Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays to you all. Hope you enjoy your time off. I'll be at my parents' home in the Adirondacks which is featured on Vogue.com this week. Check it out! Also, I'm taking a mini-hiatus from blogging for the holidays. I'll be back on January 3rd! 

The Seberg Effect

As I've said before, I was an intern for Patrick Demarchelier the last two years I was in college and a full on studio assistant for the summer after I graduated. When I first arrived there I was 19, and I'll never forget when I met Tonne Goodman (then Fashion Director at Bazaar). The first thing she said to me was "How old are you, 14?" I guess I was a young teenager. I was certainly full of beans, maybe even a little precocious, which I soon noticed people either liked or didn't like about me. There was one makeup artist who was out and out mean to me. Paul Cavaco was always so sweet to me - he let me paint his fingernails all different colors when we had down time, and Marina Schiano used to braid my very long hair during lunch break. 

When I returned to the studio though, after a tough senior year (all my best friends had graduated ahead of me and I was intensely lonely), I came with a more mature attitude and a new look. I had cut my long bohemian, wavy hair into a neat shoulder length bob. I already wasn't too sure about it, and my doubts were confirmed when Patrick looked at me and said in his very heavy French accent, "What deed you do vis your 'air darling?" He then called over his best friend Didier Malige, one of the loveliest, most gentle men I have ever met, and one of the best hair stylists in the world. "Do somesing vis her 'air," he directed. He then mumbled something about Carolyn Murphy and started cutting, in BIG chunks. I don't know what happened to me. I just let it happen. Did I not care? Did I not have the confidence to ask him what he was doing before he started cutting? Anyway, 20 minutes later I had a Jean Seberg pixie cut, and I was numb the rest of the day. I went home that night and cried and cried. I know it was just a haircut, but it was traumatic. It would be 2 years before I really felt like myself again.

So the other night I was at a dinner and Carolyn Murphy was there. We were introduced, and I told her how her 1996 pixie cut had indirectly inspired my own. Her face winced, and she put her hand on my shoulder and said, "Wasn't it awful???" Even though I look at pictures of her from then and think she looked great, and in fact I can even look at my own post-cut photo and realize it wasn't that bad, it certainly took some soul searching to live through the growing out period.

I wonder how Emma Watson feels right now?

Home Sweet Home

As much as I drool over minimal interiors and wish that I could live in such ordered simplicity, I know that the one thing I couldn't live without is the personal artwork hanging on my walls. Since I don't have the budget to buy any truly significant kind of artwork I feel incredibly lucky to not only have an artist husband but also lots of artist friends that give, trade or make artwork for me. We're also really big on handmade valentines (large ones!) in our family and those take up a lot of wall space too. 

These aren't handmade, but I do love them so much. I found them in a vintage store - they were some guy's college project in the late 60's. There are 5 of them in total and they were featured in a Vogue Living story about my house.

 A collage I made from Kmart kids' valentines for my husband (2007).

A photo that Jessica Craig Martin took at our wedding, that I then covered with heart stickers and gave to my husband for Valentine's Day (2001).

Left A photogram portrait of my son by his godfather Adam Fuss (2009).

Right A watercolor of Lil Kim by Jane Rosenblum. It was a wedding present (2000).

Two heart collages I made for each of my kids for Valentine's Day (2005).

A drawing from Planet of the Apes, by Jane Rosenblum (2000).

Left A watercolor portrait of me by Anh Duong (1998).

Right When I worked at Gagosian Gallery I got to work with one of my photography heroes, Sally Mann. She used to write me notes and letters on the back of her unseen, unpublished photos and then fold them up like stationary and put them in an envelope. This is my favorite one (1998).

This one has a story: When I was in 7th grade, I transferred to Horace Mann and went to more Bar Mitzvahs than I could count. During that time I really wished I was Jewish so I could have my own Bar Mitzvah. There were many aspects of Bar Mitzvahs that I was envious of, but I was especially crazed about the enlarged photo of the honoree everyone signed as they entered the reception. By the time I got married 13 years later I was still thinking about the signed photo so I used this picture Arthur Elgort took and had it made into a poster that everyone signed as they arrived. I still smile everytime I pass it in the hallway.

Another Valentine I made for my husband. I got the quote from a photo of a pillow in Helen Hurley Brown's living room. Go figure (2008).

A Valentine Christopher made for me. I love how surfer-y it is (2008). 

Left Our friend David Yarritu made this from an Us Weekly cover - he blacked out everything but Hollywood, Star Jones' face and that big smile. He then made the cutouts at the bottom with a hole puncher. I think it's genius (2008).

