12 posts tagged "Stefano Tonchi"
Neuwirth’s Night In
Last night, to celebrate Irene Neuwirth’s 2013 CFDA Fashion Award nomination for the Swarovski Accessories prize—her second consecutive nod in the category —Barneys New York CEO Mark Lee threw her a party. And when Mark Lee throws you a party, you know you’ve made it. “Barneys was my first account, about ten years ago—it’s the perfect home,” Neuwirth told Style.com. Speaking of perfect homes, Lee hosted the soiree in his swank Chelsea penthouse, replete with views due west to the Hudson and a luxe, quirky charm.
Neuwirth’s work, too, exudes opulence—yet with a bohemian spritz that’s often rare in the fine-jewelry business. Hyper-vivid color is her signature, from asymmetric starburst emerald earrings to chunky labradorite-and-rose-gold-disk rings to lapis-studded bangles—all trimmed with diamonds. “I love Mexican fire opals,” laughed the designer when pressed as to her favorite gemstone. “When you think of fine jewelry, you think of pieces that can be passed down forever, which I still want for my collection—but in a more colorful, creative, and artistic way,” she added.
“She’s way high up on the totem,” said Lee. “She’s built something really significant. We love Irene.” Given the fete’s friendly feel, not to mention the turnout (Allison Williams, Stefano Tonchi, Kate Lanphear, and Wes Gordon were all in attendance), we’d say Lee’s sentiment is the general consensus.
Fashion Criticism: No Respect!
“It’s considered something that’s for and about women…I think all of those things kind of conspired to keep fashion from being given the same kind of respect.” So says Robin Givhan—famously the only fashion critic ever to win the Pulitzer Prize for her efforts—during a panel discussion this week on the place of fashion criticism. Givhan was joined by The New York Times‘ Guy Trebay and W‘s Stefano Tonchi on the panel, hosted by Fashion Projects, a magazine from Parsons professor Francesca Granata that covers the industry from a critic’s perspective. Agree or disagree? In the yea column: Trebay was careful to make the distinction that he’s an “urban ethnographer,” not a fashion critic. Hmm. In the nay column: Well, the whole thing was covered by the Columbia Journalism Review.
Art and Fashion Meet in Milan
Vionnet’s Goga Ashkenazi and W‘s Stefano Tonchi hosted an opening party in Milan last night for Thayaht: Between Art and Fashion. Ashkenazi recently acquired a collection of illustrations Thayaht made of dresses designed by Madeleine Vionnet between 1919 and 1925. Famous for inventing the bias cut, the French couturier never sketched; rather, she draped all of her pieces on eighty-centimeter mannequins. Originally hired to design the house’s logo, Thayaht, an Italian futurist artist and industrial designer, born Ernesto Michahelles (he liked the palindromic qualities of his nom de paint brush, apparently), became her collaborator and documentarian. “There’s nothing more graceful than seeing the garment float freely on the body,” Vionnet once said. Thayaht’s drawings would seem to confirm that; some of the dresses look startlingly modern, despite being made nearly a century ago. Among the sixty sketches in the collection, a few include the name of the client for whom the dress was made. “They put the idea of body types in perspective, because the drawings were about the client, not about the idealized woman,” Tonchi told Style.com. “One of Vionnet’s big revelations was to eliminate the waistline,” he added. There’s some debate about who, exactly, freed women from the corset—Poiret, Chanel, or Vionnet—but Ashkenazi has her answer. “Vionnet—she made us all comfortable.”
Thayaht: Between Art and Fashion is open at Milan’s Museo Poldi Pezzoli until February 25.
Entering The World Of Walker
Three hundred yellow canaries were used in Tim Walker’s first short film, The Lost Explorer, but for Harry Potter fans anxiously awaiting installment seven, the real draw may have been Lord Voldemort. “He’s my neighbor,” Walker told us last night about actor Richard Bremmer. “I saw him walking outside and I thought, ‘There’s my lost explorer.’ ” The photographer-turned-director was in town for a special screening of the short hosted by Mulberry and Stefano Tonchi at Soho House, and an appreciative crowd of friends and colleagues, including Audrey Marnay, the French actress who’s the new face of Longchamp, and her fellow ginger Grace Coddington, turned out on the chilly Monday night.
Using a story by Patrick McGrath as backbone, the 20-minute film revolves around a young girl (played by Olympia Campbell, in her acting debut) and her coming of age—one that quickly goes from fantastical to macabre. There’s a tent, a mysterious lost explorer (Bremmer) within, and some talk of the African bird trade—hence the canaries. Those birds didn’t get the invite to the dinner Stefano Tonchi hosted for Walker afterward, but the tent did, complete with traveler’s trunks, utilitarian mugs, and campside forks and knives. “This is the closest I’ll ever get to camping,” Michelle Trachtenberg joked.
No rest for the budding filmmaker, though—he’s already planning his next flick. “We’re working on a feature length now,” Walker said. “We haven’t found our script yet, but we’re looking and it’s going to be the same team. The cinematographer, Robbie Ryan, he’s amazing. He gets the vision. He gets my world.”
Blasblog: Flower Power
As he himself will tell you, when Carlos Mota put together his first book, Flowers: Chic & Cheap, he was hoping that some of his decoration-loving friends would be willing to host a few fêtes for the tome. Well, he got what he asked for: Since the tome came out in May, Mota has done parties uptown and downtown and even across the ocean. “In the end, I think I’ll be promoting this thing for longer than it took me to put it together,” he joked. “Not that I’m complaining. You know me: I love a good party.” And apparently, a good party loves him. Last night, John Demsey (pictured, left, with Mota) hosted a sit-down dinner for Mota in his Upper East Side town house, bringing the likes of Marjorie Gubelmann, Stefano Tonchi, Cynthia Rowley, Anne McNally, Rachel Roy, Adam Lippes, and Cornelia Guest. Dinner was served at three tables on the second floor, with each seat bearing its own personalized arrangement. Many people, including Tonchi, mistook them for artificial. “But he does amazing fake arrangements,” W‘s new editor in chief protested. This one, at least, was more chic than cheap.