Fashion News

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.

Looks Like Team Spirit -
—Brittany Adams

Terry de Gunzburg -

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.

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."

A Tribe Called Equestrian -
—Marina Larroude

Shall W.E. Dance? -

Even the world's biggest stars aren't exempt from criticism—especially from their daughters. "This one time, she said to me, 'Mom, that [outfit] is totally inappropriate. No one will take you seriously as a director—you can't wear that,' " Madonna said last night at the Ziegfeld Theatre, where the Cinema Society was hosting its second New York screening of her Wallis-and-Windsor biopic W.E. If clothes make the director, they also make the star—and according to Andrea Riseborough, who plays Wallis Simpson, it was the fashion of the film that helped her bring to life the character she plays on screen. "There was one brooch that reminded me so much of the Duchess—it actually belonged to her," she told Style.com before the screening. "It was kind of evoking her spirit throughout the whole filming." Maybe it was a good luck charm, too: This morning, costume designer (and longtime Madonna stylist) Arianne Phillips was nominated for an Oscar for her work.

Directing done, it's back to the day job for Madonna. She's currently preparing for her Super Bowl halftime performance. "I am really nervous," she admitted. But as one of her stars, actor James D'Arcy, reminded us, she's a pro—it's her partners who should be nervous. "Dancing for one of the most famous dancers in the world with very little dance experience—that was the sweatiest it got," he said of filming one of the movie's sequences. "At one point, I made myself dance with her for three seconds just to say I had danced with Madonna."

Social Intelligence -

Making Headlines -

Following a preview in Milan last fall, the Covers Collection by L'Uomo Vogue, a series of 40 original cover shots, went under the hammer at Sotheby's in Paris last night.

"Honestly, this [event] has less to do with the men's collections than the fact that I wanted to do something with these covers," said editor in chief Franca Sozzani. As a newly appointed Goodwill Ambassador to the U.N., she decided to auction off unique cover shots to benefit Fashion4Development, which supports educational programs and the development of the textile industry in Ghana and Nigeria.

Surveying the scene, Sozzani expressed a special affection for Bruce Weber's Michael Jackson cover, the star's last shoot, and one of Keith Richards by her son, Francesco Carrozzini. "I loved that picture because it showed his hands and people said, 'What about the face?' and I said, 'It doesn't matter.' "

In an informal survey of guests including Didier Ludot, Kilian Hennessy, Alexis Mabille, Bruno Frisoni, and Maxime Simoens, the Tilda Swinton cover by Paolo Roversi and Weber's James Dean-style shot of Sean Penn drew the most nods. Carrozzini's shot of Stephen Dorff as a cowboy drew a special mention from Jean Paul Gaultier. "Lying on the floor of his car like that is sexy," said the designer. "One can imagine lots of things."

In the end, a bidding war broke out over Swinton (Frisoni took her home). The auction raised nearly $150,000.

Among Friends -

With the Golden Globes just wrapped and the SAG Awards less than two weeks away, Los Angeles is party central this month. But the dinner Elle Fanning hosted at the Chateau Marmont last night celebrated fashion, not the movies. In partnership with Van Cleef & Arpels, the young actress invited Kirsten Dunst and Sofia Coppola, among others, to toast Rodarte's Kate and Laura Mulleavy. "Sometimes it's nice to steal away and celebrate what you've done with the people you've worked with for a long time," Laura told Style.com, referring to a recent spate of projects, including the A Magazine they guest-curated, their Fra Angelico solo exhibition at LACMA, and a just-announced collaboration with the L.A. Philharmonic. "It's good every once in a while to take a step back and say, 'That was really cool that we did this together.' "

Fanning, who wore a dress from the designers' Spring collection to the Critics' Choice Awards last week, first fell for Rodarte at a photo shoot. "I love how they take all the memories they have from when they were little and put that into their dresses," the actress enthused, referencing their shared passion for collecting dolls. "I always look at their show first." The adoration goes both ways: "Elle loves fashion and all the things that young girls love," Laura said. "It's fascinating for me to watch her experience them."

Case In Point -
—Brittany Adams

Donna Karan Spring 2012 -

Golden Globes Beauty Report -

Global Influence -

There were movie stars on the runway at Miuccia Prada’s menswear show in Milan tonight, but with apologies to Mrs. P, she had nothing on the red carpet at the 69th annual Golden Globes in Hollywood. And for sheer star power, no one came close to Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, the former in Atelier Versace and the latter in Salvatore Ferragamo. Angie went home empty-handed (her directoral debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and lost), but she won the evening's best-dressed competiton, no contest.

That’s not to say there weren’t plenty of knockout looks. We loved Best Actress winner Michelle Williams in her covered-up Jason Wu gown (long sleeves are a percolating trend: see Julianna Margulies in Naeem Khan and newly engaged Jessica Biel in Elie Saab). Tilda Swinton remained loyal to Paris designer Haider Ackermann and it paid off. And Claire Danes and Kate Winslet (who also accepted prizes) both looked great—not to mention occasion-appropriate—in their black and white columns; Danes' was J. Mendel and Winslet's was Jenny Packham.

Some actresses, on the other hand, let their enthusiasm get the better of them. Mermaid dresses are better suited to the Oscars, and ball gowns are better left for prom night. And there were a few too many down-to-the-navel plunging numbers for comfort. We must have the legacy of Elizabeth Taylor, as well as plenty of double-sided tape, to thank for that.