The Observer

We were there to watch 27 dancers compete in an “American Idol”-like competition to determine the final spots on the dance squad, whose name at the event was revealed to be the cheeky “Brooklynettes.”

While we waited, heaping cuts of Jay-Z and Biggie boomed over the loudspeakers from DJ Eleven, and we couldn’t help bopping our heads with everyone else, mouthing the words when we knew them.

We took a spot near the action, perched above the stage. Just below it mingled photographers straining their practiced bored looks and excited reporters for small-time media outlets. In just the right lighting, they looked as pretty and well-dressed as everyone else. The dancers were a blur, all flesh and movement. David Diamante, who is also the Nets’ public address announcer, emceed the contest, announcing the women by their first names. It was all very gentleman’s clubby, except for the dreadlocks down to his waist.

A screeching in our left ear led us to strike up a conversation with Long Islander Kimberly Bodden, a stylist for Brooklyn Heights’ City Chemist. She did the makeup for the auditions, and had her favorites, specifically Melissa Timothy-Tozer, the only Brooklyn-bred one of the bunch. She said Melissa’s “Brooklyn comes out” on stage when she “gets into it.” “You can tell the way they pop their bodies if their heart is into it.” We watched the bodies popping for signs, as instructed.

Ms. Bodden’s hunch was correct. Melissa, like most of the girls there, made the team. As coach Adar Wellington—a sophisticated stunner in her own right—told us, this was mostly for picking out the final few spots, and, it was implied by the TV trucks outside and presence of heavyweight Bronx-born choreographer Rhapsody Jones as one of the judges, public relations. Ms. Wellington has been working hard to mold the team and its routine into something that screams “Kings County,” forgoing her typical offseason. “You’ll know we’re in Brooklyn when we walk in,” she promised.

As designer of the team’s uniforms, David Dalrymple also tried to create something distinctly BK. He said he was “really excited about the color statement, color story,” the “sophisticated” black and white compared to the team’s bleedy old red, white and blue. As he spoke, a blur of skateboarders bloomed past in an amazing color statement, color story, totally ignoring the media circus, which included famed designer and ginger Patricia Field lamenting the 1957 move of the Dodgers before reaching for a cigarette.

A few dancers got our attention during the auditions. Jordan, from Charlotte, was a contortionist who basically separated her gummy shoulder on stage just for the whip. She was, like Ms. Field, a coppertop. Most of the dancers were blondes or brunettes. She was making it. Same with Melissa and India, who had loaded the crowd with supporters, sending them into Bieber-like hysterics when she popped her body. Her heart was into it, we think.

For Melissa, it was a commencement and coronation all at once. The LaGuardia High School graduate and Flatbush native said she immediately thought, “There’s gotta be a dance team!” when she first heard about the team’s move. She had tried out for other teams in Philadelphia, but this was serendipity, and in some ways, last night was her show, and everyone knew it. Pomp aside, 50+ gigs for a working dancer is nothing to sneeze at.

Before we left, Ms. Bodden, the stylist, sought us out. She was proud of herself for picking Melissa earlier in the night. “I told you she was good. She’s just got that energy,” she said in her Long Island brogue, then disappeared back into the colorful crowd, heading through the local hipsters for the bar, all sophistication in her black-and-white T-shirt.

The film, based on a true story, focused on sex trafficking by members of the international community in Bosnia. Kathy Bolkovac, the cop turned UN worker who inspired Rachel Weisz’s character, attended the event as well. The after party was held at Jimmy, the club atop the James Hotel in Tribeca.

Dominic Cooper and Paz de la Huerta

“What you’re going to see today is equal parts audacious, shocking, um, decadent and wildly entertaining,” announced Lionsgate exec Joe Drake before last night’s screening of The Devil’s Double.

An eclectic audience—including Dame Helen Mirren, designer Cynthia Rowley, actress Zoe Lister Jones, Nicole Murphy accompanied by ex-Giant Michael Strahan, and dynamic duo Ice-T and Coco —packed themselves into the SVA Theater Monday evening. Guests shook out their umbrellas and took their seats, ready to see a film that has been dubbed “the Scarface of Arabia.”

We saw Patricia Field make her way into the building wearing neon-green eyeglasses and matching sneakers. “What inspired the green?” we asked the colorful designer. “The red,” she replied, referring of course to her signature red tresses.

