Last night was the Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards, which is like the Oscars of the fashion industry, except it wasn't televised, we didn't speculate about the winners for months on end, and there were even more gay men in attendance. Naturally, with anything fashion-related, there were a ton of wacky outfits. Let's look!
We didn't get that much out of Vogue editor Anna Wintour during our brief conversation last night, but she did admit that running the magazine isn't actually all that hard. Then we asked creative director Grace Coddington to chime in.
This morning, New York editor Adam Moss lost deputy editor Hugo Lindgren to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. He's certainly not the only magazine-world EIC to have a trusted confidante on staff. But they're a dying breed.
When Anna Wintour agreed to the Vogue documentary The September Issue, she probably thought it would be the greatest stop on the Make-People-Like-Me-Before-My-Contract-Is-Up Tour 2009. Too bad she is cast as the villain to Grace Coddington's triumphant hero.
• The September Issue debuted at the Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday night and the fashion set turned out en masse, not surprisingly. Just a few bits from the big event: Anna Wintour couldn't stop talking up Fashion's Night Out; Thakoon gushed that Anna is now "bigger than Madonna"; the film's unlikely star, Grace Coddington, emphasized that she really never wanted to take part in it; everyone ignored Tom Florio; Diddy claimed Anna as his fashion "godmother"; and Marc Jacobs, who insisted on putting on a French accent when speaking to reporters, argued that contrary to what most people think, Anna's really very "maternal and caring."
• Speaking of Jacobs, rumor has it his wedding to Lorenzo Martone will go down this weekend in Provincetown. And his big Fashion Week after-party, which was canceled last year, will return this fall.
• Vogue creative director Grace Coddington has sold her West Village apartment nearly a year after picking up a loft in Chelsea. The buyer of the condo, which Coddington bought back in 1987: Josephine de la Baume, the model, actress and girlfriend of Mark Ronson, who paid $1.45 million for the 1,100-square-foot apartment. [Cityfile]
• Investor Derek Quinlan has lowered the price of his mansion at 20 East 64th Street. The 13,000-square-foot home, which Quinlan bought from investment banker Roberto de Guardiola and his wife Joanne for $26.25 million in 2006 and put on the market with Dolly Lenz and Monique Silberman for $37 million in April, is now priced at $32 million. [NYP, PDE]
• Roxanne Quimby, co-founder of Burt's Bees, has picked up a pied-à-terre. The Maine-based entrepreneur paid $1.025 million for a one-bedroom condo in the Printing House building at 421 Hudson Street. [Cityfile]
• The recession ain't stopping Marc Jacobs: He's opening seven new boutiques this year. [WWD]
• Alexander McQueen stunned crowds at Paris Fashion Week with a collection that "oozed with imagination," but was "plenty unsettling," too. [IHT, WWD]
• Reviews from some of the other shows in Paris the past couple of days. [NYT, WSJ, Vogue UK]
• Détente! Anti-fur crusader (and PETA honcho) Dan Mathews was spotted shaking hands with none other than Anna Wintour. [NYP]
• Apparently the economy is forcing women to rush over to consignment shops to sell their "beloved Louis Vuittons at pennies on the dollar." [NYP]
• J. Crew is thinking of opening a bridal salon. [Racked]
• You can credit Twilight for boosting sales at Hot Topic. [NYM]
• Neiman Marcus reported that sales dropped 21% last quarter. [Reuters]
• A peek at a new collection by Kimberly Ovitz, daughter of Michael. [Pipeline]
• At John Galliano's show in Paris, "toxic" fake snow had editors like Hamish Bowles, Grace Coddington, and Glenda Bailey most unhappy. [Fashionologie]
The documentary about Anna Wintour and Vogue, The September issue, which is showing at Sundance this weekend, sounds like it will be a nostalgic look at a golden era when advertisers had huge budgets, readers had disposable income, and print media still had a reasonably healthy pulse: Based on footage gathered during the months before the publication of the September '07 issue, Vogue's biggest-ever, the film goes behind the scenes at the fashion bible and exposes the creatives processes of its inner circle like Grace Coddington (who filmmaker R.J. Cutler said was "unhappy" about the presence of his cameras), as well as delves into Wintour's personal life.
» The scene at Michael Kors was inevitably the central portion of the fashion industry/magazine world/reality TV venn diagram: Nina Garcia, Rachel Zoe with her client Joy Bryant, Heidi Klum, Joanna Coles, and Joe Zee drew the limelight away from Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, Blake Lively, Bette Midler, and Kors' mom Joan. On the runway the (smiling!) models, who were told "you are the most glamorous beach bums in the world," showed off middle-of-the-road, cheerful outfits with polka dots and gingham aplenty. [NYO, NYDN, IHT]
