By Kat Stoeffel 3/28/12 11:10am

off the record

4 Photos

Cover

Style.com Hits ‘Print’ Again

In the second issue of Style.com/Print, the Fairchild fashion site’s semiannual magazine, Chanel creative director Karl Lagerfeld reserved his trademark trash talk for a woman who can’t tweet back: the late house matriarch, Coco Chanel.

Mr. Lagerfeld blamed her late-career decline on her belief, in the 1960s, that jeans and miniskirts were “vulgar.”

“The collections from the mid-’60s to the ’70s were quite ecchh,” he told the magazine. “Then they had 10 years of respect, for what it’s worth, then the rest is … me.” Read More

By Kat Stoeffel 3/21/12 8:45am

Shindigger

Richard Chai, Shu Pei, Liu Wen, Phillip Lim

Eastern Exposure: Asia Society Celebrates Asia Week at The Plaza

The Observer was about halfway through our black rice and bok choy at the Asia Society’s Asia Week kick-off gala on Monday night when iGavel online auctioneer Lark Mason plucked our dessert spoon off the table and politely asked us to tell him about it.

Mr. Mason, a frequent appraiser on PBS’s Antiques Roadshow, was enlisting us to play along in mock version of the show.

We found the spoon while cleaning out our dead grandmother’s attic, we lied. We have a feeling it’s important.

Mr. Mason turned the spoon slowly in his hand.

“Manufactured in China, in the 1930s, for American export. She probably received it as a wedding gift,” he said matter-of-factly. “But I’m sure it has a lot of sentimental value.”  Read More