By Emily Anne Epstein 2/05 7:37pm

Couture Control

(Emily Anne Epstein)

Meet Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the Ego-tamer, Ringmaster and Floor-sweeper of Fashion Week

In the 31st-floor offices of SWW Creative, the walls are beige, the carpet is gray and the cabinets are standard-issue wood-grain. There’s no Eames armchair, no runway stills splashed across the walls, not even a lucite coffee table with a copy of Grace Coddington’s memoir. There’s not a flower in sight.

While fashion professionals are known to obsess over the color of their pens, SWW Creative’s offices are about as splashy as an insurance agency’s. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff is not concerned. Read More

By Rebecca Webb 9/21/12 2:45pm

Smelly people. (PMc)

DKNY’s Fragrance Fête: “It’s Not Like a Lesbian Movie—It’s a Fun Movie”

“It’s not like a lesbian movie—it’s a fun movie.” In retrospect, this conversation, overheard by The Observer Thursday night at The Hole gallery, may not have actually been in reference to “Intense,” the film collaboration for DKNY’s “Be Delicious Intense” fragrance championed by Beatrice Dupine, Veronique Gabai-Pinsky and Enrique Badulescu, but, frankly, we will never really know.

The somewhat spasmodic images of a beautiful blonde, mouth occasionally agape, biting (kind of necessarily, given the advertised scent) into a large green apple, that were projected onto nearly every surface of the gallery were certainly to blame for any potential confusion here. Words like “tense,” “bite” and “intuition” also kissed the walls. The rooms were packed full of surprisingly bad-smelling people, including Kelly Killoren Bensimon and Fern Mallis (though The Observer knows they smelled just fine), and most stared, if not at their phones, then at something else besides the images blinking around them. This further confounded the nature of the event and the film at its center. Read More

By Elise Knutsen 5/30/12 3:09pm

Shindigger

Matt Lauer(s)

East is East: The Beginning of the Season and the Hamptons Magazine Party with Matt Lauer

The sweltering pre-summer heat has begun to settle upon our fair city. In the season during which New York’s every nook and cranny teems with sweaty tourists, true city folk gather their kaftans and swim trunks, and head for the hills. The sandy hills of Main Beach, that is.

Fetching our long-hibernating car, we were pleased to find it still filled with the detritus of last summer. A slightly deflated sunhat, a beloved pair of flip-flops, a tube of now suspect sunscreen. We smiled, remembering with sandy fondness of our time Out East. Yes, while the city has its undeniable boons, nothing can quite compare to the Talkhouse late, late on a Saturday night, nor the peculiar shock of seeing endless George Hamilton clones strolling the bucolic streets. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 2/29/12 3:23pm

Fashion Week Observed

Picnik collage

Fashion Week Etiquette Breach: Photogs Bemoan Bloggers With iPhones

As sartorialists make their biannual pilgrimage from New York to London to Milan to Paris, some veteran tent-dwellers still have a pebble stuck in their Louboutins from Lincoln Center.

The glossy editor’s anxiety over being edged out of the front row, it seems, has migrated over to the media riser and down to the pit. What was once the province of professional photogs, to hear them tell it, has been overrun by iPhone and iPad wielding bloggers who wouldn’t know a bounce flash from a zoom lens. And they’re hogging up the press passes for backstage beauty shots!

Shortly after they turned off the stage lights and sopped up the champagne, a handful of disgruntled photographers reached out to The Observer to kvetch. Slights ranged from being turned away from shows, to an errant iPhone interrupting their runway image, to discovering that the insolent photo-bloggers never learned the etiquette about getting your shot and moving on. Read More

By Chloe Malle 10/27/09 11:51pm

Quail for the Beasties: Weber Wistful as Tina and Harry Fete Donatella

Tina Brown was up to her old tricks on Tuesday, Oct. 21, hosting a luncheon for 50 with hubby Harold Evans, honoring fashion dowager Donatella Versace, at the couple’s maisonette near the East River.

Model Christie Brinkley arrived promptly, wearing a pale gray pencil skirt and matching motorcycle jacket. “We just drove in from Read More

By Sharon Barbour 6/25/09 8:26pm

Socialites Shop For Opera; $125 Chanel!

By 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 24, a Divas Shop for Opera Shopping and Cocktails benefit for the New York City Opera, held at a “pop-up” shop on Madison Avenue, had turned into a fashion frenzy. Ravenous shoppers sprawled two floors, prowling the racks and grabbing Manolos, Louboutins, Dior frocks, and more. A Read More

By Chris Shott 5/01/09 1:51pm

Julian Niccolini Turns 21 For the 35th Time as the Posh Four Seasons Turns 50 For Real

“Ladies and gentlemen, let it rock!” charismatic restaurateur Julian Niccolini announced as sultry singer Diego Garcia kicked off a special live performance at the Four Seasons on Thursday, April 30.

The occassion was Mr. Niccolini’s birthday—his 21st, if you believe the winking invite.

“Fifty-six, actually,” noted the irreverent impresario, dressed dapperly as ever in a Read More