Anna Wintour
Morning Memo: Marc Jacobs to 'Pull a Halston'? Star Jones v. Baba Wawa
Marc Jacobs' friends tell Page Six that he's out of control with his boy-chasing and partying ways, afraid he'll "pull a Halston." [P6]
Donatella Versace wishes Hillary would give up the pants. [P6] read more »
Bam! Pow! Society Superheroes Conquer The Big Swollen Ball
To the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual Costume Institute Gala on Monday, May 5, themed “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy,” Gossip Girl star Blake Lively wore black gloves and a snug black Ralph Lauren gown involving feathers. She said that her favorite superhero was “Spider-Man. Cause he’s awesome! He gets to swing around, and, I don’t know....” Accompanied by her onscreen (and rumored offscreen) boyfriend, actor Penn Badgley, Ms. Lively had come straight from a photo shoot and had done her hair in the car. “I have no idea what I look like,” she said, adding: “I’ve always seen pictures growing up, being a teenager, and thought, ‘I’d love to go to that, a night just to dress up in ball gowns.’ And here I am!”
Here everyone was, at least in fashion and showbiz and society circles. Oh, to have the superpower of invisibility and be able to flit up the stairs and into the great halls beyond!
Vogue editor and hostess Anna Wintour was the first to arrive, at 6:33 p.m., wearing a Chanel gown adorned with what appeared to be seahorse tails and accompanied by daughter Bee Shaffer, who required two men, including the formidable Vogue editor at large André Leon Talley, to carry the train of her voluminous blue Nina Ricci dress up the stairs. read more »
Morning Memo: All Our 'Heroes' Went to Anna's Little Party Last Night ...
Dina Lohan will be honored as a "Top Mom"--no, really!--on Long Island by an organization called Mingling Moms, alongside Rae Stern (Howard Stern's mom), Betty Seinfeld (Jerry's mom), and Shelley Stevens Herschlag (Natalie Portman's mom). Check back here tomorrow for lots more ... [P6] read more »
Morning Memo: Rosie's 'Mo Mo' Coo; Modo's Billets-Doux
The Tribeca Film Festival annual Vanity Fair party is held at the State Supreme Courthouse because it reminds everyone about the better days of divorce and custody battles. [NY Mag]
Anna Wintour's got herself a new assistant and it's a Swanson! As in Swanson TV dinners. [Daily Intel] read more »
Vogue Cover (Mini?)-Controversy
So there's LeBron James, arm wrapped around Gisele Bundchen, dribbling a basketball and busting into a howl on the cover of the new Vogue.
The Today Show wondered if it was racist and the AP found a magazine analyst to say he's King Kong to Gisele's damsel in distress. read more »
Morning Memo: Anna Wintour is Knackered; Academy Twists Strikers' Knickers
Some fashion week models are wearing T-shirts backstage that tout Angelina Jolie's Global Action for Children to attract attention to the cause as they get their pre-show hair and makeup done. [WWD]
Amy Winehouse was denied a US visa to attend the Grammy Awards, but she may appear via satellite. [Us] read more »
Wipeout! As Zac Posen Channels Carroll's Alice, Models Tumble Like House of Cards
Few of Fashion Week’s most anticipated shows are held at Bryant Park’s tents (Marc Jacobs, Proenza Schouler, Rodarte, and Thom Browne, for example, are all off-site), and last night’s Zac Posen show made clear the reasons.
Security guards demanded invitations or credentials at the entrance, despite the fact that the Daily Transom had breezed through all week with neither. “There are a few shows that are huge, and everyone tries to sneak in,” said one sentry apologetically. “And everyone tries to sneak in.”) read more »
Roll a Bolo to Your Pal? On a Globally Warmed Wednesday, Phillip Lim Shoots For the West
The densely-packed 3.1 Phillip Lim show at the Bryant Park tents on Feb. 6 was, according to several breathless Chatty Cathys stationed behind the Transom, “almost three times bigger than last season.”
It was also, owing either to the unseasonably warm weather or the attendance of Conde Nast’s entire payroll, approximately 92 degrees in the Promenade (not quite as bad as last season’s Rodarte show in a West Chelsea loft, which devolved into a very well-dressed steamroom, but tonight’s sea of flapping programs did cause momentary déjà vu). read more »
Glam-Oh-Rama, Silk Pajama! Badgley Mischka Misses No Beat
“We just want to get it over with—we have to move mountains this week,” designer Mark Badgley lamented to the Daily Transom the other evening at a party uptown. read more »
Step Into Our Anna Wintour Time Capsule: It's 1995!
In an effort to discover just how much fashion has changed over the last decade, we stumbled across this Charlie Rose interview with Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour. It was conducted in September of 1995, which gives it a kind of fascinating edge. Ms. Wintour also comes across as rather endearing, which is sort of funny.