The movie, based on a true story, is set in Iraq at the start of the first Gulf War as Saddam Hussein’s sadistic son Uday commissions a body-double to make public appearances in his stead. Mama Mia! alum Dominic Cooper showed his flair for the dramatic, playing both the fanatical Uday and his soft-spoken fiday (body double).

The Scarface analogy is certainly apt. Uday, by all accounts a true psychopath, led a life of lurid excess. He complemented his fleets of Ferraris with an unending supply of cocaine, booze and women he had snatched off the street. With Uday’s penchant for erratic violence, some (literally) torturous scenes in the film were difficult on The Observer’s constitution.

Mem Ferda, who played the role of Saddam Hussein’s friend Kamel Hannah, had a more lighthearted take on the movie, however. “I think there are a lot of kind of tongue and cheek kinds of moments. The film isn’t meant to be taken seriously, even though it kind of is about a serious topic,” the actor explained. Fair enough, but Mr. Ferda’s character is brutally (and graphically) eviscerated by Uday at a dinner party.

After the film and some hearty applause, the audience filed out of the theater and into the unseasonably brisk night. Some hailed cabs while others dutifully hoofed it to the Boom Boom Room for the after party. As usual, a crowd gathered downstairs and waited to be ushered in via the at-capacity elevators.

Upstairs guests were soon intoxicated by the elegant set-up, not to mention the requisite open bar. The room’s oft-noted views of the Manhattan skyline were taken in with sips of Champagne as the elevators disgorged partygoers. Waiters waded through the crowd, holding trays of sandwiches and cheeseburgers above the throng of well-coiffed heads, while waitresses in white dresses with matching hair-bows did their best to deliver drinks, and Red Bulls.

We ran into to photographer and director Nev Schulman near the deejay booth where he snatched passing snacks. Asked if he liked the film, Mr. Schulman smiled. “It was a great story!” he said after a few telling moments of silence.

Paz de la Huerta, however, was quite smitten with the movie and its star, Mr. Cooper. “I feel like Dominic is a tour de force,” she said, using the term obliquely. “He’s an amazing actor. If anything comes from the film, you know which I feel is a very important film, you know … that’s something that has not been explicitly shown, the pain and the horror these people go through...,” she drifted off.  Snapping back from her dazed reverie, she squealed, “But this guy was a creep!”

More articulate than Ms. de la Huerta, Mr. Cooper looked downright dapper in his trim suit. Chatting with us, he described the ethos of the film and the difficulty of playing an Iraqi psychopath. “The honest truth is that I couldn’t relate to his actions or anything that he did. He was repulsive,” Mr. Cooper said.  “I needed, in very small doses, to think about why the man was the man he was, why he behaved the way he did.”

Playing the role of the body-double, Latif, Mr. Cooper said, provided a much needed psychological reprieve. Filming the two characters at once, however, was dizzying.  “There was no sitting around. I would literally jump from being in the most insane space in my head to being much more of an observer, and a caring and thoughtful man.”

Mr. Cooper, bombarded by congratulatory guests, was barely able to leave the entrance of the club all night. He good humouredly chatted with everyone who approached, taking photos with starry-eyed and slightly tipsy revelers.

A bevy of self-described “models”—who could have been members of a sorority headed by Coco—ringed a corner table. One of the ladies helped her friend mount the three stairs to the seating alcove, her dress being so tight as to prevent simultaneous lateral and vertical motion. Before long, the group, now sufficiently drunk, began dancing around the room. “This is, like, my fifth glass of champagne,” a visiting Spainard in a see-through dress confided. Another, who had been repeatedly mistaken for hip-hop muse Amber Rose, grabbed hold of our arm, spun us around and critiqued our look. “What are we going to do with you?” she asked rhetorically. “Darker eyebrows and fuck the highlights!” she answered excitedly, giving our locks a tussle. (As it happens, we do not have highlights.)

By midnight, the crowd had thinned out, revealing once more the familiar skyline. Shuffle. Cram. Elevator. Until next time, Boom Boom.

Louis Vuitton was celebrating a collection designed by Marc Jacobs in honor of the fashion designer and graffiti artist Stephen Sprouse, with whom Mr. Jacobs collaborated on a spring collection in 2001. (It sold out before it even arrived in stores.) The store’s windows were covered in graffiti mimicking the work of the artist, who died in 2004. Mr. Sprouse’s old friends, like singer Debbie Harry and Andy Warhol’s pal Paige Powell, arrived dressed in Mr. Sprouse’s Day-Glo designs. Mr. Jacobs, who was wearing a black kilt and had boyfriend Lorenzo Martone by his side, was welcomed by explosions of camera flashes. It almost felt like 2007 all over again!

