On Monday night, W magazine
held a party to celebrate its annual art issue at the brand new Edition
Hotel in New York. The guest list read like one of the mag’s famed
call sheets: Iman, Gemma Ward, Caroline Trentini, Lindsay Ellingson,
Emily Ratajkowski, and Chrissy Teigen
all stopped by, perching on various velvet couches while Leonardo
DiCaprio and Toby Maguire tried—and failed—to go incognito. (Note to
male movie stars: a baseball hat and a razor boycott doesn’t really cut
it in a place where half the room gets paid to post Instagram photos.
Just so you know…)
As
the ‘90s heartthrobs went back into their secret elevator (seriously),
another fashion rule was revealed: Polaroid film is still an It Girl
obsession. “I get mine from The Impossible Project,” said Scout Willis,
whose first New York art show happened this weekend in Brooklyn. “I do a
lot of mixed media with Polaroids,” including a series of t-shirts with
her NSFW topless art, “and the immediacy of instant film is really what
gets me.”
Another
great accessory: the giant bejeweled pyramid clutch that Harley Viera
Newton made for Judith Leiber. “We did three handbags together for
Saks,” grinned the model and DJ, “the pyramid, a snake, and my name in
hieroglyphics. But I’m kind of nervous to take them out because they’re
so limited edition, so they kind of sit on my mantle like objets d’art… I
always swore I’d never be precious about fashion, but these are
special… and my Vivienne Westwood hangman’s sweaters from the ’70s.
Those are like history, not clothes. I just like to look at them and
pretend I was there.”
Designer
Misha Nonoo had a different take on things: “Wear it all, wear it to
death,” she said. “Why look at your clothes like art, when if you wear
them and they become part of your being, you can become part of the art,
too?” Nonoo’s most recent collaboration was with contemporary art
darling Dustin Yellin; her husband, Alexander Gilkes owns the online art
auction site Paddle 8. “If
I had one of those paper soup can dresses by Andy Warhol, I would wear
it,” she said. “Why save something that should be part of how you live?
What better day do you have than today?”
“It’s great when fashion and art collide,” mused British fine artist Phoebe Collings-James, a former Vogue model
who just moved to—where else?—Brooklyn. “But I don’t think anyone
should be taken less seriously as an artist because they love clothes or
participate in the style world.” I ask if her modeling reputation has
helped her art career. “You know those standardized tests you fill out
in school, and if you don’t have an answer that applies, you just write
N/A? That’s what I think of that question… of course, female artists
have to prove themselves more relentlessly than male artists, because
that’s the world we live in… but we need to keep talking about [sexism],
keep asking about it, and then we will demolish it!”
But
first, several girls were demolishing the Edition’s gilded dining
room—perhaps hearing Leo and the Gang were afoot, they decided to dance
on the antique tables. Champagne glasses rattled. Silverware crashed to
the floor. And Martha Stewart decided with one swift look that it was
time to bid adieu…and we did too.
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