Wed, Bed, Dead. (The Gloss)

For as long as we can remember, the best game during sleepovers/on late-night drug binges/in girly blogs has been Fuck/Marry/Kill. If you are unaware of how the rules work, they're pretty simple: you pick three people who share a similar Venn Diagram overlap (such as Disney princes, former prime ministers or Scientologist movie stars) and then go around in a circle announcing which of the individuals you would sleep with, marry or kill. One fate for each person, and no overlapping. So you can't marry two people, nor can you opt out of killing one of them.

Fun, right? And now the game has been taken to a new level by Jennifer Wright and Ashley Cardiff of TheGloss.com, who have made a web series off the same concept with a slightly less blue name: Wed, Bed, or Dead. And guess what? It's the Fashion Week edition!


Personally, we would not marry Karl Lagerfeld, no matter how many gay marriages he approves through a runway statement, or how many Scrooge McDuck pools of gold he gives to charity. Though Tom Ford is the obvious choice to sleep with, right? So, we guess we'd marry Ralph Lauren and kill Lagerfeld? Or the other way around. Either way, fun game, right? Now you go!

A dozen years ago, the non-profit Art Production Fund launched with a show of naked models standing and slouching, for hours, on the floor of the Guggenheim Museum. The invitation-only evening was a sensation, drawing the likes of Leonardo di Caprio, Eli Broad and Tom Ford, who 'dressed' the models, most in only sequins and stilettos.

Prior to that, Ms. Force Villareal had been known largely as a scenester who, with friend and business partner Amy Sacco, partied about town, dressed well and opened art-bedecked lounge/bar Lot 61. But the Guggenheim event launched her and partner Doreen Remen's Art Prodution Fund as a sponsor of major art pieces and, not incidentally, as a creator and curator of scenes. Working with artists, APF has curated and funded some of the more ambitious contemporary art installations of the last decade.

The Art Production Fund projects are familiar: They carpeted Grand Central Station in 2004.The giant neon Electric Fountain by Tim Noble and Sue Webster installed at Rockefeller Center was their project. APF sponsored Aaron Young's Greeting Card, a piece in which motorcyle riders zoomed through the huge Park Avenue Armory, their heat and tire tracks burning a painting into planks on the floor. 

At Art Basel Miami Beach, APF sells artist-commissioned beach towels, limited editions by Cindy Sherman, Peter Doig and the like. Coming this year, in a meeting of Picasso's ceramics and the Franklin Mint's kitsch, is a Jeff Koons collectible plate.

With the Art Production Fund's Yoshitomo Nara sculptures currently looming over Park Avenue, The Observer asked APF co-founders Ms. Force Villareal and Ms. Remen about the Foundation and about how the art world's changed since they've been around.

Is the current climate in New York helping or hurting when it comes to creating good art?

YFV: The boom time made life for artists in New York almost unaffordable- unless you had rent stabilization or were selling your work regularly- and rents have not changed much and art sales are down, This is a major problem for the cultural life of artists living in New York.

Do you think it's affecting the art being made?

YFV: On a positive note- the survival instincts always kick in- you could not stay here unless you started a communal living  studio-sharing situation or by forming an artist collective- which so many artists did and are still doing. A great example born in this generation are artists: Aaron Young, Dan Colen, Nate Lowman, Agathe Snow, Hanna Liden and the late Dash Snow. Another more recent example: The Bruce High Quality Art Foundation.  Great creative movements have been generated by the condensed energy and editing that naturally occurs in these talented enclaves.

How has the art scene changed for the better in those years?

YFV: We increasingly found ourselves in an art world that was about other things and catered to an exclusive/privileged audience. While artists and non-profit organizations definitely benefit from a strong economy, there is a refreshing revival in the pure art experience.

For the worse?

DR:i think one of the downsides of all of the support for art by individuals, corporations, etc., during those early years when APF started, was that it fostered an elevated expectation of production value.  Somehow art got very expensive to make, which was great in a way because artists' elaborate ideas and fantasy projects were actually being made. But it also felt like an interest and appreciation for simpler work was suffering.  The recession brought things back into perspective.

What are some things that have happened since APF began that you wouldn't have seen coming?

DR: I particularly was interested in the trend to confuse and undermine personal identity.

Artists were either working under pseudonyms, as collectives with individual anonymity, or as partners without individual distinction.

Any trend that you are noticing now?

DR: More artists and more organizations are moving towards public art. 

You've had some very elaborate parties - your gala last year featured performances by Terence Koh, Kembra Pfahler and the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black and a tableau of 'Nubian slave boys.'

What are some of your favorites?

DR: I remember having a great time installing Rudolf Stingel's Plan B.  We were up all night at Grand Central Station, installing miles of carpet. The building was empty and what we were doing seemed radically subversive.