The party guests noted how influential Mr. Jacobs' original collaboration with Mr. Sprouse had been. “I love the mixing of the two—it’s two icons of their time,” said model Molly Sims, who was dressed in a red, low-cut Louis Vuitton dress, told the Daily Transom. “Who would have thought Stephen Sprouse and Louis Vuitton? Graffiti on bags? But now it has become iconic.”

We wondered if the supermodel was herself ever guilty of vandalizing buildings—or at least a skateboard—with graffiti.

“I never spray-painted buildings, but I was always a girl that liked fluorescent. I was always drawing and coloring,” she replied. “I love art.”  

Actor and jewelry designer Waris Ahluwalia arrived, as usual, with Chiara Clemente, daughter of painter Francesco Clemente, whose family was close friends with Mr. Sprouse.

"I was too much of a goody-two-shoes," said Mr. Ahluwalia when we inquired whether he ever explored a career as a graffiti artist. "But I would do it now. Now I’m up for anything!"

Mr. Ahluwalia told the Daily Transom that his New Year's was fairly quiet; he spent it in Connecticut with a few friends. 

"I’ve been on a plane in 2008 about 30 times so I didn’t want to go anywhere," he said. "I would only go somewhere that we could drive to. So we went went sledding in Connecticut." 

But the jewelry designer, a habitual party goer, assured us that we could still look forward to an eventful Fashion Week this year. 

"No, no, there is going to be parties. There have to be! There will be parties and there will be a Fashion Week," he said. "You know how Santa Claus says, 'There will be Christmas'? Well, Waris says there will be Fashion Week. If you’re positive, then everyone will get it."

Designer Patricia Field, who said that she is looking to "decelerate a bit" lately, also seemed to have a positive outlook. 

"I have no idea what it will be like this year, but maybe it will be more exciting," she said. "Maybe it’s time for the soil to be tilled and the new buds to sprout."

Inch by inch and row by row, we suppose.

Even Tim Gunn hasn't been able to buy an apartment in New York. [TONY via Racked]

The Olsens will collaborate with Steve Madden on a line of shoes under their Elizabeth and James label. [Fashionista]

Patricia Field's Sex and The City collection for HSN has debuted and it's almost as hideous as the movie. [Racked]

Viktor and Rolf's online-only fashion show will employ just one star model: Shalom Harlow. [WWD] 

Patricia Field, Sex and the City’s controversial costume designer (who has become largely famous for her often zany clothing choices for Sarah Jessica Parker’s character Carrie Bradshaw) can’t imagine dressing a more ideal body than Ms. Parker’s.

“Sarah Jessica Parker has the best body that I have experienced and probably will experience in the future, because I mean, she’s just got great proportion, great tone, great movement, grace,” she continued, “She’s got long legs, a high ass. She’s miniature, but it’s all perfect.”

Last night at Carnegie Hall’s “interSEXtion” after-party for The Notables—the institution’s membership program for young music enthusiasts—Ms. Field showed up at D’Or at Amalia on West 57^th Street wearing a white faux-fur jacket over a black miniskirt and tank top. She had just come from a panel discussion, moderated by our very own Simon Doonan, where Ms. Field was joined by the likes of designer Zac Posen, photographer Mark Seliger, rocker Tommy Ramone and lifestyle entrepreneur Damon Dash. Ms. Field’s sparkly pink purse was about the size of a lipstick bag, so she had wedged her black Motorola cell phone between a couple of very tan breasts.

Ms. Field did go on to say that she is aware of critics who claim that her fashion sorcery is, ultimately, less than alchemic. “I don’t say anything to them, because basically I don’t really have a face-to-face confrontation with people that say those things, or that say they love it. I don’t really respond to it, because, otherwise, what would I do?” she inquired, a pair of sunglasses tucked into her raspberry-red mane. “I don’t really think about any of that. I just try to think about what makes sense to me and hopefully others will like it; I’m not really that concerned,” she added confidently.

Ms. Field, who owns a clothing boutique on the Bowery, said that her favorite designers were probably John Galliano and Diane von Furstenberg—the former designer for his “air of theatrics and fantasy” and Ms. Von Furstenberg because “she makes clothes that women can wear.”