Aside from admitting her excitement over Wire magazine and the then-forthcoming magazine George, which was launched by the late John F. Kennedy, Jr., she speaks of “an underground German designer named Helmut Lang” and a new designer out of Italy, Miuccia Prada. read more »
2007: The Year of Fashion's Desperate Death Wail
In the wonderful world of fashion, 2007 was the year designers sent up a collective chorus, begging, “Look at me!”—or, so says today’s Styles section in the Times. Revisiting disastrous runway trends that add up to a mere style-free cesspool, the piece points specifically to the hard-to-ignore lack of non-white models, Dolce & Gabbana’s atrocious “fantasy-rape” ad and a gaggle of designers who had cameos on lowbrow T.V. shows.
Perhaps Vera Wang’s bizarre appearance on Ugly Betty rings a few bells? Marc Jacobs on The Hills?
What’s more, 2007 was also the year when Tom Ford demanded that his spread for Out magazine’s November issue be re-shot because—why else?—he thought it seemed odd to appear fully-clothed while showering with two naked dudes. read more »
Oscar de la Renta Warms Fall Fashion, Anna Wintour
It’s springtime for Oscar in autumn! We just came from Oscar de la Renta’s Pre-Fall 2008 show, held in an old church on Park Avenue and 63rd Street. It seems even Old School fashion bigwigs like Mr. De la Renta are starting to acknowledge the fact that balmy temps can, these days, extend well into November.
Sure, there were plenty of black cashmere sweaters, dark brown suede boots, tortoiseshell patent clutches and sepia wool faille jackets to whet the appetites of onlookers like Vogue’s Anna Wintour and, a few seats to her left, Teen Vogue’s Amy Astley. But what really drew a few wide-eyed gasps—and a lone clap—from the modish onlookers was the abundance of color. Bright color—in floral, sequined prints, no less! Circumambulating one another in figure-eights and cockeyed circles, tall models (in even taller boots) stomped around the platter-shaped runway as if in some nightmare runway challenge on ANTM. At least their floral cloqué brocade skirts, harlequin ribbon belts, plum silk georgette dresses and emerald silk hammered satin gowns made it easy to avoid an eminent collision.
Continue reading after the jump. read more »
The So-Far Unremarkable Career of Fashionista Diaries Star
Celebrity blog Fashionista reported today that Bridget Helene—whose internship at P.R. firm Seventh House was featured on the SoapNet show The Fashionista Diaries—landed and then lost a job at Vogue. According to the item, Ms. Helene, 25, was offered a full-time temp job at the fashion glossy after she ran into Anna Wintour at 4 Times Square. When House and Garden shuttered and the belly-up book’s staffers were placed at other in-house magazines, the reality TV star got the axe.
But Conde Nast is disputing that rather dramatic version of the tale.
“She was temping here," a spokesman for Vogue told The Daily Transom in an interview. "She came from our temp agency and was helping out with a project in the special events office. There might be some follow-up,” he said, referring to Ms. Helene’s future at Condé Nast. “It was more because we had some need for some temporary help. And she did a great job with filling in on that. I don’t think it was because she ran into Anna.”
Hamish Bowles Answers: What Is 'Vogue Living'?
With his shiny mop of hair and tortoise shell glasses, Hamish Bowles, the ever-dapper, somewhat avian-looking European editor-at-large for Vogue, seems a bit like a character only Evelyn Waugh could have dreamed up. But Mr. Bowles, 44, is in fact real and, it turns out, he's quite serious about what it means to live in a 'Vogue world.'
Mr. Bowles spoke to the Daily Transom last night at around 7:30 p.m. in the Calvin Klein store on Madison Ave. and 60th Street, where he and his new book, Vogue Living: Houses, Gardens, People, were being toasted with buckets of Veuve Clicquot. The party, which was hosted by Mr. Klein's creative director, Francisco Costa, was filled to the brim with Condé Nast editors, the majority clad almost entirely in black. Men's Vogue's Jay Fielden and Ned Martel made brief appearances. Vogue's Anna Wintour was also there, though, according to one of her assistants at the party, Ms. Wintour planned to make her entrance a mere 15 minutes before the celebration’s end. Other guests included: Deeda Blair, Tory Burch, Renee Rockefeller, Aerin Lauder, Patrick Demarchelier, Arthur Elgort, Anh Duong, Marina Rust, Allison Sarofim, Lucy Sykes and Jacquetta Wheeler.
Mr. Bowles admitted that, while working on the book, he felt the immense pressure to uphold Vogue's king-of-the-hill legacy. Aside from the expectations placed on his work, he said, “it's also a great door-opener of course. One of the exciting parts of this book was that I really looked through a hundred years of interiors and lifestyle and architecture coverage in Vogue. It's extraordinary how ecclectic that coverage has been. It's been, obviously the fashionable leaders of society, the great swans of the 20th century, but it's also been the most innovative architects, the most revered artists of the century, so I think there's an incredible legacy to live up to. I think it's exciting for people to be asked,” he said of the subjects that appear in Vogue Living.
When he was asked to describe what the quintessential 'Vogue person' might be like, Mr. Bowles nodded with an honest grin. “I think it's all about having the courage of your convictions and having a real personal conviction about style,” he said. Mr. Bowles then went on to describe what it means to be a 'Vogue trendsetter,' saying, “I think that they're the kind of houses and the homemakers, style-makers who create them that we celebrate always have a strong point of view, and it might be quirky and idiosyncratic. You know, it's a kind of translation of…they're people who kind of live as they sort of present themselves. It's a certain sense of style or a vision of how to live or present yourself is a very coherent thing, entity.”
