Done Talking

After-Partying With the Met Set

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."

"More Than War and Sports"

The Whitney American Art Award gala attracted collectors, artists, and admirers alike to a lofty far west Chelsea venue last night. "I'm not artistic. Well, you could say my art is on the tennis court," John McEnroe told Style.com. 

The tennis ace chatted with Peter M. Brant, who was one of the honorees of the evening, before he did a quick browse of the work up for sale. One memorable digital print of a dollhouse landscape by James Casebere was tagged at $25,000. "I do love and collect art," McEnroe said more seriously. "There's this one guy that I think is pretty good. You might have heard of him: Vincent van Gogh?"

The casual atmosphere carried through dinner and a performance by McEnroe's wife, Patty Smyth. The strong turnout, which included Diane von Furstenberg, Julian Schnabel, and Anh Duong, brought in more than $1.5 million. With teenage sons in tow, Stephanie Seymour Brant discussed modern art—one of her favorite periods.

"That's such a tough question," she said when asked about her favorite artists. Although when pushed, she conceded, "I do love Urs Fischer's work." The artist was seated just nearby.

Brant, her husband, was perhaps more decisive. He has been an avid supporter of Jeff Koons' oversize sculptures for some time. When he took the stage to accept his award alongside the Henry Luce Foundation and Ogilvy & Mather, he said, "I'm deeply honored. 

This fills me with great emotion I can't express. Thanks to my mother and father, who taught me that this world had more to offer than war and sports."

Dirty Dancing

If the measure of a party is how many times it's compared to New York in the eighties, Friday night's Creative Time gala at the Roseland Ballroom was a raging success. "When times are uncertain, I think it's only natural to crave a return to opulence," said Donna Karan. Terence Koh, wearing a plastic suit jacket from a Hong Kong street vendor, said he comes to the gala every year because it's "just over-the-top, crazy." But this year being the nonprofit public art foundation's 40th anniversary, things were perhaps more heightened than usual.

By the time dessert was served, a wild dance competition had Cindy Sherman, Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, and Courtney Love all looking more than amused. Twenty pinup girls swirled among the dinner tables, each carrying a red box containing a single silicon rose, sculpted by the artist Rachel Feinstein Currin. The flowers felt, said more than one partygoer, like sex toys—which may explain why all 20 sold by night's end. "People love coming out for Creative Time because they've made so much great art happen in New York," Waris Ahluwalia told Style.com over the din. "And because it's a hot party. Wait, can you hear me? If you have to make up a quote, make it dirty."

Girl Talk

Not just anyone could draw the fashion set out for a party on the eve of the Met ball, but Amanda de Cadenet isn't just anyone. Donna Karan, Prabal Gurung, and Christian Louboutin joined Gwyneth Paltrow and Diane von Furstenberg at the designer's Meatpacking District studio to fête de Cadenet's new Lifetime series The Conversation last night.

"I haven't seen the show yet, but they're saying everyone is having real conversations, no bars held—it's raw and honest," Malin Akerman said of the series. "I think people forget celebrities are real people too and we are all fallible, you know? I just feel like we should be real about it."

Of her turn on de Cadenet's couch, DVF admitted, "I don't remember what I said, so I may hate it, but I don't think I will. All I can say is I talked about myself, my favorite subject, and became friends with Amanda." 

Paltrow has known de Cadenet a little longer: "Amanda has been my dear friend for many, many years," she told the crowd. "If you YouTube her, you'll see she was interviewing people when she was 15 years old, you'll see she has this gift. She's able to put people at ease and extract the most incredible bits of information from them."

De Cadenet, in turn, shared one of Paltrow's talents: "I'm a terrible cook," she said. "My kids ask to go stay with Gwyneth all the time because she makes better food for them than I do. Seriously."

"It Ain't a Rock Show, That's for Sure"

"I didn't know she was an artist," said one gallery hopper last night at Courtney Love's debut exhibition, entitled And She's Not Even Pretty, at Fred Torres Collaborations in Chelsea. Gazing at one of the drawings, featuring a doll-like woman resembling Love with the phrase "I'm a celebrity, get me out of here" scribbled across it in red, he added, "But if I were to envision what her art would look like, it would look exactly like this. Like, exactly this, #whitegirlrockerproblems."

The white girl rocker in question—whose art, like her music, is a compelling mash-up of confrontation and vulnerability—made her entrance more than an hour after the likes of Julian Schnabel, Steven Klein, and Olivier Theyskens began filtering into the small studio space. "What I am is nervous. I can't hide behind my guitar in here," Love told Style.com as she lit up a cigarette. "It ain't a rock show, that's for sure. I only went to San Francisco Art Institute for two years, mainly so I could get my allowance. Basically, I just wanted to be a rock star and a movie star. I wanted to either go to Miss Porter's to be a lady, or Chatham Hall, or Interlochen, because Tatum O'Neal won an Oscar when I was two and I wanted one too."

On how the exhibition came about, Love said, "I have two Karen Kilimnik pieces, and one day I was looking at them and I was like, 'I draw better than Kilimnik.' " Apparently, a few art collectors agree; some of the pieces in the exhibition (there are over 45 works on paper on display) have already been sold. But not the white wedding dress made for her by John Galliano, which she marked up in red lipstick with words we can't reprint—that one isn't going anywhere: "They all went nuts on it yesterday and Frank got an offer, but I said I'm not selling it. The point is, I was a little drunk and I just wanted to deface it and then I had this Etsy chick in Ohio embroider over it. Etsy chicks in Ohio, I'm telling you!"

