The ‘Times’ Notices Something Skinny About Male ModelsHey, guys, remember when we noticed that male models, starting with the fashion shows in Milan, were surprisingly skinny this year? Well, eventually Guy Trebay noticed, too! He has a whole story in the Times about it today. Now, to our eyes, the models in New York aren’t as coltish and sunken-cheeked as they were in Milan. But they are skinnier than usual. Take the normally buff boys of Duckie Brown, for example. Their silhouettes are much narrower this year. For more evidence, click through our slideshows from menswear (and mixed) shows like DKNY, Phillip Lim, and Thom Browne.
The Vanishing Point [NYT]
Related: The Skinny on Milan’s Male Models
party lines
A Designer Explains the Effect of the Writers’ Strike on FashionAfter the Fug Girls got us thinking about the effect the WGA strike would have on the fashion industry, we caught up with designer Phillip Lim and asked him about it at Repetto’s 60th-anniversary party last week. Lim is a well liked, quickly rising designer who has been showing since fall 2005, and is therefore a good example of a designer who is established but by no means on as stable ground as any of the giant houses that have been around for much longer. So what does he think about the strike, which is appearing to affect more and more people as time goes on? “It’s about how it trickles down to retailers, how it trickles down to restaurants, how it trickles down to the community,” said the bubbly Lim. “They’ve got to work it out and get on with it. It’s almost selfish to just keep on with the struggle.” So if it affects everybody, it must be affecting Lim himself, right? “For us, we have a distribution in Los Angeles. Our stores, people we sell to, they’re affected by it. So in the end it affects us.” And the loss of award shows? “[A presence on the red carpet] boosts business, but we didn’t build our business on that premise, so in the end it doesn’t hurt us a ton,” Lim explained. “We make clothes for the ‘everywoman,’ you know.” Still, we’re guessing some other, more gown-oriented designers (Marchesa, much?) would have killed for the opportunity to dress Keira Knightley last Sunday…—Jada Yuan
Earlier: No Golden Globes? Now Everything’s Fugged Up
Related: Mr. In-Between [NYM]
in other news
Adrian Grenier Meets a Belle in the Big CityYou’re at a party, sitting bored on the couch next to some drunk Indian guy, when a shaggy-haired, twinkly-eyed stranger ambles up to you. He smiles. You smile back. “What’s your name?” he says. You tell him, and then you ask for his. “Adrian,” he says. He says he’s a documentary filmmaker, along with some other stuff. As he says this, his eyes twinkle, and you realize that you have seen these twinkling eyes before, on the hit show Entourage. Why, it’s Adrian Grenier! Immediately, you start planning your lives together. Half the year, you’ll live in his Clinton Hill brownstone. Winters, you’ll decamp to Los Angeles, with the occasional jaunt to St. Barts, Italy, and Cannes. He asks what you do. You tell him you’re in fashion. “That’s cool,” he says. Maybe he’ll pay for you to start your own clothing line, like Harvey did for Georgina! Then he leans in and huskily whispers the thing every woman has always dreamed of hearing. “So,” he says, “how about we go home, and I fuck the shit out of you?”
Adrian Grenier Pickup Lines: A Play in One Act [Radar]
company town
Jeffrey Goldberg Wants a PonyMEDIA
• Atlantic owner David Bradley sent ponies to Jeffrey Goldberg’s kids to help lure him away from The New Yorker. Seriously. [WP]
• Just before the Dow Jones deal went through, the Bancrofts voted to double this quarter’s dividend for themselves [NYP]
• Murdoch and Ailes’s next move? All-out war? (Wait, they’re not at war with everyone else already?) [Newsweek]
party lines
At Opening, Phillip Lim Is Hot, and So Are His GuestsPhillip Lim — fresh off his CFDA womenswear triumph and busy collaborating with everyone from Uniqlo to Birkenstock — is hot. And so was the opening party for his first store, the 3.1 Phillip Lim boutique on Mercer Street, last night. The stylish crowd loves the endearingly bashful designer and his ridiculously adorable wares — the less-than-designer prices don’t hurt — which meant there were throngs in his Soho space last night, overwhelming the air conditioning. The only solution? Quaffing plenty of the chilled bubbly, generously provided by Veuve Cliquot. Even so, perhaps the only person whose hair didn’t wilt in the humidity was Anna Wintour — but that’s because Lim immediately escorted the editor and her perfect bob downstairs and away from the crowd. Designers and social girls and fashion assistants were all there, as was Debra Messing, who had never met Lim before and tried to stay cool by the bar. The actress was adorable in a pouffed black Lim dress, though overaccessorized with a distracting headband also from the designer. Even with beloved Phillip, there can be too much of a good thing. —Nan Wolfe
company town
Private-Equity End-Time Is Near!FINANCE
• The big private-equity guns are sounding warning shots of a bubble. Henry Kravis and David Rubenstein believe the good days are waning. [WSJ]
• Despite the bullish market, Goldman Sachs initiated a “pause” in hiring. Is an industry-wide freeze likely to follow? [Breaking Views via DealBreaker]
• Wall Street firms are having trouble keeping analysts because the work is boring and the pay better elsewhere. [NYS]
photo op
Michael Wants That Back
Desperate to ogle some obsolete technology? You’re out of luck, unless you want to fly to Las Vegas. Guernsey’s auction house will be selling thousands of Jackson Five items tomorrow and Thursday at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, but Friday some of the highlights were displayed at the auctioneer’s Upper East Side headquarters in Manhattan. Behold, the microphone Michael used in the seventies.
The Jacksons [Guernseys.com]
in other news
The ‘Times’ Answers Our Financial QuestionsSee, this is why we love the Times. (And why we love our readers, who called the Times piece to our attention.) Yesterday, while bestowing due huzzahs upon the delightful news that the MTA will not raise fares in 2007, we were tripped up by an unexplained statement in the Daily News. “The agency gets revenues from real estate transactions,” New York’s hometown paper baldly asserted, going on to claim that the mammoth Stuy Town sale will result in a windfall for the Transit Authority. How, we wondered, does this happen? In today’s Times, William Neuman, bless his metro-y heart, explains:
Mr. Kalikow spoke yesterday at a meeting of the authority’s board, at which officials announced that a tax windfall from the sale of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village would help pay for new paint jobs in 200 subway stations.
The $52 million needed to paint the stations will come from a total of $81.6 million that the transportation authority will receive in mortgage and transfer taxes from the sale, which totaled nearly $5.4 billion. The authority receives a percentage of the transfer and mortgage taxes collected on real estate sales in New York City, and the taxes have become an important part of the agency’s financing.
And now you know.
Walkway Between Subways Is Promised for Transit Hub [NYT]
Earlier: MTA Won’t Raise Fares, Thanks, Somehow, to Stuy Town