#RIP: PIONEERING DESIGNER, SONIA RYKIEL

Sonia Rykiel, the French designer dubbed the “queen of knitwear” whose relaxed collections helped liberate women from stuffy suits, has died.

President Francois Hollande‘s office announced her death in a statement, praising her as 

“a pioneer who offered women freedom of movement.“

For the generation of women who came of age in the 60s and 70s, Rykiel — with her hallmark bright orange hair — came to symbolize the new era of freedom.

Rykiel got her start by designing knit maternity dresses for herself and became a fixture of Paris’ fashion scene in 1968 when she opened her shop when student riots were challenging France’s establishment. The designer’s empire grew to include menswear and children’s lines as well as accessories, perfumes and home goods, sold in the label’s stores on four continents.

Her daughter, Nathalie Rykiel — who as a young woman used to model her mother’s garments on the catwalk — has long helped manage the fashion house. The business was among France’s last major family-owned labels until it was sold in 2012.

Rykiel’s star pieces include the “poor boy” sweater — often in black with jewel tone stripes or emblazoned with messages or graphic motifs like oversized red lips — knit tops with embroidered roses and funky, rhinestone-studded berets. 

She was born in Paris on May 25, 1930 and married Sam Rykiel, the owner of a Paris boutique, and had Nathalie at 25. Early on in her career, Rykiel was wracked by doubts. She told the Le Nouvel Observateur in 2005,

“When I started in fashion, for the first 10 years, I said to myself every day, ‘I’m going to quit tomorrow. People are going to figure out that I don’t know anything,’ I always thought I’d be discredited in the end.“

Rykiel is survived by Nathalie and son Jean-Philippe. She was 86.

Rykiel for H&M, 2010

(via NBC)

#UPSTATEINPARIS: THE CATSKILLS JOIN UP WITH THE CITY OF LIGHT

NOTE: This post was scheduled for the weekend which seemed sort of like like bad timing. The opening of this collection is scheduled for today, but I have no idea if that will take place, given the events of this last Friday in Paris.

Sarah Andelman, the founder and creative director of the Parisian boutique Colette, has been a been visiting the Catskills, where she and her family have a house for the past decade in upstate New York. She spends holidays and summers in the area and was married in Woodstock in 2011. She recently told The New York Times from her house…

“I think I feel a little guilty spending so much time upstate.”

This month, Colette will feature a collection of goods, art, music and literature produced in that area from the Hudson Valley to the Pennsylvania border. A t-shirt from Phoenicia’s Graham & Co. hotel trumpets the areas battle-cry: CATSKILLS VS. HAMPTONS. After discovering the wealth of locally made products — from jewelry to candles to granola — over the years, 

“it made sense for me to bring all of it to Paris, where the Catskills are really unknown.”

Andelman’s decision to highlight the Catskills is a testament to the growing DIY folks in the last decade. My friend Michael Mundy and his wife Nhi left the city after their apartment was flooded during Hurricane Sandy and they launched a small gazette, DV8, this past summer out of Jeffersonville, the next town over from me. It offers up portraits and interviews with everyone from farmers and beekeepers to familiar fashion names like Daryl Kerrigan… 

“The kind of people who move up here are really practical. They can be rough around the edges, like pioneers. I felt like these people have stories that need to be told.”

I recently told my own story in their current issue, The Locals. I’m upstate in that house right now and have been thinking of Paris for the last three days. I feel a connection and I’m happy DV8 and upstate New York will be debuting in The Catskills collection today, Nov. 16, at Colette, 213 Rue Saint Honoré, Paris. 

We ARE with you, Paris.

(via NY Times)

LAST NIGHT 5,000 NEW YORKERS, ALL DRESSED IN WHITE, DINED UNDER THE STARS

Yes, 5,000 people, all dressed in white, got together for the world’s largest outdoor popup restaurant in NYC last night. The location was a secret until the last moment. Guests for Tuesday’s Diner en Blanc (that’s french for Dinner in White, y’all) showed up at one of 24 designated spots where the secret venue was disclosed. Then, dining and dancing and drinking and talking at Pier 26 on the Hudson River in Tribeca. It was BYO–everything, including food, booze, tables, chairs –even silverware and candles. Of course, there were no waitstaff, so they had to clean up after themselves too. Each participant pre-registered for the event, and paid $30. It all started in Paris in 1988 and has expanded to 60 cities on five continents, but organizers say the one in New York is the largest with more than 125,000 people signing up this year.

JOAN JULIET BUCK ON DRESSING HER AGE (& WHY THOSE PEARLS AREN'T AGELESS)

My friend, the fantastic writer, actress and all-around fascinating gal, Joan Juliet Buck just penned a piece for Harper’s Bazaar on how “great style is timeless —until it isn’t”. She knows what she’s talking about too…. besides having been on the International Best Dressed List, she was also the editor of French Vogue too, so TRUST, she’s knows whereof she speaks. (You may also have seen her in the movies, as she is a good actress and was the french cooking school mistress in Julia & Julia) I’ve been thinking lately of what I CANNOT wear as a bald, gay man my his mid-50s. As I told Joan, the list is l o n g . . . and getting longer. I’m not sure if these rules (or any) apply to men in dresses. I’ll ask Joan the next time I see her… 

When I was 30, my necklaces were ironic. The single row of baroque pearls with the intaglio clasp that I wore along with my grandmother’s double strand were a cheeky nod at Coco Chanel in her late-revival prime, say, when she was 78 or 80. Now that I’m barreling toward my mid-60s, the last thing I want to do is remind anyone of Coco Chanel at 78. 

