Filmmaker Wes Anderson turns 40 today. Country singer Tim McGraw is turning 42. Jewelry designer Elsa Peretti is 69. Former Random House CEO Peter Olson is 59. Folk signer Judy Collins is 70. Director John Woo is 63. People's Court judge Marilyn Milian is 48. And Kelly Bensimon is 41. Weekend birthdays below.
Winter vacation is over (for most people, at least), but if the holidays left you with a depressing spare tire around your midsection and you need a reminder that nature doesn't discriminate—and plastic surgeons aren't miracle workers—the third picture from the left should boost your spirits. The identities of the four designers after the jump.
♦ Lauren Hutton is the new face of the Olsens' clothing line, reportedly, although it's not clear whether that means the younger Elizabeth and James label or the more high-end The Row. Ashley Olsen on the 64-year-old actress: "She's just a wise woman and she's a traveler and she's obviously a style icon." [Vogue UK]
♦ The Olsens' appearance on Oprah yesterday was noteworthy for many reasons, but none more than the fact that Ashley totally lies about what she eats for breakfast. [Fashionista]
♦ Donatella Versace must not be too worried about the recession: Versace is launching a perfume in a "that comes in a gleaming, hand-stitched white leather train case." The price: $2,100. [WWD]
Fashion Group International hosted its "Night of the Stars" gala at Cipriani Wall Street last night, where Kate Bosworth, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, Prince, Karl Lagerfeld, Ashley Olsen, Anna Wintour, Isaac Mizrahi, Donatella Versace, Allegra Versace, Georgina Chapman and Harvey Weinstein (left), Debra Messing, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Francisco Costa, André Leon Talley, Stephanie Seymour, Stefano Tonchi, Blake Lively, Penn Badgley, Alexander Wang, Bobbi Brown, Lindsay Price, Tom Florio, Christopher Bailey, Behnaz Sarafpour, Zani Gugelmann, Chanel Iman, Cindi Leive, Julianna Margulies, Christian Louboutin, Peter Som, Philippe Starck, Nina Garcia, Roopal Patel, Glenda Bailey, Tim Gunn, Jonathan Adler and Simon Doonan, Ruben Toledo and Isabel Toledo, Justine and Jeff Koons, Jonathan Newhouse, John Varvatos, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Patrick Demarchelier, Linda Fargo, Phillip Lim, Leigh Lezark and Max Minghella, Mary Alice Stephenson, and Mamie Gummer celebrated the industry. [InStyle, Wireimage, PMc]
Jay-Z and Beyonce leaving 1OAK ... Michael Phelps leaving MTV studios in Times Square ... Juliette Lewis using an ATM in SoHo ... Katie Holmes leaving her apartment building on East 13th ... Uma Thurman shopping in the Village ... Brooke Shields, Kim Raver, and Lindsay Price filming scenes for Lipstick Jungle in the West Village ... Carrie Underwood posing with her wax figure at Madam Tussauds on 42nd Street ... Agyness Deyn and Albert Hammond Jr. walking with a friend ... Donatella Versace leaving the Chanel Mobile Art afterparty at the Waverly Inn ... Kate Bosworth outside the same party ... and Madonna getting out of a helicopter while carrying son David.
Alex Rodriguez walking in Midtown with Guy Oseary ... Madonna with kids Rocco and Lourdes on a trip to Chelsea Piers ... Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Hudgens standing outside the GMA studios ... Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes on their way to a cocktail party for All My Sons ... The Hanson brothers hanging out in Times Square for some sort of PR stunt ... Jason Schwartzman and Olivia Thirlby on the set of their new film, Bored to Death ... The cast of Gossip Girl standing on set ... Anna Wintour, Vera Wang, Tory Burch, Donna Karan, and many others walking into the Golden Heart Awards Dinner ... and a long list of notables entering last night's Whitney gala, including the host of the event, Donatella Versace.
