It all started with an unlikely barter between friends. “Would he do it for jewelry?” Solange Azagury-Partridge asked Tracy Lowy of having Lowy’s husband, Laurence Dunmore, direct a short film to showcase her new creations. “Yeah, ask him” is Lowy’s mischievous reply. Thus the lovely short film The Letter, starring Thandie Newton and Jason Isaacs, was born.

It tells the story of a beautiful woman (Newton) who decides to leave her husband for her lover, but not before packing up her jewelry (pieces from Solange’s new Stoned collection). Still, when she reaches to her lover, she decides she doesn’t need him either—only the jewels, namely a diamond engagement ring she left behind on the nightside table. 

“I wanted her to say, ‘I’m not staying with my husband; he’s stifling me. Then she runs to her lover, and thinks, But I don’t think I’m bothered about him, either, but I am bothered by that ring,” explains Azagury-Partridge, laughing. “It’s tongue-in-cheek, really.” With a sound track by Rob Dougan, an  original script by Azagury-Partridge’s husband, Murray Partridge, and styling by Charlotte Pilcher, the project was a family affair; hence the creation of Friends and Family Productions as the force behind the shoot. Says Azagury-Partridge of putting together the talent, “It was great being an old-fashioned producer and just letting them do their thing.”

The film debuts by invitation only on Monday at the Solange Azagury-Partridge store on Madison Avenue, with a special screening and party planned in London later this month, but you’ll have to wait until the holidays for the jewels (like this gorgeous ring above). They don’t arrive stateside until December.   

—By Stephanie LaCava

When it comes to fashion, the Internet has clearly taught us this: Women everywhere, but everywhere, love clothes, and they want to look good in them. And because we’re aware that it’s all too easy to be myopically challenged and look no farther than the streets—and stores—of New York, we’re going to check up on what women around the country just can’t get enough of right now. First up, the top-ten buys, in no particular order, from Forty Five Ten in Dallas (fortyfiveten.com). The store has always brilliantly walked the line between a Texan’s innate love of glamour and glitz and a kind of darkly rich Euro idea of dressing up. So Alexander McQueen’s bold-shouldered, big-drama cocktailiana, not to mention his gem-encrusted skull rings, is being snapped up, as are Stella McCartney’s faux-leather leggings, inspired by the ultra long boots that were such a major part of her fall 2009 runway show (left).

It’s a Buy It, Wear It, Enjoy It mentality, says store co-owner Brian Bolke. “Investment to our customers means they will wear it until they are sick of it,” he says. “They aren’t buying things that may still have the tag on it in a year. As long as it speaks to them . . . it sells. We love that people are responding to new names as well—Christian Cota, Sophie Theallet, Matthew Ames. They know they are the future of fashion, and they are willing to get their foot in the door.” And here’s what’s flying out the door. . . .
 
Givenchy Hombre bag in cream patent with large tassel, $1,540
Alexander McQueen gold “knuckle” ring with skull and gems, $550
Ippolita large rose silver hoops, $225
Nicholas Kirkwood for Pollini black satin peep-toe platform with rhinestone detail, $695
Golden Goose black leather ballet flat with studs, $550
Salvatore Ferragamo for Yohji Yamamoto by black-and-white lace-up, $620
Raven Kauffman black python-and-feather clutch, $1,615
Alexander McQueen “dripping lamé” strong-shoulder cocktail dress, $1,515
Azzedine Alaïa “mini panther” knit sheath, $2,715
Stella McCartney perforated black leatherette leggings, $895

—Mark Holgate

One of the loveliest outcomes of the inauguration of Barack Obama last January, and one of the most surprising, occurred Wednesday in the nation’s capitol, where Isabel Toledo staged a fashion show. Toledo, one of the fashion world’s rarest and most refined talents, has spent as much time putting models down catwalks for her eponymous label as Thomas Pynchon has doing interviews for Publishers Weekly. Yet, when Michelle Obama wore Toledo’s acid-yellow coat and dress in winter lace from the Swiss textile maker Forster Rohner last January 20, an idea was hatched and a campaign begun: the Swiss Embassy and Nordstrom’s (where Toledo’s clothes are sold in the D.C. area) would host a fashion show for clients, ambassadorial reception-goers, and the press, to champion the uncompromising genius of Isabel Toledo and the equally uncompromising beauty of Swiss lacework.

Nearly a year later, on November 4, 21 remarkable looks, all fashioned from Forster Rohner embroideries, were shown to gasps and applause (a Chanel-clad woman attempted to charge the set while shrieking, “Oh my God that skirt!” at a fit-and-flare number in pink taffeta and black-and-blush guipure). The set, though, was unreachable: a glass box of tiered staircasing entirely covered in black-and-white murals by Ruben Toledo of “deconstructed lace” (including cherry blossoms, butterflies, and one mysterious Isabel face). Ruben Toledo had painted it all freehand in a single night. His wife, meanwhile, had spent one month with an extraordinary array of laces—some heavy as armor, others shaggy like terry cloth—and “letting the fabrics inspire her.” There was a white tank that floated loose from the body like an exquisite doily over a peasant skirt of encrusted black-and-silver embroidery. There was a chic seventies-ish blouse of nude washed-silk with a waterfall of ruffles down the front of unsurpassed swagger paired with a neat narrow skirt of crème-and-pink lace. There were dresses for dancing; sculpted suits for the office (all lace, mind you, but lace sturdy as tweed); and one frock of gold-thread embroidery on net that radiated pretty as few frocks can do.

