On the Runway Blog: Exhibition on Katharine Hepburn

“A STAR practically always asks for a designer, if she has any sense,” Katharine Hepburn said in an unpublished interview from the mid 1970s. No one would dispute that Hepburn had heaps of sense, or be surprised that she had a lot to say about her legendary style. That is the subject of an exhibition at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center until Jan. 12.

Organized by the Kent State University Museum, which acquired her performance clothes (as well as personal items like khakis, shoes and makeup) after her death in 2003, “Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage and Screen” includes more than 40 costumes and other pieces she wore in plays and movies like “The Philadelphia Story,” “Adam’s Rib” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” Also on display are letters, scripts and research notes that Hepburn made, and which are part of the library’s collection of her stage papers.

The actress was a great pack rat; she seemingly saved everything, according to Barbara Cohen-Stratyner, the curator of exhibitions at the library. In addition to somewhat peculiar items like a Russian military uniform from “The Iron Petticoat,” a 1956 comedy she made with Bob Hope, she also kept opening-night telegrams and floral cards. “Rebel Chic,” a companion book published by Skira Rizzoli, has essays by Ms. Cohen-Stratyner and Jean Druesedow, the director of the Kent State museum, as well as by Kohle Yohannan, who helped organize a terrific show years ago on Valentina, the Russian émigré designer who was a favorite of Hepburn’s. It was Valentina who designed the pink organza and crepe wedding gown that she wore in 1939 on Broadway in “The Philadelphia Story” and reused in 1973 as Amanda in “The Glass Menagerie.”

“Her waist went from 20 inches to 26 over her 96 years,” Ms. Druesedow said in an interview. When Ms. Druesedow visited a Connecticut warehouse, around 2008, where Hepburn’s clothing was stored, she was a little stunned by the depth: costumes by Muriel King, Howard Greer and Walter Plunkett, who was responsible for the gorgeous black draped evening dress in “Adam’s Rib.”

“And, of course, there were a lot of beige slacks,” said Ms. Druesedow, noting that Hepburn’s pants, like most of her shoes, were custom-made — in the case of the pants by costume houses like Brooks-Van Horn. For “Alice Adams,” she bought some of the costumes herself, like the Hattie Carnegie straw hat she wore in a scene with Fred MacMurray. She learned early to shape her characters through fashion.

Apart from her performances, Hepburn had a style far ahead of its time. Maybe we take that for granted. I loved a picture of Hepburn in “Rebel Chic.” Taken in 1932, around the time she made “A Bill of Divorcement,” she’s on the RKO lot wearing a pair of faded jeans and a mink coat, with a scarf knotted at her neck. That image could have been taken today, with the difference that Hepburn wasn’t trying to be someone cool or chic. She just was.

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T Magazine: Now Online | T Women's Fashion Winter 2012

Cedric Buchet

Halle Berry graces the cover of T’s latest fashion issue. The actress sits down with Joyce Maynard to discuss her career, the paparazzi and her love life. Inside, the actress Bella Heathcote, the singer Grimes and the musical duo the Dove and the Wolf wear the clothes of the season, while The Selby drops in on Aan de Amstel in Amsterdam. Don’t forget to read about Joan Juliet Buck’s search for the perfect mattress, Suzy Menkes’s musings on the blurring lines between couture and not couture or Florence Kane’s survey of facials, along with an overview of the latest products and treatments designed to ease wrinkles. When you’re done, visit the studio of the jewelry designer Gabriella Kiss, which is filled with all the objects that make up her creations. See more from the issue >>

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Jeffrey Deitch Faces Critics at MOCA

ZELIG is missing. It is a crisp evening and along Santa Monica Boulevard, out toward the Paramount lot, a platoon of valet parkers stands theatrically awaiting stardom or the arrival of the city’s cultural cognoscenti, whichever comes first.

The autumn arts season is under way here, and the occasion is the inaugural exhibition of the new Regen Projects gallery, a white stucco fortress so hulking and large it could easily swallow up great chunks of Chelsea. A show of work by artists both new and established has drawn out the city’s creative types along with dealers and collectors and curators, eager to see an outpost pioneered by the dealer Shaun Caley Regen in an unlikely corner of this art-absorbed city.