Necklaces age me.
So do black jackets.
So do shoulder pads.
So do earrings. Any earrings.
So, alas, do printed scarves.
So does red lipstick.
So does smoky, sexy eye makeup.
And high heels I can’t walk in.

Now that I’m a lady of a certain age, I have to drop the costumes. Everything that put me in the Best-Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1987 must be left in 1987, and the same goes for the Lartigue look of 1972, the dust-colored suits of 1991, and the rest. Fashion is a time capsule and becomes a time machine that only the young should enter. 

I hang on to the Saint Laurent smoking coatdress that I wore to a lunch in 1983 because I hadn’t slept in my own bed, the Missoni camisole I wore to a magical dinner at Maxim’s in 1974, the Hermès chestnut leather dress from 1996 that was the coolest thing in the world. But the world moves on, the Saint Laurent coatdress is a fashion history lesson, the camisole can’t be worn with a bra, and the leather dress is oddly tight. I haven’t gained weight, but things have moved around.

We find our style in our 20s and hang on to everything that makes up our look—hair, shoes, colors, shapes—through our 30s and 40s, at style cruising speed. But somewhere between 50 and 60, there are bumps in the road. Physical changes, social changes, contextual changes.

The face changes shape. From the age of 23 onward, I wore a particular expression in photographs until I saw evidence that the pensive, dreamy, three-quarter profile had turned grumpy. Now it’s full face, with a smile, and as much light as possible.

Last fall I longed for Saint Laurent silver boots identical to the gold ones I had in 1973. Missoni makes me as happy as ever, Uniqlo’s collections by Jil Sander and Ines de la Fressange are beautiful, and I look forward to what Christophe Lemaire will do there this fall. The wardrobe now comes down to the essentials: black sweaters, good trousers, boatneck tunics, and dresses that are cut, shaped, and fitted to me. A good trench coat, and then a few more good trench coats. I found a silk one at Pamela Barish’s shop in Los Angeles, with pleats in the back so that it can be worn as a dress, or thrown—the way I used to throw my pearls—over a plain top trousers for that abstracted I-just-got-out-of-bed look that signals cool at any age. It’s the ideal garment, but the one in my size was snapped up by some 30-year-old movie star, so I’m going to have to wait.

For the full treatise on what works fashion-wise (for Joan, anyway) in your 60s, go here. (via Harper’s Bazaar)

PARIS IS PISSED ABOUT McCARTHY'S "TREE"

Paul McCarthy’s contribution to The FIAC art fair in Paris is an 80-foot sculpture in the Place Vendome titled Tree. But you know, as does ANYONE with sight that is over 21, that it looks much more like a HUGE green butt plug. A story in the french paper Le Monde says that a REALLY angry Parisian accosted the artist in the street, punching him three times in the face! That’s pretty mean –McCarthy is almost 70! But hey, the Vendome column, like most monuments and skyscrapers super-phallic to start with, so McCarthy is just inverting the idea at the other end, right? And, France, don’t poo-poo his art, you could have gotten the piece below that was shown last year in Hong Kong instead. Merde!

Paul McCarthy, Complex Pile, Hong Kong 2013

UPDATE: According to The Guardian the cables supporting the the sculpture were cut today, leaving the artwork slumped on the pavement and forcing a security guard to deflate it. FIAC said it intended to resurrect the sculpture as soon as possible.

LOUIS VUITTON'S $135 MILLION GIFT TO PARIS

Bernard Arnault is the richest man in France, with a net worth of over $29 billion. He oversees LVMH Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, the corporate colossus that owns the mother-lode of luxury brands; Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Givenchy, Fendi, Bulgari + 55 more. Its Fondation Louis Vuitton is opening the 126,000-square-foot glass and steel structure designed by Frank Gehry this month in the Bois de Boulogne of Paris. He has spent the last decade making it at a cost of more than $135 million –perhaps much more. He says in an article today, in The New York Times;

“We don’t speak of numbers when we speak of a dream. Let’s just say it is a very expensive sculpture.”

But, of course, it is more than that. Built to house the contemporary art collection of LVMH (including works by Jeff Koons and Gilbert & George) as well as pieces from Mr. Arnault’s personal collection, the FLV may be the most ambitious, and potentially controversial, new structure in Paris since I. M. Pei’s pyramid landed in the Louvre in 1989. And because the new museum sits on land that belongs to a public park, in 55 years it reverts to the city.

It really is a marvel. After the Guggenheim Bilbao and the Disney concert Hall in LA, we tend to take his designs as a given but he continues to astound with buildings like this, and as a pubic place, it will continue to give back to Paris for many, many years. To read the full story on it and Arnault in the Times, go here.

One of Gehry's original sketches for the building

(Photos, FLV; via NY Times)