One only hopes that the Toledos will find a way to present her fall collection in New York next February. Fashion Week needs that sort of stage-barging drama and high design.

—Sally Singer

“The purpose of this book is to retrace and represent the multivalent aspects of Prada,” declare Miuccia Prada and Patrizio Bertelli in the introduction to Prada (Progetto Prada Arte), the newly published tome that charts the extraordinary pancultural reach of the company that Miuccia’s grandfather Mario Prada founded in 1913 as a purveyor of elegant luggage and jewels. Today, Prada and Bertelli can rightly declare that their company’s engagements run “from fashion to communication, from the pursuit of excellence to technological advancement, from architecture to art.”

“I like the irony in my work,” opines Miuccia Prada, and the book has the gravitas and sense of purpose of a company report rather than a classic coffee-table fashion monograph. And a company report is essentially what it is. Pradaphiles will be giddy at the miniaturized runway shots that chart every outfit shown since Miuccia brought (thoughtful, ironic, challenging) fashion to her family company with her fall-winter 1988 collection; at the two decades of iconic-image-making campaigns; and at the work-in-progress fittings shots that chart Miuccia’s creative fashion process. Continue reading ›

Out of respect to the gossamer unity that is both the gathering ribbon and sometimes the rope of that disparate thing called “social life” uptown, downtown, and out of town, I have declined the best invitation of the week. (OK, maybe second best; the Valentino-Madonna-meet-Jesus party at the Standard hotel’s eighteenth floor was pretty “up there,” as Andy Warhol used to say when he was impressed with a soiree.)

All your favorite boldface names have been asked . . . I don’t know who has accepted. The party that I am declining is the opportunity today, to appear “as yourself—‘Real New York High Society’ ” — in a “Black Tie Alzheimer charity event scene which is set at the Metropolitan Museum of Art” in Wall Street 2, directed by Oliver Stone and starring, among others, Michael Douglas, Josh Brolin, and the delicious Carey Mulligan (see my caricature here.)

I’m a huge Oliver Stone fan, and I would have relished the opportunity to watch him work. Plus, there is nothing I like more than an idyll on a film set; it is a very diverting way of spending a day. But the following description of the scene itself gave me pause. Said an E-mail from a representative of the film: “Regarding the look I am hoping to achieve, it is likened to the ‘Last Hurrah’ of NY society, the last moment in 2008’s ‘Golden Age’ when everything was large and flowing. Oliver has used this analogy if helpful. . . . It is to appear similar to a salon on the Titanic, right before it hit the ICEBERG!!”

Now, why would I want my timeless mug seen in that scene? Drowning, not waving? Continue reading ›

In the new thriller The Box, Frank Langella plays an ominously disfigured stranger who stops by the house of a suburban couple, Norma (Cameron Diaz) and Arthur Lewis (James Marsden), and leaves them a black box topped with a bright-red button. Push it, he tells them, and you’ll receive $1 million—but someone you don’t know will die. 

Now, such a premise is as seductive as it is hoary (Portuguese novelist Eça de Queiros used it in his 1880 novella “The Mandarin”), and it immediately sucked me in. Yet even as the story’s twists held me, I could feel the presence of another deadly kind of box. It’s the one threatening writer-director Richard Kelly, who, at age 34, must already feel the walls closing in. A mere eight years (and two movies) since Donnie Darko got him hailed as a cinematic wunderkind, Kelly badly needs a big opening weekend; otherwise, The Box could prove the coffin in which his career is buried.

This crisis isn’t all Kelly’s fault. He’s venturing forth in an era when indie cinema has run out of steam and the studios, avid for blockbusters and “tentpoles,” no longer have much interest in adult dramas; they treat grown-up entertainments like Duplicity or Public Enemies as if they were somehow art films. Things are even tricky for celebrated young filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, Spike Jonze, and Wes Anderson. This trio has made some of our era’s landmark movies, including Rushmore, There Will Be Blood, and Where the Wild Things Are. But because none of them makes big hits (I’m not sure they even know how), their road is always precarious. Although Wes Anderson’s new animated film, Fantastic Mr. Fox, is blissfully good, excellence may not be enough. After the box-office disappointments of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and The Darjeeling Limited, Anderson himself admits that he has a lot riding on the furry back of Mr. Fox.

Because Kelly is younger and less successful than these three, he’s even more vulnerable. In fact, he’s almost a cautionary tale of how, with a couple of wrong steps, a smart, highly original young director can go from promise to overreach to serious trouble. Continue reading ›

Seek adventure in America’s own backyard: the endless, endlessly inspiring West. Vogue picks five of the best destinations to break a sweat in the great outdoors.

