The New York Observer » Meredith Bryan

The Floppy-Haired Fellows

The most striking thing about this year’s Oscars, other than that a female director finally won? The guys’ hair. There was George Clooney, whose longish (for him) do had a distinctly feathered quality in the front. Then there was James Cameron, whose soft, elongated bowl cut channeled ABBA, and was possibly blow-dried. But Mark Boal, Read More

We Are All Fricked! Socialites Stomp Through Snow to Diamond Deco Haze

At the Frick Young Fellows Ball last Thursday, Feb. 25—theme: “Diamond Deco”—the traditional coat check was accompanied by a boot check for Uggs and Wellies, since guests were braving what was quickly becoming 20 inches of snow.

“None of us canceled!” cried one young attendee who had made it safely inside the mansion, to her circle Read More

My Town of Kind!

A year ago, Natasha Vargas-Cooper, a California-based contributor to the Awl and Gawker, named 26-year-old Manhattanite Katie Baker among her favorite female bloggers in a blog post. Ms. Baker linked appreciatively to the post on her Tumblr, calling Ms. Vargas-Cooper, whom she'd never met, "a lady I luv." After that, "the lovefest continued," said Ms. Read More

Star Power

The astrologist Susan Miller was speeding up Madison Avenue in a cab recently from Frederic Fekkai, where she’d had her hair blown out, toward Barneys, despite the fact that the young man at the Fekkai counter had been unable to snag her a last-minute reservation at Fred’s for lunch. She was clutching a cane; Ms. Read More

We’re Gaga for Guts!

Last Halloween, Scott Gold, author of The Shameless Carnivore: A Manifesto for Meat Lovers, offered to serve as guest chef at an underground dinner party hosted by his friend Kara Masi at her apartment in Fort Greene. Tasked with cooking for 12 devoted gourmands, Mr. Gold, an accomplished if not professional cook, swung for the Read More

A Rough Time in Smoothie World: Raw-Food Queen Scuffles With Chelsea Market

One late winter afternoon at Chelsea Market, Sarma Melngailis was mulling potential colors for the sign outside her new raw vegan juice bar and takeaway, One Lucky Duck, which had since Nov. 30 inhabited an airy space with its own entrance on 15th Street. “If you have everything green related to a vegan juice bar Read More

Get Me Epi-Pen! Upper Crust Snuffs Out Food Allergies at Big Ball

"I have the strangest allergy I’ve only discovered in the last couple years,” revealed petite wealth manager and socialite Alexandra Lebenthal, arriving Monday, Dec. 7, for the 12th annual Food Allergy Ball at the Waldorf. “I’m allergic to tomatoes. But not in the way other people are, where they get hives. I actually get a Read More

Who Knew Del Posto, Purveyor of Lardo, Was So Eco?

Del Posto, the three-star Italian restaurant co-owned by Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, has a green side—and we’re not talkin’ about all the dough they’re raking in from the $28 spaghetti!

The 2002 Ford Excursion in which Mr. Bastianich commutes every morning from Greenwich, Conn., has a converted diesel engine. He fills up not at Read More

Couture-teria Indochine, Celebrating 25th, to Get 15 More

At Indochine’s retro-Shanghai-themed 25th anniversary party on Friday, Nov. 20, near-naked women in pasties shook their rear ends while hotelier André Balazs, in a khaki suit, danced with a tall blonde in a downstairs nightclub called the “Undochine” (which hasn’t been open since the ’80s).

Upstairs, designer Narciso Rodriguez, taking refuge in an air bubble Read More

The Pickle Posse

"There’s something in the air that makes people want to make pickles,” said Joya Carlton, 28, one of three partners in Brooklyn Brine, a local pickle start-up, sitting in a booth at the Greenpoint Coffee House with her two partners, Shamus Jones, 29, and Josh Egnew, 34, both covered in tattoos.

“We’re getting requests from Read More

Sweet Fancy Moses: Manhattan Pastry Potentates

Last week, as the scrubbed and smirking mugs of Tom Colicchio and Padma Lakshmi continued to advertise Top Chef’s sixth season in Vegas all over town, Bravo announced an open casting call for the series’ latest iteration, Top Chef: Just Desserts, on Sunday, Nov. 8, at Craftsteak.

“It’s about time!” exclaimed Zak Miller, pastry chef Read More

Spotted Piglet Hiccups: Boozy Breslin Clashes With Mosque

The much-hyped, soon-to-open Breslin restaurant, situated in the 12-story Ace Hotel on Broadway and 29th, is giving members of the Masjid Ar-Rahman mosque across the street some agita. “Five times a day, there’s a hundred cabs on the street—the good news is you can always get a cab,” co-owner Ken Friedman told the Transom the Read More

Here Come the Braids!

"I've been sporting braids for years now,” said Allison Pottasch, 20, who—stopped in Union Square on Monday, May 25—was wearing a loose-fitting purple shirt, jean shorts and a silver nose ring, her thick brown hair parted down the center and arranged neatly into two of spring 2009’s ubiquitous Heidi-esque braids (the Swiss orphan, not the Read More

Consignment Shops Clean Up

Recently, as the retail world was being rocked by the news that the venerable Fifth Avenue department store Henri Bendel will cease selling, oh, clothes, Myrna Skoller was on the phone from Boca Raton, where she spends most of her time nowadays, discussing the contrasting fortunes of her 19-year-old Upper East Side consignment shop, Designer Read More

The Eight-Day Week: May 13-20

Wednesday, May 13

Another year, another Met Gala at which Gisele is much skinnier than us. Say, is it summer vacation yet? The indefatigable dames who lunch and attend store openings with the help of a full-time staff of six will not stop until Memorial Day, thank you, when the ones who weren’t Read More