CFDA chief executive officer Steven Kolb was standing just inside the doors of the Museum at FIT last night, greeting designers and directing them onto the red carpet. "Some of them are shy. They don't really want to go that way. But it's not just Vera and Diane's moment to shine, it's everybody's," he said. If anything came to light at the opening night of Impact: 50 Years of the CFDA, it was the star-making turn the half-century-old organization has taken in recent years.
"Early on, the meetings were really just an excuse to have a martini and go to lunch," Kolb explained. "But now fashion has become this pop culture phenomenon, and people want access, so we've evolved from an insular trade group to a consumer-facing organization." As Michael Kors put it, "Everyone wants to crash the party." The martini drinking is being done after dark these days, in the company of stars like Kate Winslet, who arrived on the arm of St. John's George Sharp amid a flurry of popping flashbulbs.
At some point, most everyone made it from the buzzing ground floor to the basement, where looks from 70 designers told the story of the last few decades. Reed Krakoff was paying his second visit of the day, having attended that morning's preview. "I'm familiar with most of it, like all of us, but to see it at one time this way shows how it happened historically—that gave it a new twist," he said, adding that the opportunity to say hi to childhood heroes like Alexander Julian and Norma Kamali was an extra bonus.
Maria Cornejo pointed out that today's American designers are comparing themselves not to Europeans but to each other. Case in point: "I'm really pleased," she said, "because my piece got put next to a Rick Owens."
"We wore these green plaid skirts and we would have to get down on our knees so they could check the lengths in school—no joke," Annabelle Dexter-Jones said last night of her prep school uniform. She didn't like those skirts at the time—"I was always the one trying to change the uniform in some way. I always got in trouble for it, too," she went on. But after going through old family albums recently, she found inspiration in them for her new capsule collection for French brand Faith Connexion.
To celebrate her debut design efforts with the label, Annabelle's friends and family gathered for dinner at Le Baron. "I actually have only been here twice because I've been so busy with this line, and André has an art show he's about to open so he's been focused on that," she admitted, referring to her beau André Saraiva, who busied himself making sure everything was running smoothly at his newly opened club. Meanwhile, mom Ann Dexter-Jones was showing off her own jewelry designs. As one guest gawked at the weight of her chain-link pieces, she responded, "After one vodka drink, I don't even notice them."
During dinner, conversation quickly turned French. "Have you seen the Emmanuelle Alt video?" asked one male guest in his native tongue. He was referring to the clip in which the Paris Vogue editor sings Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go." Although Olivier Zahm, who was sitting nearby, remained focused on his BlackBerry, the rest of the table was amused. "I called Carine Roitfeld the second I saw it to see what she thought about it," the guest continued. "She watched it on her iPhone immediately."
Last night, New York's downtown scene was divided by two musical performances: the Wu-Tang Clan, at the Made Fashion Week and Lexus launch party at Milk Studios, and the Kills, who also began playing at midnight a few blocks away at a party held by DeLeón Tequila at the Standard's Boom Boom Room. By 10:30 p.m., there was already a line around the block for Made's Valentine's-themed party, which boasted a Vegas-style wedding chapel where guests could take pictures with an Elvis impersonator before making their vows on the dance floor. Over at the Standard, loud cheers came from the likes of Erin Wasson and Alexander Skarsgard when Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince stepped onto the stage. (They would've been louder if Hince's better half, Kate Moss, was in attendance, but there's always their Saturday night performance at the Dream Downtown for that potentiality.) The duo's set included their song "Kissy Kissy" and Patsy Cline's "Crazy" and wrapped up with "The Last Goodbye" around 1 a.m., after which the capacity crowd made its way next door to Le Bain.
The crowd at last night's New York amfAR gala was worth sticking around for. Just ask Joseph Altuzarra, who was scoping out his table during cocktail hour. "I'm going to have to be rude and leave early; I'm just seeing who I'm going to offend," explained the designer, whose runway show is this Saturday. Among those he'd be ditching: Linda Evangelista, Sky Ferreira, and Terry Richardson.
Sarah Jessica Parker served as master of ceremonies, launching the evening's program with a tribute to the AIDS research organization's founding international chairman, Elizabeth Taylor. Kenneth Cole added a current-events twist during his turn at the dais, expressing gratitude to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which declared California's Prop 8 unconstitutional earlier this week.
Cipriani Wall Street's dining room was a veritable supermodel corral, thanks in large part to the presence of honoree Roberto Cavalli. Elizabeth Hurley, Karolina Kurkova, Heidi Klum, and Liya Kebede were there to pay respects, and on the designer's right sat none other than Cindy Crawford, who had the inside scoop on why her old friend was going around the room with a point-and-shoot camera. "He's blogging now, that's what he says," Crawford related. It's not a hobby she's picked up yet, she added. "I barely have time to tweet."