Right I love to make photo collages. It's so much easier to look at photos that way instead of hiding them in albums. This picture was from Domino (2003).

My Style: Fenton/Fallon

For the last 9 years, I've lived on Chrystie Street, which is a pretty typical Lower East Side street, meaning grungey but cool. It wasn't even cool until Freeman's and The Box showed up, and it got a little less grungey when the city's largest Whole Foods unveiled itself, right on Chrystie Street! Nonetheless there is a pretty frequent turnover of random stores that come and go on my block. The best we've had 'til recently was a storefront selling hip hop inspired t-shirts (I bought a Stevie Wonder one) and a kind of trendy stationary shop. When those went the way of the recession I had low expectations for what would take its place, until Thakoon told me over lunch one day that Dana Lorenz was opening her first Fenton/Fallon store right underneath my building!!! I was so excited. I've been a big fan of her jewelry since Stephanie Seymour wrote about it in Interview a few years back. Since she opened shop, Dana and I have become pals and I have certainly taken advantage of her convenient locale to dash in before a party and add the perfect bit of edge, sparkle, irony or texture to my outfit. Of all the pieces I've worn I am particularly taken by her cuffs. There's a pair of them (yes I wear both, one on each wrist) covered in metal sculpted rams heads, foz faces and turtle shells. I wear them day and night and they are by far the most complimented thing I have worn in a long time.....all sorts of random people lust after them. I wore a similar cuff, albeit with large black and white rhinestones sprinkled between metal snakes to the CFDA Awards this year. Dana even custom made me matching post earrings - we were worried the whole post thing would be too WASPY on me but then decided my fluffier than fluffy white Thakoon dress could use a little old world charm. It worked. My newest addition is a gold cuff with chains, rhinestones and bows all over it. Haven't figured out what to wear it with yet, but I'll let you know when I do.

Check out Fenton/Fallon

Freeman's Alley, enter on Rivington between Chrystie and Forsyth Streets or visit www.danalorenz.com.

In Bloom

I don't like taking jewelry with me when I travel. Despite the sartorial payoff, the burden of worrying about losing it always seems greater. This is usually fine except when I am traveling somewhere to go to a dressy party or a wedding. I discovered a solution in 2002 when I went to the Dominican Republic for a friend's wedding that was not only formal but also being photographed by Vogue. As I was getting dressed for the rehearsal dinner I grabbed a handful of bougainvillea that had been placed as a welcoming decoration in the bedroom of our hotel. It worked so well to make my outfit a little more special that the next night I went out into the garden and picked some gardenias to wear in my hair for the wedding. They looked good AND smelled good! I'm not always so lucky to have a garden of fresh flowers to pick from. I once bought a hideous bouquet in the Munich airport and picked out the pink roses to work into my braids for another wedding the next night. This is a great traveling trick but also good for dressing yourself up on home turf too. And even though I'm partial to flowers in the hair they also work in a lapel or on a hat as evidenced below, or in Jane Birkin's case even held in your hand. And although you might shudder at the idea, I once even made a corsage - a gardenia on a thick black grosgrain ribbon tied around my wrist - and wore it to the Met Ball. It worked, I swear.

Clockwise from top: Catherine Deneuve & Francoise Dorleac, Jacqueline Bisset, David Hamilton photograph, Charlotte Rampling, Jerry Hall, Me, Kate Moss, unknown, Gwenyth Paltrow, Joni  Mitchell, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin.

Light as a Feather

Especially on a short little evening jacket. The first one I got was from my friend Duro Olowu - he's an amazing designer and he also has an incredible eye (and nose!) for vintage. His wife Thelma is one lucky woman. Anyway, whenever I go to his studio he brings out little treasures from a back closet to show me. They are always impressive historical pieces (a 60's Balenciaga coat made from rubber!), but not always something I must have or that he wants to neccessarily part with. Its more like show and tell. One day, however, he brought out this 70's YSL sequin bolero with Maribou sleeves and I just plotzed, as my buddy Josh would say. I'd never seen anything that felt more like me, and I HAD to have it. What's more, if you look at the closeup below you can see the sequins are sewn onto lace tulle, which makes it shimmer even more. It was perfect because Duro had been coveting a painting of my husbands and so we did an even trade. I wear it every year at least once or twice, I never get tired of it. I even wore it to The Met Ball one year with a white silk tank top and sharply tailored black trousers. I never thought about owning a second Maribou evening jacket until I saw one go down the runway at Phillip Lim a few seasons back. The color was stunning - very dark hunter green - and when the model walked past me and I saw the gunmetal sequins on the back I knew it was going to soon be in my closet. I'm so happy when I wear it, and I'm even happy just to see it hanging there in my closet when I'm not wearing it.