Makeup Bag Confessions


Style Squared

—Brittany Adams

Sole Man

"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!"

—Kristin Studeman

Fashion Speak


Kopp Land

Sandro Kopp paints his portraits differently: namely, via Skype from Scotland. And perhaps for that reason, his New York friends and famous sitters (often one and the same) have been overjoyed to have the 33-year-old artist in town—although it doesn't hurt, of course, that his plus-one is Tilda Swinton. "It's been, like, Sandro week. I think all of his friends have been throwing him parties," David Maupin said on Saturday night, where his gallery, Lehmann Maupin, hosted a dinner in celebration of Kopp's new exhibition, There You Are, at its Chrystie Street space.

"I think part of it is an extension of his charm and his personality and being an artist—to do this type of work, you have to kind of relate and open up some kind of conversation with your subject," Maupin mused, as Michael Stipe (who'd thrown Kopp a dinner party of his own the night before) arrived with gold, letter-shaped balloons that spelled out K-O-P-P. Meanwhile, Frances McDormand was taking her co-hosting duties seriously: "I'm the hostess; do what I say," the actress said, cutting a swath through the cocktail area. "We're moving to the back room. My name's Fran."

Singer-songwriter Patrick Wolf had flown in from London and serenaded dinner guests before they took their seats underneath enormous rice paper lanterns. (The proceedings were sponsored by Belvedere, Pomellato, and Istanbul '74, the Turkish culture-importing outfit behind the annual Istancool festival.) Kopp, looking very much the man of the hour in a velvet YSL dinner jacket, declared himself not just over the moon—"I'm over Mars," he said. As McDormand started packing up kale salad for the road, the crowd headed off to the after-party at Pulqueria. The balloons didn't make the trip, but Kopp and Swinton did, and stayed until 2 a.m.—which makes the actress' luminous appearance at the SAG Awards in L.A. the following evening all the more remarkable.

 

—Darrell Hartman

Heart Skipped a Beat

—Marina Larroude

And The Actor Goes To

The 18th Annual SAG Awards ceremony was almost like watching the Globes all over again. Same A-list nominees, same A-list winners, save for upsets in the Best Actor and Actress categories. Only this time around the festivities included a drinking game courtesy of the Bridesmaids crew. Kristen Wiig and company's onstage antics echoed the action on the red carpet: For the most part, the vibe tonight was cooler, looser, and more fun—and better for it.

That's not to say the glam factor went missing. Natalie Portman and Zoe Saldana both nabbed looks fresh from the Paris haute couture shows that wrapped last Wednesday; the former chose a strapless Giambattista Valli in a deep shade of bordeaux, and the latter wore Look 17 from Givenchy. Minus the nose ring, that is—things weren't quite that loose.

Still, there was plenty to like: Emma Stone's black Alexander McQueen, Michelle Williams' lacy red Valentino, Jessica Chastain's royal-blue gown from Calvin Klein Collection. We'll be looking forward to seeing what those three choose for the Oscars. Gretchen Mol's white and gold L'Wren Scott column dress also made a big impact.

White and gold also proved lucky for a Marchesa-clad Viola Davis. After winning Best Actress for her role in The Help, she was back on stage again for the Best Ensemble prize.

—Nicole Phelps

Fête Majeur

For ten years, the Sidaction gala has closed the spring Couture season in Paris. The evening has evolved into a highly successful fundraiser for AIDS education, research, and treatment, but the personality of the actual event is contingent on a couple of other features. One, it's something of a fashion showcase, not quite to the extent of New York's Met ball, but designers do make the scene with a "muse," like Giambattista Valli arriving with Bianca Brandolini d'Adda, Peter Copping dressing Clémence Poésy, or Dita Von Teese sporting Alexis Mabille on her bod and Alexis Mabille on her arm. Jean Paul Gaultier and Grace Jones also made a logical pair, even if she was actually with The Other JPG (Jean-Paul Goude).

Another characteristic of the gala is the lengthy speechifying that precedes dinner. Not, in itself, unusual at such things, but it's always seemed a little off that they're not somehow translated for the non-French speakers in the audience. A shame, when the information being imparted is so worthy. Plus, Sidaction's work is international. Plus, the gala comes at the end of a fashion semi-week, when Paris is awash with out-of-towners. I seemed to be surrounded by people who'd quickly stretched their bilingualism to the max. Oh, well, there was always a special postprandial edition of Club Sandwich, where the Anglophones whose French had been tested and found wanting could blow off some nonverbal steam.