Cannes Film Festival 2012: Pictures that are worth millions

Eva Herzigova in Chopard jewellery and Dolce & Gabbana gown

The right dress + the right star + the Cannes red carpet = red-hot fashion sales. Luke Leitch checks the Croisette accounts.

You can tell just how important - and commercial - the Cannes red carpet has become by how rigorously it is organised. Like lollipop men, but dressed in tuxedos, there is a team whose sole job is to steer starlets through what has become the world's biggest fashion photo-opportunity - one that is almost as vital to oiling the wheels of Cannes as the films are.

This year, their work began at the opening ceremony of the 65th Film Festival on Wednesday. At 6.40pm, the celebrity traffic was light: they waved the Virginie Ledoyen straight through. Wearing an excellent, elegant Elie Saab dark green strapless gown, Ledoyen took five minutes to walk 20 yards, stopping every few feet to swivel, steady herself, tilt her head then pose for the bellowing, four-deep photographer-phalanxes.

Suddenly, a traffic jam: Jane Fonda, Lana Del Rey, Eva Herzigova, Freida Pinto, Jessica Chastain, Eva Longoria, Fan Bing Bing and many more all either sat on the sweltering Croisette in their cars (where, according to one red-carpet stylist, they would have had tissue wadded in their armpits to prevent staining their dress) or waiting in a holding area at the bottom of the carpet.

At 90-second intervals, the lollipop men gestured them forward for their slow, lurking progress up the carpet. Pinto (in split, peplummed Michael Angel dress) and Fonda (in a shimmering, mirrored Atelier Versace gown), were particularly excellent posers; Fonda jiggled, wiggled, grabbed Alec Baldwin in a bearhug and seemed delighted to be there, while Pinto's beaming grin seemed spontaneous, too. The excitable Frenchman commentating for the thousands of rubberneckers played a Del Rey song as the singer started her walk: within minutes, Italian designer Alberta Ferretti pressed "Send" on an email to thousands, announcing itself as the designer of the singer's dress.

Even off the record, no fashion house will admit to paying actresses or models to wear their their clothes on the Cannes red carpet. They will, however, gleefully whisper suggestions that all their rivals do. The truth is somewhere in between: some actresses take money to wear dresses, others have more hazy ties that dictate their choice. One French fashion VIP wrangler said yesterday: "We never pay people to wear our designs. Many do, though, and you can't blame the actresses. Ten thousand euros or more just to wear a dress for the night? I'd do it, wouldn't you?"

One of the most significant sprinklers of stardust in Cannes is not a designer but a jeweller. Knockout pieces by Chopard - which has been a part of the festival for 15 years - glittered on Del Rey, Berenice Bejo, Ledoyen, Fonda, Pinto, Bing Bing and Dolores Chaplin. Herzigova, an old friend of Chopard's co-president, Caroline Scheufele, wore a particularly amazing, lace-intricate, white-gold and diamond necklace designed by Scheufele for the company's exhibition of 25 unseen Marilyn Monroe photographs that opened here this week.

Speaking at Chopard's penthouse pavilion in the Martinez hotel, Scheufele said: "Apart from being exposed the next second all over the world because you have 5,000 journalists, and I don't know how many TV stations, I would say that when you put the the most beautiful necklace in the most beautiful location - say, Place Vendôme - it's nice. But the minute you put it on a celebrity, a beautiful woman and she moves around with it, it becomes alive: this is the difference." She has known customers to arrive at Chopard boutiques with cut-out Cannes red-carpet pictures of Sharon Stone in a pair of earrings, who order them immediately. "It is very useful," she said. "A nice side- effect. But remember it is not just about wearing a dress from Dolce Gabbana or Versace, it is about looking their best, too. For the actresses, the red carpet is a one-off moment and they want to get it right."

The phenomenon of fashion house-led red-carpet style began in 1995, when Barbara Tfank (Michelle Obama's favourite designer, btfank.com ) dressed Uma Thurman in a Tfank-refashioned Prada dress for the Oscars. From LA, Tfank said: "Modern films (excluding period films and TV) have become so 'real', perhaps people long for some aspirational fantasy? The red carpet harkens back to the glamour that Hollywood once embraced via its iconic stars and talented costume designers: think of Carole Lombard, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly. Now, the carpet has become the only outlet for stars where full-on glamour is expected and accepted." 

So perhaps the film industry has missed a trick by sacrificing its on-screen glamour - and the fashion houses have just filled the gap. As costume designer Edith Head wrote in the 1970s: "We don't make glamorous movies today. Everything now is very realistic, artistic - and depressing. When is the last time you you saw a wonderful musical or a fabulous fantasy?" The answer is on Wednesday night, when those tuxedoed lollipop men choreographed the Cannes red carpet.

The insider speaks: Eva Herzigova on how she handles the flashbulbs of the Croisette

"In an editorial shoot there is only one picture being taken, and you can control the angle. But on the red carpet, you can't control anything: there are 360 degrees of photographers. So all you can do is walk, walk through, and when they call your name look over and say "Hallo!", smile, and move on. 

A wrong dress, or high heels - they can make it difficult. But it's about how you feel really. You can be in a sh---- dress and still feel great: you just don't care and it's fine. It's really about confidence. Do some meditation just before you get out there: this is it, you can't change what you look like, you've done that hair, that make-up - so just go with it.

If you think that you have the worldwide press there, who will instantly send the image around the world, that will make it nerve-wracking. You have to think: 'I'm just going to see a movie.'

Normally I turn up, pick a dress at the last minute, and go to Caroline (of Chopard) and we would pick jewellery that would go with the dress. This is the first year that the necklace was the focal point - it's the Marilyn necklace, made especially. So it was quite a challenge: the look started off from the choice of jewellery."