What shows or events are you looking forward to?

YFV: My husband, Leo Villareal's first survey show is at the San Jose Museum of Art. I cant wait to see John Currin (Nov. at Gagosian) among so many others.

DR: There is Chris Astley's show at our lab space that we're all excited about.  I'm also looking forward to... whatever will be happening at The Hole, the new gallery opened by Kathy Grayson and Meghan Coleman, formerly of Deitch Projects. 

You've worked with Jeffrey Deitch. How big a deal is it that NY has 'lost' him?

YFV: We hope we will continue to work with Jeffrey now that he is in LA...  His move is genius for him and will make a great impact and give a much shaking-up of things.

Your most famous work was probably the Vanessa Beecroft installation at the Guggenheim. Talk a little bit about that: Did it turn out as you hoped?

YFV:  "Show" was the catalyst for Doreen and I founding Art Production Fund- we realized after this three-hour performance- that took 1.5 years to create- made a huge impact on Vanessa's career and also helped to form ours. "Show" was a live performance artwork that placed 20 women in the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum to be watched by the audience that surrounded them... We realized we had done something significant and we started to formulate the vision for what we wanted to create. A year and a half later, Art Production Fund was born.

What's next for APF? 

YFV: We have incredible projects/products lined up with Sue de Beer; a public art partnership with the New Museum; an entire art program launching at a new casino, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, in December (Currently on view on their marquee located on the strip are huge digital video works by T.J Wilcox and Yoko Ono); new work by Fab 5 Freddy.

And the famous beach towels this year?

YFV: Tracey Emin -- and Jasper Johns.

Hairy-chested design guru Tom Ford may have learned how to sew a seam straight when he ran Gucci, but that doesn’t qualify him to direct movies. Fashion is not film, and A Single Man, his debut feature, proves it. A film is more than 27 buttons and a skirt spread like a fan. It needs life and emotion and the beat of a human heart. Most of all, it must tell a story. A Single Man has style without content; careful camera movements reflecting dead air; manicured sets that look like pristine floor models nobody lives in; and a narrative that plays like a one-page outline. As a movie, it has all the life of a boxed pink taffeta sample at Bergdorf that never leaves the stockroom.

Basing A Single Man on a book of elegant minimalism by Christopher Isherwood about a day in the life of a 52-year-old homosexual grieving for the loss of his younger lover, Mr. Ford deserves admiration for putting literature on the screen, and filming anything by Isherwood is a noble pursuit. But this one is coy and cold as marble. It goes nowhere, and goes nowhere so slowly that it seems to take forever. (Isherwood’s Down There on a Visit would have been a better choice.) It has a poetic feel and a lustrous look, but despite the avalanche of prissy interviews that threaten to bury Tom Ford in his own pretentiousness, the director’s contribution seems little more than tangential. (Mr. Ford, a famous perfectionist, tells the press this is the least calculated thing he’s done, yet everything about it is as calculated as matching cuff links.) Colin Firth, a risk-taking actor with a portrait gallery of diverse etchings to his credit, has never looked better, more dapper or fit than in his impassioned portrayal of a gay English professor transplanted from England to sunny California in the 1960s who loses his reason for living, but what he sees in the mirror is not so much a face as an expression of a predicament. The day drones on in a fog of nihilism as he pretends to carry on a conversation with a colleague about the Cuban missile crisis while gazing at the shirtless chests of nearby tennis players. Julianne Moore drops in for a brief cameo as a gin-guzzling best friend and former fling, still hopelessly in love with a man who is emotionally unavailable. The lover (Matthew Goode) appears briefly in flashbacks. But it is Mr. Firth, elegant in his horn-rimmed privacy, fresh from the hairdresser and exquisitely dressed in a perfect suit (designed by Tom Ford, natch), who commands and holds attention. This is his most sensitive, nuanced and heartbreaking performance since Apartment Zero, but the film cares more about accessories than the man who wears them.

Unfortunately, the script calls for more reacting than acting, and as a study in the psychological tortures lonely, closeted gays were forced to endure in the ignorant shadows of the pre-AIDS past, Brokeback Mountain got there first. Middle-aged gays no longer commit suicide or pay for their sins with a trip to the convent or the morgue, so after you cheer Mr. Firth for finding a sexy, sensitive student (Nicholas Hoult) with compassion and caring who spends the night on his sofa and shows signs of wanting more tenderness at breakfast, you want to boo when the older man suddenly and inexplicably drops dead. Did I miss something? Maybe I’m the one who dropped dead. At any rate, nothing of the kind ever happened in Isherwood’s book, so why dick around with perfection?

