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
video look book
The Greats Come Out for the Look Book Book Party
The hair was large and the colors loud at last week’s Look Book book party at Bergdorf Goodman. Catch up with your old friends André J., Monique Garofalo, and more of our street-fashion greats in this week’s edition of our Video Look Book.
intel
Does Thom Browne Have His Very Own Jason Preston?Earlier this week we got a tip that 42-year-old designer Thom Browne was dating a 19-year-old blond hottie. They met at a launch event for Browne’s Black Fleece line at Brooks Brothers, and since then have been out on the town together (including a stop at Browne’s favorite restaurant, Il Cantinori). The kid, who we’ll leave unnamed in case his parents read Daily Intel, is currently studying at Columbia. So we called up Browne’s people and asked them what was going on — we were dying to know, after all. Thom himself is adorable, and we heard that this new boy was a partyboy, along the lines of Marc Jacobs’ own on-again-off-again rentboy, Jason Preston. We especially hoped there would be similar tattoo branding. But Browne’s rep said that the two weren’t dating — and had only barely met at the Black Fleece event. Which we believed, until today when we saw the above picture of the twink, lurking in the shadows at Thom’s runway show yesterday. Looks cute, huh? Except his pant legs are entirely too long. We hope that’s the next thing Thom gets to working on
Thom Browne Brings Wool to the Beach [Fashionista]
party lines
Socialites Reduced to Mere NumbersRomeo + Juliet opened at the New York City Ballet earlier this week, and guests at the black-tie dinner afterward were handed not seating cards but rather a sprawling seating chart. Odd: Instead of being shown their seats, society girls with tiny clutches were forced to grapple with 25 pages of table assignments. But the usual system was fortunate for folks like us, providing insights into the inner workings of high society. For example:
• VIPs get triple-digit table numbers. Double-digit tables seemed to have a maximum of one celebrity each, while single digits went to the teeming masses.
• Designer Alice Roi does not seem to count as a VIP. Neither did MoMA bigwig Agnes Gund.
• Former mayoral candidate Carl McCall won this round by sitting at table 55, right next to the bar.
• Lost’s Michelle Rodriguez, no longer serving time, was sentenced to table 8. (Or maybe not: Turned out to be a civilian with the same name.)
• Nicole Miller, whose husband works in national security (who knew?), was supposed to be at table 109 with fellow designer Thom Browne. Instead, she was a little disappointed to have been moved to table 114 with Gilles Mendel, Byrdie Bell, and Mary Alice Stephenson. How do we know? Because she got stuck sitting next to us and borrowed our seating chart to check out where all her friends were. Jada Yuan
in other news
Free Papers Are Also Responsible for Late Trains, Garbled AnnouncementsIn a study released yesterday, MTA officials have named free, hand-distributed tabloids like Metro and amNew York as the chief culprits behind subway floods. The statement, needless to say, reverberated around the papers in question — and their competitors — this morning. It would, however, be useful to recall that after the most infamous recent floods, in September 2004, the MTA invoked not the Fourth Estate but rather the Lord Almighty as the perp. (There was a lot of rain as a result of Hurricane Frances.) And, indeed, the transit authority’s own inspector general earlier this year rattled off the following list of shortcomings:
• There’d been “historic neglect” of valves.
• First responders were reduced to arriving at flooded subway sites by subway, which took hours. Some of them never even made it.
• MTA failed to set up a clear-cut center of command for the cleanup effort.
• Trash and muck, including — but by no means limited to — newspapers, free and otherwise, had clogged the drains.
