEMINIST.”
Held at the United Nations, the annual event—which was hosted by von Furstenberg and Tina Brown—honors five women who have exhibited courage and leadership in their respective fields, and who have helped to advance the lives of other women in the process. This year’s winners—including Robin Roberts, Natalia Vodianova, Sunitha Kirshnan, Andeisha Farid of the Afghan Child Education and Care Organization, and Tammy Tibbetts of She’s the First—will all receive $50,000 grants from von Furstenberg’s foundation for continued charitable work and development. And everyone from Olympian Gabrielle Douglas—a.k.a. the “Flying Squirrel”—and Olivia Wilde to Mario Testino, Fran Lebowitz, and Gloria Steinem turned out to toast the winners.
Despite her broken arm (she opened her introduction to the crowd by emphatically stating “I will never. Go skiing. Again,” referring to last week’s accident in Aspen), von Furstenberg shone with as much poise as ever. “Style is about confidence. Look at Robin Roberts—she just went through the most horrible year—but her beauty, her light inside, is so big, and she’s beautiful. That’s the real beauty.”
In Chelsea, Portraits Of The Artist And The Primate
Anh Duong was in Chelsea last night, surrounded by a gallery full of Anh Duongs. The painter’s new show, at New York’s Sonnabend Gallery, was devoted exclusively to self-portraits. “I decided I’m going to paint myself because I’m always available and on time,” Duong deadpanned. “So it started as an excuse, basically, and then it became a sort of diary. I’ve been painting myself for the last 20 years.” The portraits, which have the slightly off-kilter fluidity of Alice Neel’s (and the liquid eyes of Margaret Keane’s), show the artist nude and clothed, outdoors and in, with cameo appearances by dogs and stuffed toys. They also offer Duong an ample opportunity to dress up for her sittings, spotlighting a killer collection of frocks, accessories, and jewels. “I think they are also great excuses to use a color or shape or to add something to the painting, to the composition,” she explained. “That’s why I’m interested in painting objects, the bag, the shoes, whatever. I think also the clothes have a personal significance. As I child I would always dress up; I felt like it was some sort of make-believe world, where if the clothes were perfectly put together, then I was safe. It was a response to a chaos around me…I felt like it was this ideal world, so it came naturally that I would use that in my portraits.” A fashion-heavy crowd, including Barry Diller, Carlos de Souza, Calvin Klein’s Francisco Costa, and Phillip Lim, came by for a look. Lim, a friend of the artist, found an especially good reason to keep a sharp eye open. “I think one of our trenches is in here,” he said, before spinning off to have a look. But Duong herself said she preferred to see her paintings as expressions of emotion and technique, rather than portraits, per se. After all, she added, “I really think that every work of an artist is a self-portrait—I just push it further.”
At Paul Kasmin Gallery nearby, the new show by Walton Ford was testing that hypothesis. Ford is known for his large-scale watercolors inspired by the animal paintings of J.J. Audubon and others, but several of the enormous pieces in the new show had no history at all: wall-sized paintings of gorillas mid-scream, without the context of time or place. A portrait of the beast within? The gallery was as thronged with stampeding visitors—Daphne Guinness, Salman Rushdie, Padma Lakshmi, and Olivia Wilde among them—but the artist himself was the picture of civility in a sharply tailored three-piece suit.
The Spirit’s Still Independent, But The Mood’s More Mainstream
The Oscars won’t be Hollywood’s only fancy awards night this weekend. The Independent Spirit Awards, traditionally a pretty scruffy affair, got natty for its 25th anniversary, allowing big-time stars to dress up—including Vera Farmiga, in Marchesa (pictured); Carey Mulligan, in Christopher Kane; and Olivia Wilde, in Ralph Lauren—in honor of movies made, in many cases, for less than a studio blockbuster’s wardrobe budget.
The show moved this year from the beach to downtown, from daytime to evening, from flip-flops to semiformal. “Well, I never wore flip-flops,” John Waters clarified. Later, on the podium, the Hairspray director lent the show some of his famous edge when he fantasized about making a Precious sequel about the love child of Precious and Justin Timberlake. Emmy Rossum was drinking straight Jameson in the Piaget lounge before dinner—”Normally, I hardly ever drink,” she assured us—and host Eddie Izzard indulged in some on-stage theology that certainly wouldn’t have flown at the Oscars.
Other parts of the evening, though, felt like a Sunday preview. Mo’Nique added yet another trophy to her mantle for Precious, and Jeff Bridges won for his role as a washed-up country singer in Crazy Heart. Bridges had his thumb in his belt during his acceptance speech, and even thanked his stand-in. Presumably he won’t be quite as laid-back on Sunday—or wearing a leather jacket.