—Tim Blanks

Haute Joaillerie


"It's a New Mix"

Karl Lagerfeld understands decor as well as he knows fashion. The premises for his new signature collection Karl are an opulently minimal series of salons in an hôtel particulier on the Left Bank, so it made sense that the food for the dinner party he hosted on Wednesday night to launch the line should also focus on the bare opulent essentials: caviar, foie gras, and lobster, with a logo-fied iPad as a takeaway. One of the T-shirts in his Karl range features a fanciful self-portrait with the handwritten message "I Love Gossip." Plenty of that in a room full of fashion people, though I spent much of the night talking about obscure Eastern European films with the encyclopedically informed Anja Rubik. How often do you get the chance to have a real talk with anyone about Dusan Makavejev's scatological Sweet Movie? Especially while chunks of foie gras are drifting back and forth under your nose.

Rubik stars in the commercial that Trey Laird made for the launch of Karl. It was pre-loaded on the iPad. Sui He is also in the ad. She spoke no English when she arrived in New York a year ago but now sounds as politely precise as an elocutionist. On the day of the shoot, Sui was intimidated by the ease of the more experienced models. "It was like a competition," she said. Everyone's a winner in the finished product, which premiered at the dinner, but Sui seemed a little taken aback at how persuasive she was as a minx.

"It's a new mix," murmured Lagerfeld to the camera at the end of his film. Right on cue, Azealia Banks appeared to perform. The neighborhood is "nice," so she didn't get to play more than two songs, but a ruckus was duly raised, and the hair of the haute bourgeoisie peering down into the yard from their windows was surely curled (presuming they could understand her four-letter wordplay). From caviar to c-you-know-what…It may have been a new mix, but it was the same old polymath Karl.

—Tim Blanks

Terry de Gunzburg


Looks Like Team Spirit

—Brittany Adams

A Tribe Called Equestrian

—Marina Larroude

24 h Party People

After the success of the Double Club in London, Paris was an obvious target for another of Prada's cultural interventions. The 24 h Museum was exactly that, an imposing exhibition space constructed inside the Palais d'Iéna for all of one day. Prada's collaborators this time were the art provocateur Francesco Vezzoli and Rem Koolhaas's design team AMO, who mimicked the traditional museum setup with a central gallery of classical "sculptures" (photographic images of ancient statues mounted on Perspex, with contemporary features superimposed). There was even a monumental techno-goddess in the grand stairway of the Palais, à la the Winged Victory at the Louvre.

The 24 h Museum opened last night with a party that was a work of art in itself. First, there was a dinner for 120 or so, in the central gallery. As party guests began to arrive and the gallery's metal grill doors were briefly closed, it became clear that we were actually in a huge cage. That fit right in with the conceptual mind games Vezzoli and his patron Miuccia Prada play so well. Super-chef Alain Passard, who specializes in extraordinary vegetariana, did the menu. I tasted a hibiscus reduction for the first time in my life. Entertaining (on a grand scale) footnote: All the tableware, glasses, and cutlery apparently came from Miuccia's home. After dinner, there was a disco in the Salon des Refusés, the room where museums would traditionally store things that were rejected from exhibitions. Kate Moss directed the music—Dexys Midnight Runners, David Bowie, George Michael, the hits of your (or at least her) life.

It's easy to imagine the Herculean effort that went into making the 24 h Museum happen. That's power. But it looks like power is Prada's theme this season. The shadow cast by Miuccia's star-injected men's show last week is a long one. She got another celebrity turnout last night, from Polanski and Deneuve to Salma Hayek and Diane Kruger, with a smattering of art world stars. Still, the ever-contrary Vezzoli said, "This is a night when romanticism trumps power." Mind you, it was romance with a twist. The artist also claimed inspiration from the Oedipus complex. It was his mother's eyes that were superimposed on every statue.

—Tim Blanks

Wish You Were Here

Starwood Hotel Group's Luxury Collection has done some significant booking of its own recently, enlisting Tilda Swinton and I Am Love director Luca Guadagnino to conceive and create a short film showcasing three of its upscale American properties.

Here, which went live online and screened at midtown's Core Club last night, stars Agyness Deyn as a solitary traveler whose itinerary (the Equinox in Vermont, the Phoenician in Arizona, and the Royal Hawaiian in Honolulu) is delivered to her one mysterious handwritten note at a time. "You don't know what the romance is about, you don't know who the man is," Guadagnino explained post-screening. "Actually, it's Waris." As in Ahluwalia, who in his role as a so-called Global Explorer for the brand assembled the creative dream team (including costume designer Heidi Bivens and Jason Schwartzman, who co-wrote the score).

Deyn, who channels Tippi Hedren for the film, found parts of the role familiar. "A lot of my traveling for my job over the past ten years has been solo traveling, I suppose, where I've not planned the hotel or anything, so in a way I just discover it."

The concept came courtesy of Swinton (who stayed home in Scotland during filming) and fellow traveler Sandro Kopp, both of whom know the highs—and lows—of traveling alone. "The only issue with it, which is quite a funny moment, is when the systems crash and you realize you're in an airport, in a country, and somehow the booking didn't come through and there you are, stuck," the actress explained. But you won't find such snafus in Here. "That was all cut out of the film," she joked. "It's in the DVD extras."

—Darrell Hartman