It is a must-attend event, and thus here is the artist Catherine Opie, in a spread-collared shirt and black trousers, proprietarily showing a posse of friends around the museum-like white cubes, while over-tanned waitresses, dressed with no irony (this is Hollywood, after all) as Kim Kardashian teeter on stilettos carrying trays of Champagne.

And here is Mark Bradford, if not the best painter working in America today then certainly the tallest, gliding past works by certified stars like Jack Pierson, Glenn Ligon, Lari Pittman, Sue Williams, Raymond Pettibon, Matthew Barney and others. And here is Michael Govan, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with his comely wife, the brand consultant Katherine Ross. And here is Irving Blum, godfather of Los Angeles dealers, a throwback to the 1950s glory days of the Ferus Gallery, when Ed Ruscha was still an unknown working for an ad agency. And here is a flock of deep-pocketed arts patrons descended from their 40,000-square-foot houses in Beverly Park high upon Mulholland Drive. And here is a cluster of movie agents looking perhaps for things to cover the holes in their walls. And here, too, is Michael Peter Balzary, better known as Flea, the bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, motorcycle helmet tucked under one arm as he gazes at his image in a mirrored wall sculpture by Anish Kapoor.

The faceted fly’s-eye surface of the artwork refracts the faces of a crowd representative of the core Los Angeles art world — everyone who matters in the arts is here, with one conspicuous exception.

Where is Jeffrey Deitch?

For the last two years in this city, ever since he was appointed director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles — and before that, for decades throughout the art world — Mr. Deitch was a constant and predictable art-world presence. Steely though soft-spoken, enigmatic to the point of appearing to be a cipher, dressed in trademark double-breasted bespoke suits and owlish eyeglasses made from buffalo horn, Mr. Deitch was a kind of art-world Zelig.

Like the Woody Allen character, Mr. Deitch had elements about him of the chameleon, morphing over time from a performance artist to an art critic (he was the first American editor of Flash Art) to an art adviser in possession of a Harvard M.B.A. (developing Citibank’s art advisory group) to an art dealer (in little more than a decade he built Deitch Projects into one of New York’s premier galleries). The career apotheosis of the 59-year-old Mr. Deitch occurred when he was appointed to lead a world-class museum with holdings impossible — particularly during an art-speculation bubble when a Gerhard Richter work painted in 1994 could sell for $34.2 million — to duplicate.

Then, as with Zelig, something happened to Mr. Deitch. The world in whose workings he had immersed himself abruptly seemed to have turned on him.

“I’ve been in this business for decades and I’m not in a position where somebody is going to knock down my self-confidence,” Mr. Deitch said in a September interview at the Tower Bar, a plush nexus of power dining tucked into a corner of the Sunset Tower Hotel.

“I suppose it’s characteristic of the movie industry that people are in and out,” Mr. Deitch said. “In New York I was always really appreciated for my contribution, but you would think that all I’ve done here is court Hollywood and do celebrity art.”

He was specifically referring to efforts by detractors to recast his brief tenure at a museum that, when he inherited its mantle, was virtually on life support as the story of a hubristic outlander with outsize ideas about how to repackage and sell Los Angeles to itself.

There have been missteps over the two years since Mr. Deitch moved west, specifically a handful of shows that took celebrity as their focus. Yet while there have been measurable and even outstanding successes, these have been purged from the narrative.

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Scene City: Gala for Elton John AIDS Foundation

On Oct. 12, an article about Wyclef Jean and the financial mismanagement of his charity, Yéle, was on the front page of this newspaper. Earlier this week, an op-ed column in The Los Angeles Times said that Lance Armstrong was using his foundation, Livestrong, as a “force-field to ward off doping accusations.”

So forgive Sir Elton John if he sounded a little cocky on Monday night at the annual gala for the Elton John AIDS Foundation, at Cipriani Wall Street, as famous attendees like Matt Lauer, Brooke Shields, RuPaul and Courtney Love came out in force.

How could he not feel a little vindication, after raising over $275 million in the last 20 years with nary a whiff of scandal?