♦ Kate Betts sits down with Tom Ford and Karl Lagerfeld for an interview, which was also filmed if you can cope with seeing Karl's ponytail up close. [Time]
♦ Suzy Menkes celebrates 20 years at the IHT, and fashion stars including Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, Donatella Versace, Alber Elbaz, Anna Wintour, and John Galliano offer their video tributes. [The Moment]
♦ Sofia Coppola is designing a line of handbags and shoes for Louis Vuitton. The company must have searched far and wide to find this unknown talent so deserving of a break. [WWD]
The Clock Tower Building on Madison Avenue, which Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev's company paid $200 million for last year, is getting a blingtastic makeover. Versace will design the former MetLife headquarters' 55 apartments—including a six-story penthouse with its own spa, wine-storage facility and cigar room—with Donatella herself designing the complex's "club." Renovations are expected to take two years and $110 million, but if you've got some significant spare change and a yearning to live like a mahogany-tanned, bleached-blonde, chain-smoking, gold-dripping, recovering cokehead, then the sales office opens in September, with move-ins scheduled for February 2010.
Awkward auteur Woody Allen politely asks Donatella Versace how much longer does he need to stand here in order for Soon-Yi to get some free clothing. After Donatella incomprehensibly mumbled something in the lower-register of the baritone scale, Allen said that he had to excuse himself so that he could catch the score of the Knicks game. However, Donatella responded in kind by pulling a tattered Knicks schedule from her purse in order to prove that the Knicks, in fact, did not have a game that night.
After turning their swarthy disdain for Jaffa Cake Knees into a full-out journalistic attack, the Brit tabloids are at it again, only now they've sunk their unmanicured claws into an affliction rampant in Hollywood they've dubbed "trout pouts." Known victims of said affliction, like Jenna Jameson and Heidi Fleiss, have long been injecting so much poison into their lips that kissing them might feel a bit like sucking on an well-inflated balloon. Angelina Jolie Pillow Lips, these are not. After singling out once-quite-pretty actress Saffron Burrows as the poster girl for T.P., they've unleashed their venomous pens on several other poufy-lipped ladies—and no group of newsies writes a meaner caption than the snarky Brits. NSFYH (that's Not Safe For Your Health) pics, along with their brush-offs, after the jump.
Old-school blogger Jason Kottke only got to the third paragraph of this week's New Yorker profile of Donatella Versace (which, ridiculously, is not online). This was what stopped him: "The trouble began when, between appointments, Donatella repaired to an outdoor terrace to smoke. Seated at a wrought-iron table, she thumbed open a pack of 'special DV Marlboro Reds' (so called because her staff in Milan is instructed to cover the customary 'Smoking Kills' label on every pack with a sticker bearing a DV monogram in medieval script)." Writes Jason: "That's as far as I read before deciding that reading yet another article about someone wealthy enough to have a staff helping them opt out of reality is a waste of my time, no matter how well written the article."
The March Harper's Bazaar hangs with Allegra Versace, the young family-biz-heiress-to-be and recipient of uncle Gianni's $700 mil. All that money didn't go to her head—she's still the best daughter Donatella, or any other chain-smoker, could ever hope for: "I have to see movies first to scout them for her," she says. "She hates to sit still for two hours without smoking." For the first time, breeding up some kids sounds useful.
In New York's roundup of what luxury goods rich people who can afford eight of them want for Xmas, recently-rehabbed designer Donatella Versace's strikes us as telling. White sand, eh? Well, tropical vacations are fine and good, but nothing beats skiing.
Here's a little something to make your head explode, courtesy of pretty Jim Shi at The Daily:
We have no idea where to begin with this picture of blowfish Graydon, the always-scary Donatella, and Mrs. Graydon, who is clearly wondering what the hell she got herself into. Got a good caption? Email it to tips@gawker.com by the end of the day and, if yours is best, win lots of Gawky love. And maybe a spare VF we've got lying around, if you want it.
We're going to veer ever-so-slightly off our usual beat here, just for the sake of absurdity: Tuesday night was the Women's World Awards, held at the Media City in Leipzig, Germany. We're fascinated by the thought that Germany has a "media city" (why can't New York be so simply named?), and the event itself would put any local awards gala to shame. Mikhail freaking Gorbachev presented the honorees with their awards, including the World Fashion Award, which went to none other than Donatella Versace.