As a movie that never brightens, about a man nursing a hurt time cannot heal, A Single Man flat-lines right before your eyes. It’s about grief and sadness, but you don’t care about anybody in it. With music only slightly less sluggish than Mahler (the comparison to Death in Venice in both style and theme is inescapable) and austere to the point of stopping the pulse, it is also boring. It’s like watching ice melt. Expensive ice, sure, but at the end you still have a puddle of water. rreed@observer.com

After being thrown into the public spotlight, Jason Wu has decided to delay his fur collection with Sara Furs. [WWD]

A Housing Works thrift store in Brooklyn Heights brought in more than $1 million in 2008. [NY Daily News] 

Charlotte Ronson's line for JC Penney, I Heart Ronson, is now available on the store's website. [JC Penney via Racked] 

Tom Ford photographed the advertising campaigns for his spring men’s wear and eyewear collections. [WWD]

More than 30 retail spaces are empty on the "Gold Coast" of Madison Avenue from 57th Street to 72nd Street. [NYT]

Janie Bryant, the costume designer for the AMC show Mad Men, may be at work her own collection. [Glamour via Racked] 

Scott Sternberg of Band of Outsiders says talking about the brand you're wearing is "gay." And talking about how much money you saved on it is even worse. [Details via Racked]   

Tom Ford has introduced a $990 jean made from Japanese selvedge denim, silk-lined pockets and a front button plated with 18-karat gold. [WWD] 

This year, Valentino will stream its Spring 2009 Haute Couture show at Le Grand Ampitheatre de la Sorbonne at its boutiques around the world. [Vogue UK]

Christina Aguilera might be bringing her dubious personal style to the masses via a line for Topshop. [The Cut]

Ping-pong loving shoe designer Stuart Weitzman is hosting an online search for an "ultimate fan" to challenge him to a match at his New York showroom. [P6]

NexCan Brands sold off Bill Blass to Peacock International Holdings, a men's dress shirt and neckwear firm, for a mere $10 million (they had initially asked for $25 million).  [WWD, The Cut]

Tom Ford, Judith Leiber, and Paul & Shark will buck recent trends and open new stores on Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles this year. [WWD]

Racked chronicles the year in New York billboards. [Racked] 

Anna Wintour would like to get Michelle Obama on the cover of Vogue. [WWD] 

Here's a preview of Thakoon Panichgul's resort-ready line for Target, slated to hit stores on Christmas. [Racked] 

What does the phrase "price available upon request" mean when it appears alongside items pictured in the shopping pages of fashion magazines? Usually that the item is not available at all. [NYTimes] 

Lisa Perry will open a '60s themed store in Soho featuring clothing, home decor, and DVDs of movies from the era. [FWD] 

The new celebrity trend is not to wear the actual designer handbag, but rather the dust bag in which it is sold, as seen on Keira Knightley and Jake Gyllenhaal. [Vogue UK] 

Zac Posen has made a promotional video urging people to vote on Tuesday which is being screened on fashionthevote.org. He also suggests you wear blue on Tuesday and accent it with red. [WWD] 

Tom Ford will not be designing the wardrobe for his film, A Single Man. Instead, he has enlisted costume designer Arianne Phillips, who won an Oscar for her work on Walk the Line. [WWD]

Escada Creative Director Damiano Biella is honored that Sarah Palin has publicly admitted to being a fan of his collection. [The Cut] 

Ms. Beckham is also reportedly running in the New York City marathon this Sunday. [NBC via Racked] 

Designer Tom Ford will make his much-awaited directorial debut with A Single Man, an adaptation of the Christopher Isherwood novel, starring Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, and Matthew Goode. [THR] 

Katie Lee Joel has been named a food columnist at Cosmopolitan, a first for a magazine that usually traffics in seduction tactics. [FWD] 

Naomi Campbell will host the opening of a photo exhibit at Miami Art Basel on Dec. 2 featuring images that different photographers shot of her in various stages of undress. [P6]

Tom Ford on the rumor that he's difficult to work for: "I don't think I'm a megalomaniac, though you'd have to ask the people who work with me. Either we click or they don't last very long. Do I throw tantrums? Yes. But more with Richard [Buckley, Mr. Ford's partner], at home if he's forgotten to buy milk." [Vogue UK] 

Tory Burch said that despite the current state of the economy, she does not plan on selling her label. But a 30 percent stake might be for sale. [WWD] 

Hearst International is launching editions of Harper's Bazaar in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Serbia, India and Croatia. [FWD] 

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have managed to move their fashion vision from Wal-Mart to Madison Avenue. [NY Times]

Ralph Lauren and Giorgio Armani have earned the top two spots in DNR.com's rankings of the 100 most powerful people in men's fashion and retail for the second year in a row, followed closely by Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, Miuccia Prada, Patrizio Bartelli, and François-Henri Pinault. [Vogue UK]