“In the ’70s and ’80s, I ran a football club in England and I had done a lot of benefits for other people,” Sir Elton said. “I saw the hotel rooms and the planes. I’m not stupid. I thought, ‘How are they going to have any money left over?’ ”

“We kept it small, we kept our eye on the ball,” he added. “My mantra was, ‘Do not waste money.’ ”

But he still seems to know how to hold a party with ample eye candy. During the cocktail hour, the hall seemed to be filled with about half the members from the Equinox gym at West 12th Street and Greenwich Avenue. A hop, skip and a jump away, Alan Cumming worked the red carpet in an orange plaid suit.

“I thought, there aren’t many occasions where you could wear this and feel you wouldn’t be outdoing the host,” he said, shrugging.

When Anderson Cooper took to the stage at around 8:30 p.m. to fulfill his duties as host, he professed to being bowled over at the prospect of a Stevie Nicks performance.

“How excited are you?” he asked the audience. “I’ve got my big hat, I’ve got my wind machine, I’ve got my white bird.”

Around 9:30, Jamie Niven of Sotheby’s held a live auction. Lily Safra, the Brazilian-Monegasque philanthropist, snapped up a pair of Warhol cow prints for $44,000. Ms. Shields, in a sparkly white gown from Angel Sanchez, snatched a portrait session with Jean-Philippe Delhomme for $20,000.

Lunch with Mr. Cooper went for $44,000, a Matthew Brandt photograph for $42,000 and a vacation package in Tuscany for $38,000. (The night raised $2 million, according to organizers.)

Finally, around 10 p.m., the lights dimmed and Ms. Nicks performed 40 minutes of her greatest hits, including “Stand Back,” “Landslide” and “Dreams.”

By the time she got around to the encore, “Edge of Seventeen,” the entire room was on its feet. Lance Bass was singing along. Donna Karan was doing a little shoulder-bob thing. Even Christine C. Quinn took a break from running for mayor to get down.

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Highlights of Mario Testino Exhibition

Jennifer Lopez, Vogue, 2004. More Photos »

FASHION photographers are finally being taken seriously in the art world. Perhaps that is not surprising, given the art world’s recent obsession with fashion as subject matter, but lately those model-chasing photographers are getting their own attention from museums.

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Jean-Paul Goude was the subject of an exhibition in Paris this year; a show of Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin portraits opened at the Dallas Contemporary last month. And on Sunday, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston plans to open a Mario Testino exhibition called “In Your Face.”

“We are in a moment of blending in fashion and art and the world in general,” said Mr. Testino, who has photographed countless designer campaigns, magazine features and royal weddings in his three-decade career. His photographs have actually figured into a number of contemporary works, including those by Nate Lowman (an image from a Julia Roberts fragrance campaign) and Karen Kilimnik (a portrait of Kate Moss from Russian Vogue).

“It is all probably becoming more and more one,” Mr. Testino said.

Here, a look at the stories behind some of his memorable images, which are also included in a book published by Taschen for the exhibition.

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Something in a Sleeve for Spring

Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSleeves to the elbow from Prada. More Photos »

From the look of the spring shows last month, fashion has had a wake-up call. Designers who routinely cater to stringy adolescents, or parade arm-baring sheaths that only Michelle Obama could love, suddenly seemed to get that their most devoted clients — women well over 40 with upscale tastes and incomes to match — view the first lady’s biceps with serious pangs of envy.

This year a handful of tastemakers, among them Dries van Noten, Joseph Altuzarra, Karl Lagerfeld and even the perennially youth-conscious Marc Jacobs finally acknowledged those customers, offering them camouflage in the shape of . . . sleeves.

Long scarce on the runways, caped sleeves, belled and puffed variations, bracelet sleeves and those extending to the wrists have returned in force. Their resurgence may well owe a debt to the Duchess of Cambridge, who flits around London, her arms discreetly covered. Or to hit shows like “Homeland,” whose heroine would be apt to think twice before baring her shoulders in a crowded Beirut market.

Or, for that matter, to a belated recognition that much of high fashion’s fan base is in the Middle East.

