By Richard Morgan 1/08 8:26pm

uptown shabby

josh-hivescrop

Greenpoint Luxe: Brooklyn Scruff Invades Bergdorfs

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is currently cultivating a new kind of honey for its kitchens and bars. The hotel, where President Obama stays when he is in town, is used to painstaking attention to detail and extravagance, which makes its approach to the honey all the more intriguing.

Rather than relying on what could be called the Masa Imperative of luxury, after the top-dollar sushi joint that ships in fish from the Sea of Japan and the Bay of Spain with the urgency and costliness of helicoptered transplant organs (indeed, some of the fish are carried in organ containers), the Waldorf has gone in a direction more evocative of the Brooklyn Flea Market: its honey comes from beehives it is now keeping on a 20th-floor outdoor patio.

The initiative, brainchild of executive chef David Garcelon, relies on the expertise of the city’s premier beekeeper, Andrew Coté, who sells his own neighborhood-specific honeys at the Union Square farmer’s market. Read More

3/29/12 10:05am

Fond Farewells

The designer with Glenda Bailey.

Stefano Pilati Has ‘A Great State of Mind’ Despite Departure from Yves Saint Laurent

“You can find greatness everywhere. You just have to look for it,” said Harper’s Bazaar editrix, Glenda Bailey, quoting former Yves Saint Laurent creative director Stefano Pilati in a brief, prepared introduction. Ms. Bailey had been charged with welcoming the recently departed YSL designer to the stage as a part of French Institute Alliance Française’s Fashion Talks program. (Other fashion stalwarts this year include former president and executive creative direct of Coach, Reed Krakoff and designer Dries van Noten.)

With considerable buzz about Mr. Pilati’s exit after ten years at Yves Saint Laurent—one which had been the subject of many rumors—it was inevitable that the elephant in the room would be addressed. A throng of eager YSL devotees crowded Florence Gould Hall to witness Pamela Golbin, chief curator of Paris’ Musée de la Mode et du Textile, in conversation with Mr. Pilati. Read More

By Hillary Frey 4/01/08 4:06pm

Whatsa Matter With Choo?

On Sunday, March 30, in the shoe department on the fifth floor of Bergdorf Goodman, ladies of varying age were sitting with box after box piled before them and male shopping companions collapsed at their sides, wearing the typical lobotomized expressions of men forced to undertake a woman’s expedition. A small crowd had gathered near Read More

By Hillary Frey 1/29/08 5:15pm

Hey! Do I Look Like $11,815?

I saw the dress first in a magazine advertisement, on a model named Sasha Pivovarova, who was seated with three other pale young women. The clothes they were wearing, I would come to learn, came from the Prada Resort collection for spring-summer 2008.

Even though the way Ms. Pivovarova was sitting, slightly slouched in Read More