A Robert Mapplethorpe photograph of Richard Gere fetched $20,000 during the live auction, with Padma Lakshmi's offer to hang it personally failing to secure an extra five grand. By the time the Cavalli VIP package came onto the block, though, the competition had heated up. A menu of royal treatments that included front-row seats to the designer's show in Milan next September and a styling session with the man himself went for $32,000, funds that will improve the prospects for sufferers of HIV and AIDS—as Cavalli put it in his heavily accented English, "to make them more happy, like we are."
New York-based photographer Anna Bauer spent the past four years catching industry icons like Karl Lagerfeld and Dries Van Noten backstage with her 4 x 5 camera. Last night at the New Museum on the Bowery, Bauer took center stage at the Interview and DeLeón-sponsored cocktail fêting her new book Anna Bauer Backstage. The party was co-hosted by Fabien Baron and Style.com's Tim Blanks.
"I remember I used to see her all the time backstage at shows, and she asked if she could take my picture and I told her 'no, thank you' because I don't like to have my photo taken," said a PR executive in a crowd that included Thakoon Panichgul, Johan Lindeberg, and Liu Wen. "Now I see this book and, man, I really wish I had let her take my photo."
Plenty of famous faces had been more than happy to oblige. "When I shot David Sims," Bauer explained, "I didn't know who he was and I told him he was holding more still than any of the models. He said, 'Yeah, I kind of know how this works.' "
What's next for Bauer? "Enjoy the next season without my 4 x 5," she said.
A buzzy vernissage for Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld's latest found-artist project has become a ritual of sorts during New York fashion week. This season's unveiling was of 15 works by Ouattara Watts, a Neo-Expressionist who came of age in the eighties with fellow big-canvas painters David Salle and Julian Schnabel.
Giovanna Battaglia, no slouch when it comes to art history, connected the dots even further. "It's like transavanguardia"—the Italian movement of the same period that included Francesco Clemente and Mimmo Paladino. Watts even got her to come out to his studio in Brooklyn, Battaglia added, a borough she visits rarely and with an extreme sense of purpose—"only to studios and photo shoots, and they have an amazing place for cheeseburgers over there."
A half-hour after the opening ended, guards at the West Village warehouse where the show went down (or up, rather) shooed her and Restoin-Roitfeld out. No matter: They were late for the after-party at Acme, where they joined the likes of Elisa Sednaoui, Lily Donaldson, and Stavros Niarchos, the latter installed in a corner seat with girlfriend Jessica Hart. Watts entered the dining room to a standing ovation and settled in at the main table with Ivorian countryman Isaach De Bankolé and Glenn O'Brien, who's known Watts ever since meeting him through Jean-Michel Basquiat.
"Ouattara's been underrated for various reasons," O'Brien offered. "I think he's the kind of person who likes to live a nice life, so he hasn't really been incredibly aggressive and ambitious. But his work has still really evolved." Thanks to the new exposure, his sales may have, too—Roitfeld said he'd found a buyer for about half the paintings in the show, one of which has the letters "V.R." rather prominently stitched into it. "Vlad was very proud of it, but he never said anything to Ouattara. And Ouattara never said anything," Battaglia confided. Actions, as they say, speak louder, anyway.
"I'm sad the secret is out," Rose Byrne admitted to Style.com last night at the new Sandro Bleecker Street store. "I'm a big fan of the Sandro brand from being in London. I guess all good things can't remain a secret forever."
The actress wasn't the only one singing the praises of Sandro and its founder-designer Evelyne Chetrite at the cocktail party celebrating the brand's U.S. arrival and a new collaboration with Dree Hemingway. "It's a new, big step for me," said Hemingway, who was sporting several pieces from her capsule collection. "The white shift dress is my favorite. You literally throw it on and it's the quintessential summer dress—whether you have big boobs, small boobs, big hips, whatever, it works."
After things wrapped up at the store, Hemingway, Chetrite, and other partygoers were shuttled over to the newly opened Le Baron, where they were joined by the likes of Penn Badgley and Zoë Kravitz. Though many guests turned in early with the big week of fashion shows ahead on their minds, a few stayed up well past midnight. On his way out, Waris Ahluwalia said, "What am I doing? I'm a designer, I have to go home!"
"The last time I was at a Louboutin party, I almost broke my foot," a woman said as she rode the escalator to the second floor at Bergdorf Goodman last night.
Things didn't get quite that rowdy at the retailer's red-themed 20th anniversary fête for the shoe maestro. Except, that is, when the man of the hour made his grand entrance. As guests tried to get a photo or an autograph of Louboutin—not easy, what with his pack of bodyguards—even industry insiders admitted that meeting the designer is a thrill. "In May, I had lunch with him in Budapest. I know it sounds name drop-y, but I'm from the Midwest, so it was pretty exciting," said Paper magazine's Mickey Boardman.
Bergdorf's Linda Fargo was on the same page—she decked herself out in confetti for the occasion. Just how did she manage to attach it to her skin? "I used lots of fake eyelash glue," she told Style.com. "Originally, I went to the store to get those gold star stickers, like the ones they used to put on your papers in school when you did well, and they looked at me like I was crazy!"