Whatever the impetus, frocks and blouses with sleeves are likely to give more-revealing styles a run for the money in the spring, not just on the runways but also in mainstream stores. Retailers like Nordstrom, Gap and Bloomingdale’s are already showcasing dresses with sleeves on their Web sites. And by next season, presumably, a wardrobe feature that once telegraphed matron or (shudder) mother of the bride, will have acquired a bracing dose of cool.

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Shopping Snapshots: Oct. 18

Shopping Snapshots: Oct. 18

By ERICA M. BLUMENTHAL

You Flatter Me

FULL skirts, in textural fabrics, are showing up as a staple for fall. At the recent fashion shows, Jane Keltner de Valle of Teen Vogue (right) wore a flared Jason Wu skirt with a tucked floral T-shirt. The Net-a-Porter founder Natalie Massenet, out for an evening in London (left), wore her vintage Bill Blass skirt with a bomber and dressed-up accessories. “The nipped waist and fuller skirt are flattering and forgiving,” said Ms. de Valle, who is often photographed in this style. “It’s a classic New Look silhouette, which in my opinion is timeless, but feels especially so after Raf Simons’s debut at Dior.”

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Possessed: Christian Liaigre Is a Minimalist With a Taste for Ornate Coconuts

Can it be both? Or is it, say, a question of time? In the 1920s, the great appeal of Modernist design lay in its embrace of an almost machine-made simplicity and its rejection of ornate decoration as not merely superficial but superfluous. Similarly, the elaborations of the 1980s, the junk bonds and faux finishes, were vehemently renounced in the 1990s in favor of John Pawson architecture, Helmut Lang clothing and Calvin Klein Home.

And, one might rightly add, Christian Liaigre furniture. When the Mercer Hotel in SoHo opened in 1998, the low, starkly elegant wenge-wood furniture that Mr. Liaigre designed for the lobby and rooms became a touchstone for minimalist décor. It also made him a household name — at least in 1 percent of houses.

Almost 15 years later, the French designer is still hard at work, having opened his first American store, in New York, this summer. But while he has remained true to his design DNA, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like to shake it up once in a while. That is one reason Mr. Liaigre has a weakness for a particular and obscure art form: extravagantly carved coconuts.

The curious objects date from the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries, when the sugar and rum trade between the Caribbean and Europe was at its height and sailors regularly found themselves crossing the Atlantic with nothing other than a jackknife, a coconut and several weeks to kill. Sugar scrimshaw, if you will.

Mr. Liaigre’s desire to get off the grid is what led him to the coconuts in the first place. As a boy, he vacationed with his parents at Île de Ré, an old-fashioned-but-chic island off the west coast of France, which he likened to long-frequented American getaways like Nantucket. (No, there is no good French word for “preppy.”) As an adult, Mr. Liaigre bought a house on Île de Ré and goes there whenever he can.

Part of his fascination with the area is its maritime history. Île de Ré is just off the coast from La Rochelle, which was a trade port where ships from the Caribbean would dock and unload. Until recently, he kept a small four-person sailboat at Île de Ré for day sails in the summer. In his early 30s, he was invited by a friend on a sailing trip from St. Barts in the West Indies to La Rochelle. It was a fateful trip. An early convert to the idyllic lures of that island, Mr. Liaigre built his own house there as well.

It was in the maritime museum in La Rochelle that he first saw examples of the ornately carved coconuts that seemingly linked his two favorite islands, and was bowled over.

“The poetry of it was so beautiful,” he said. “I found it so incredible that some sailor should have that kind of talent and dedication. It’s quite fragile work, using a knife to do that.”

He also understood exactly how the art would have come about. Having sailed across the ocean himself, he remembered the long, empty stretches of time begging to be filled.

“Six weeks,” he said of his own trip. “A nice trip, but a little too long.”

Mr. Liaigre started collecting the coconuts in antiques stores in France and the Caribbean. He now has about 12, a few in each house and a couple in his Paris apartment.

The coconuts have provoked no desire in him to go Baroque. Rather, they remain an inspiration and reflection of his ruling ethic: that at its best, design is an expression of the inventiveness that springs from necessity.

“It’s about creativity,” he said. “About what you do with the materials that you have.”

In other words, what do you do when life gives you nothing but time and coconuts? Make lemonade.

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