Skeptics might be forgiven for being wary of the tedium that attends the notion of a Vogue person or house, but Mr. Bowles promised that he is constantly being surprised by unexpected people and surroundings when working on a project for the magazine or his new book. “What is exhilarating for me about covering houses and doing lifestyle stories for Vogue and for Vogue Living is the idea that you never know what's going to lurk behind that door. It's the idea of constantly being surprised and excited,” he said, wearing a gray, slim-fitting suit over a plaid purple shirt and dark necktie. “For me, the more reflective, the better. All I would say is that I hope and trust that it's going in very eclectic directions.” read more »
The Day in Gossip: S.A.T.C.'s Shooting Snafu! Anna Wintour Purses Lips!
Despite his fling with Linda Evangelista, billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault will still wed Salma Hayek. [Page Six]
Anna Wintour is less than impressed by Spain’s fashion-forward frocks. [Rush & Malloy: final item]
Josh Hartnett stammers over recent hot date with Rihanna. [Page Six] read more »
Kate Moss Goes Mass!
And her clothes are going to be sold at … Barneys. Meanwhile, Anna Wintour is classing up the Gap. It’s the logical apotheosis of our cheap-chic era. read more »
Brrrr! PETA magnet and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour takes to the tents.
9/11 5.0: Broken Ground/Portraits of Grief
Roger Federer & Anna Wintour, Oscar de la Renta, 9/11/06.
Photo: Getty Images.
It’s Condo Nast: Newhouse Keeps Editors Housed
It's Condo Nast: Newhouse Keeps Editors Housed
Your Conde Nast Opportunity Awaits
Trashing Lauren Weisberger: Frenemies of New York
As in today's Observer, NY Daily News gossips Rush and Molloy get in a little on Lauren Weisberger's new book, noting that "The Devil Wears Prada author gets even in her new book with witty Gawker founder Elizabeth Spiers, who trashed her on the blog. 'If anyone finds out exactly what Ms. Weisberger is an 'insider' in, do let us know,' she wrote," they say.
Of course, that Gawker item was written after Ms. Spiers was safely ensconced at New York magazine, but the point remains. (In fact, there's a new theme in chick lit of (totally fantasized) horrible abusive bloggers in the Big City; see also Deborah Schoeneman's forthcoming book.) read more »
In any event, the name "Weisberger" appears 25 times on Gawker, and 13 of those appearances are during Ms. Spiers' tenure. Here are a few selected items of Ms. Spiers' horrible, cruel mauling of Ms. Weisberger:
July 7, 2003: "When the NYT had former Harper's Bazaar editor and [Vogue editor] Anna Wintour protegee Kate Betts review The Devil Wears Prada, (Lauren Weisberger's roman-a-clef about her job as Anna's assistant) I thought it was incredibly unfair..." April 24, 2003: "Shameless but relevant self-promotion: I interviewed Lauren Weisberger, the author of The Devil Wears Prada (a roman a clef about Vogue editor Anna Wintour) on Monday for Salon." April 14, 2003: "How naive do you have to be to sign up to work for [Vogue Editor] Anna Wintour, expecting that she's going to be nice to you? She's Anna Wintour, for god's sake! Of course she's going to abuse you! It's her job!" April 13, 2003: "As far as book reviews go, Betts' review isn't an actual review. There's no discussion of the novel as a piece of literature. It's really just an ethical analysis of Weisberger's decision to trash her ex-boss in print..." Yow! Harsh! Meow!Inside The Salmon Spread: Kunkeled, Dentonized, and De-Krensed
The Transom, as a former employee of the profile subject, will not comment on Tom Scocca's profile of Nick Denton. However, The Transom will quote this paragraph:
"I do find bizarre the level of interest in the finances of a private company," Mr. Denton instant-messaged. "A small private company.... Without an office, even." In his humility, Mr. Denton sounded like a man cruising the Jersey Turnpike on a motor scooter that appears to run on bathwater: Why are you interested in my little scooter? It doesn't carry anywhere near as many people as your gasoline-powered S.U.V.Indeed.
The Transom, led by correspondent Brook S. Mason, postulates this week that Moscow is the New Paris. They're rich, baby! Also: Anna Wintour throws an awkward party for George Clooney, and sad-sack Gifford Miller wanders the streets of Manhattan licking candy apples.
Hey, have you been Kunkeled? So many people have these days! Matt Haber recalls life on Chambers Street where Benjamin Kunkel borrowed a set for scenes in his novel Indecision.
Thomas Krens is out, after 17 years, as director of the Guggenheim. But can museums survive his heinous legacy? Tyler Green looks back on an era, and chats with new Gugg director Lisa Dennison.What goes on inside that hip Danny Meyer burgerstand? It's Shake Shack Confidential! read more »
Justine Levy, glam Parisian daughter of Bernard-Henri Lévy, comes to America to dish the dirt.
Alexandra Jacobs confronts her own media-whoredom after her Jet Blue "national event."It's Fashion Wake
It’s Fashion Wake
