4 posts tagged "Stephen Gan"
Fashion Week Ends, The Parties Don’t
New York’s party scene never sleeps—even the day following a whirlwind fashion month. Last night, both the fashion and art worlds convened at Sotheby’s S2 Gallery to toast Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld’s latest opening. Dubbed Hue + Cry, the exhibition was the budding megadealer’s first stint as guest curator for the venerable auction house, comprising 30 contemporary works that highlighted the transformation of abstract expressionism. But unlike Restoin-Roitfeld’s typically hip gatherings—often warehouse-based and liquor-fueled—yesterday’s soirée was decidedly a toned-down affair, complete with passed hors d’oeuvres (OK, pigs in a blanket) and sauvignon blanc. “It feels a lot more uptown in here,” quipped V‘s Stephen Gan as he surveyed the mixed-media pieces by contemporary artists including Nicolas Pol, Jin Meyerson, and Angel Otero. Gan’s trek from Lower Manhattan to the uptown York Avenue space took nearly an hour, but the host didn’t mind the commute. “I live five minutes away,” Restoin-Roitfeld shrugged. Still, representing the downtown contingent were the likes of Vito Schnabel, Stavros Niarchos, and girlfriend Jessica Hart, who happily installed themselves near the open bar.
“The show really looks like him, doesn’t it?” mused proud mom Carine Roitfeld in head-to-toe Givenchy. Giovanna Battaglia, clad in Dolce & Gabbana and a sparkling Marni collar necklace, arrived from Paris just in time for her boyfriend’s big night. “This is such a prestigious location,” she
beamed. “Every time Vlad does something, it’s different and a step ahead.” As for the couple’s plans post-fashion month? “This is my first weekend off in a month and a half,” she told Style.com. “But I still have to work—there’s a shoot next week. It never ends.” To wit, at 9 p.m., the guests decamped to Casa Lever, where Aby Rosen, Kim Heirston, and Leo Koenig toasted the young curator with a private dinner.
School Ties
For every fashion student toughing it out in the university, take hope: You may just find your future collaborator in the trenches. “We met in a college dorm,” Visionaire‘s James Kaliardos said of meeting his magazine’s co-founders, Stephen Gan and Cecilia Dean (left), during their Parsons days. “Stephen needed my food card to eat back then in the cafeteria.” Twenty years later, the trio is still raising eyebrows with their evocative flagship publication and receiving accolades too; they took home the first ever Future of Fashion Award at the 45th Annual YMA FSF Geoffrey Beene National Awards dinner last night.
Despite a Northeast snowstorm warning, a bevy of Visionaire admirers and original supporters (including Diane von Furstenberg, Italo Zucchelli, and Milk Studios’ Mazdack Rassi) turned out anyway. “I feel like we’re the grandpa and grandma of the publication,” Isabel Toledo said of her and husband Ruben’s involvement. “We used to put together the issues in our kitchen and it was the second issue where I literally bound each magazine with thread.”
Needle and thread will always have their place in fashion (and maybe even in publishing), but the business proposals of last night’s newly-anointed Geoffrey Beene scholars, who took home $25,000 scholarships for their work, ranged from tech-oriented to Web 3.0. But if online offers instant gratification, print still has the potential for shelf life. “I have this edition of Visionaire that I kept from the nineties,” Calvin Klein’s Zucchelli said. “It’s about birth and religion and all these different visual ideas. It’s old now, but it’s still really special.”
In London, A Turkish Delight
The first day of London fashion week is habitually a bit of a cozy domestic affair, mostly modeled by new faces and attended by assistants, but lo! At lunchtime today the full power of international fashion friendship networking was almost surreally visited upon The Old Dairy on Wakefield Street. There on the runway were Natalia Vodianova, Lara Stone, Mariacarla Boscono, and Natasha Poly. There in the audience, Kate Moss, Carine Roitfeld, Emmanuelle Alt, Stephen Gan, et al. The draw? Not a Londoner but a fresh arrival from Turkey, Hakaan Yildrim, a well-known designer who dresses the high-profile media and social glamorati of Istanbul. His all-guns-blazing debut on the Western runway was, it turns out, thanks to his compatriot Mert Alas (one half of Mert & Marcus), who corralled all his friends’ support. What they saw: well-made clothes in the short-tight-sexy mold, treated to cutting techniques involving rippling stand-up frills; peplums; overlapping, interwoven diagonals; and spaghetti strips of leather. There was a lot of intricate work in it—a touch too much in places—but the quality was inarguable and the styling, with the outcrops of ostrich, puts him somewhere in the slipstream of Riccardo Tisci.
Blasblog: The Queens of Holiday Cheer
For many, this has been a most depressing holiday season. With unemployment rates skyrocketing and the economy in the can, it might be easy to just saddle up to happy hour and drink these next few days away until the new year rolls around. But that’s not what Stephen Gan had in store for his friends and family. Explaining that he felt an obligation to put a smile on the faces of us downtrodden fashion folk (How hard has it been to look at all these Dress for Less recession guides when all you want is a new Givenchy tote?), he decided that epic tranny ball at the Box would be his gift to loved ones and assorted Visionaire staff. Linda Evangelista co-hosted the festivities, which featured appearances by Lady Bunny, Sweetie, Flotilla de Barge and Lypsinka. Joining in all the sequined, fake eyelashed and bewigged glamour were Lady Amanda Harlech and her daughter Tallulah, Peaches Geldof, Diane von Furstenberg, Jen Brill, Julia Restoin-Roitfeld, Francisco Costa and The Kills’ Alison Mosshart. While I would never deign to name a highlight—I learned early in life to never, ever rank trannies—André Leon Talley did tell me had a soft spot for Lypsinka’s performance. “She is a very, very talented human being,” he said of her amusing rendition of Old Hollywood movie scenes before dramatically diving into the downstairs dressing rooms. “She dove into the steps like Michael Phelps in a crimson crinoline.”