My next book revealed for Christmas: Don’t open ’til….July?
Women’s Wear Daily aka WWD revealed the cover of Focus: The Secret, Sexy, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers today in an article by Alexandra Steigrad. The book will be published July 5th, but pre-orders are vitally important nowadays, so if you’re interested please order a copy from your favorite online bookseller. Links to them […]
Throwback: Princess TNT at Versailles
A new book’s been published on the home of Gloria von Thurn und Taxis, but she’s frankly turned dowdy in her current incarnation. Click the image to see and read a bit about the younger, wilder, glorious Princess Gloria I knew and loved in a wonderful photo by Roxanne Lowit, who covered a Karl Lagerfeld […]
Supertalls drooping? Tightening the Billionaire’s Belt
Katherine Clark of The Real Deal’s report last week that the “irrational exuberance” among developers of apartments for the super-wealthy is waning, according to participants in a recent realty summit, seems to confirm anecdotal reports that have filtered into and through Gripepad in recent months. “The market today is very slow in terms of high-end […]
Sutton Place: Sweet Suite
Value investor Wilbur Ross has seen the future, and is betting on better days in east midtown, where the luxe district surrounding Sutton Place and Beekman Place was once the height of fashion but more recently has been forgotten if not faded. Ross has purchased a long-on-the-market 14-room duplex apartment at nearby River House, formerly […]
What kind of woman do you think I am? We’ve already established that. We’re just haggling over the price.
An e-mail just received from a “strategic communications” company: “We are now accepting [sic] interviews with Bree Olsen to discuss Charlie Sheen recently announcing he is HIV positive. Olsen is enraged and says Sheen never disclosed he was HIV positive in their year long relationship. If you would like to set up an interview with […]
London Calling
The battle royal between the competing dining empires of Jeremy King and Richard Caring was at the center of my story, “Who Rules The Night?” in the October issue of Departures. King created Le Caprice, The Ivy and other spots now owned by Caring. They compete with King’s newer The Wolseley, The Colony Room (pictured […]
15CPW drops a notch after seven years as NYC’s costliest building
It was inevitable that Fifteen Central Park West would have to give up its crown as Manhattan’s most expensive building, but its seven-year run has nonetheless been impressive, and the building that finally usurped it owes it and its developers, Will and Arthur Zeckendorf, Eyal Ofer‘s Global Holdings, and Goldman Sachs, a great debt of […]
Don’t Look Back: Return of the Nineties
In the new 40th Anniversary issue of Avenue, I mull the matter of the Nineties, and Society’s place in it. If a champagne glass falls in a forest of Vera Wangs and nobody hears it, did anyone really drop it?
The slippery slope isn’t limited to fashion. Magazines are devolving, too.
Vanessa Friedman‘s article on Alber Elbaz today is a perspicacious look at what’s wrong with the fashion system. But fashion, even in crisis, still reflects the broader culture. Is there really any difference between designers morphing into creative directors and magazine editors restyling themselves as brand managers? The degradation Friedman describes isn’t limited to the […]
R.I.P. Anita Sarko
I was traveling this weekend when I heard that Anita Sarko died thirteen days ago. It’s inexpressably sad–and I bold-faced her name because for me, she’ll always be alive. That’s her, at right, DJ’ing at Barbara Hodes‘ and my wedding. And here is a profile I wrote of her in the New York Times shortly […]