The Life Aquatic
California’s Channel Islands

A cluster of five pristine islands a stone’s throw from Los Angeles forms Channel Islands National Park, an ocean enthusiast’s easily accessed paradise. Dolphins, whales, and inky-eyed seals inhabit the islands’ wind-sculpted coves and aquatic archways, and their spindly hilltops are often blanketed with wildflowers. Take a guided kayaking tour with the Channel Islands Kayak Center through the waterways (above) or discover marine life in miniature in the incredible tide pools, populated with everything from octopuses to pillowy anemones. Pitch a tent for an overnight stay so you can snorkel the next day or surf—it is California, after all.
cikayak.com
(805) 644-9699
Full-day tours from $179.95 Continue reading ›

This year’s smash winner at Sundance, Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, a modern-day fairy tale about an African-American girl bursting with hope, pain, and exhilaration, is destined to be one of the fall’s biggest movies—as well as a serious player during awards season. Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe stars as Claireece “Precious” Jones, a pregnant, illiterate, overweight teenager living with her mother, Mary (Mo’Nique), who treats her like a slave. Trained in self-hatred—she fantasizes about being white and blonde—this inner-city Cinderella appears doomed. Then she begins meeting decent people who want to save her; in particular, her teacher, Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), who glimpses Precious’s true beauty, and the sturdy social worker, Mrs. Weiss, played so convincingly that you may not realize that the actress is Mariah Carey. For the first time, Precious starts fighting to make a decent life for herself.

The film was directed by Lee Daniels (the producer of Monster’s Ball), who never saw an emotional button he couldn’t push. Here he serves up a delirious cocktail of gritty realism, Dickensian melodrama, horror-flick chills, and crazy dream sequences in which Precious sees herself as a pop star or supermodel. Amazingly, Daniels’s pulpy approach proves enormously effective, capturing Precious’s struggle more powerfully than would more controlled filmmaking. Of course, it helps that the film is anchored by superb performances. While Sidibe is an eloquent presence as Precious—her face, once seen, is never forgotten—the film’s revelation is the comedienne Mo’Nique, who (trust me) is going to win an Oscar for her portrait of the lazy, abusive, hard-smoking Mary, a woman no less monstrous for being all too human. There hasn’t been a witch this scary since The Wizard of Oz.

—John Powers

For more movie coverage, read Absolute Powers on Vogue.com.

Perhaps it was the pull of the constellation of Chanel Fine Jewelry on display at the Four Seasons Restaurant last night that caused the stars to align and the weather to comply with just the perfect little hint of chill. Or maybe it was the sheer force of ladies who turned out in support of the Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s Fête d’Hiver. English translation? “Celebration of Winter,” and who can bemoan the cold when it means a fur thrown over your Chanel? Not Lauren Santo Domingo (black Nina Ricci fur over silvery Chanel) or other guests like Blake Lively, Eugenie Niarchos, and Caroline Sieber, who all chose long Chanel for the evening. Lively added a white gold camellia brooch as a necklace, while Sieber carried a jeweled egg-shaped minaudière from the Paris Moscow collection. A shot of sunshine came courtesy of Azie Fritz, in vintage yellow Proenza Schouler, while both Ferebee Bishop Taube and Eleanor Ylvisaker chose single-shoulder prints. The only competition with the jewelry on display may have been the dress worn by Diane Kruger, an explosion of midnight-blue sequins, perhaps a nod to the wintry night sky.

—Stephanie LaCava

Hard to believe, I know, but the most radical thing that can be done to a shoe right now is . . . absolutely nothing. No zippers snaking everywhere. No buckles unless they are functional. And definitely no junked-up jeweling that looks like someone has gone berserk with a Bedazzler. That’s certainly what Gianvito Rossi, son of shoe scion Sergio Rossi, believes. “My idea has been to make shoes with as few ornamental effects as possible,” Rossi said this Tuesday at his presentation at the Crosby Street Hotel in New York’s SoHo. “It’s also about bringing the shoe back as an accessory—and not as an object that takes all the attention.”

If you haven’t heard of Rossi until you started reading this, then that’s because he hasn’t been making shoes that can be heard over the din of all those statement-making footwear that always looked like something Frankenstein’s monster would wear if he needed a little something for a night at the Jane. But that’s all about to change—and not just because he has been collaborating with New York wunderkind Joseph Altuzarra these past two seasons. Rossi’s shoes—ankle-length or knee-high lace-up summer boots in suede or stretch silk; elegant, understated kitten heel (yep, they’re back; thank you, Mrs. O) pointy pumps in a grosgrain called caneté—are some of the most convincing examples of spring’s tendency toward shoes that are simple, and simply chic. And while they’re not loud, it’s true, sometimes the easiest way to make a statement is to do it ever so very quietly. gianvitorossi.com.

—Mark Holgate