Last night's Costume Institute Gala offered plenty to marvel at, but it wasn't the red-carpet fashion or the Schiaparelli and Prada dresses encased in glass that had Karolina Kurkova buzzing at the Crown after-party: "I loved the cookies!" the model told Style.com as she made her entrance with Rachel Zoe. "There were a lot of amazing things—Bruno Mars!—but those cookies were really good."
The crooner's performance back at the Met's Temple of Dendur had everyone on their feet. "People were grooving out pretty hard," said Jonathan Tisch, who added that his personal highlight was "saying hi to Tom Brady, and that's a lot coming from me." (Tisch, for the fashion types reading this, is a co-owner of the New York Giants.) There was no sign of Brady at Crown, but there were other sports stars in the mix, including Alex Rodriguez and basketball player Tyson Chandler—both of whom gave the model set a run for its money in the height department. "Wow, I bet she could make a few slam dunks," said a cocktail waiter when Chanel Iman strolled in.
By 1 a.m., the party was winding down, with some in the crowd moving on to the Prada-sponsored bashes at the Fletcher-Sinclair mansion and at the Top of the Standard. "I am going to the Prada after-party at Boom Boom after I change," said Kurkova, whose sparkling Rachel Zoe column gown and matching headpiece was one of the more opulent looks of the night. "I'm wearing all black. The turban is coming off, hair is coming down, everything is coming off."
—Kristin Studeman read more..
Wednesday, 9 May 2012
Costume Institute Gala-Karolina Kurkova-Rachel Zoe-Fashion-Prada
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Traditional Museum-Francesco Vezzoli-Central Gallery-Collaborators-Miuccia Prada
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 read more..