Puttin' on the Ritz: Japan Society Art Deco Party and Fashion Show

Earlier this month, we donned top hats and tails and strolled to the Japan Society's Art Deco party and fashion show, co-sponsored by the Art Deco Society of New York.

A long, long time ago (March 16th, to be exact) we had attended the opening of the Japanese Art Deco exhibit itself -- furniture, painting, sculpture, dishes, lamps, wall panels, covers of sheet music and matchbooks -- almost all of which came from a private collector in reaction to statements that art deco did not exist in Japan. One of our favorite items was an antique silk men's inner kimono covered in movie poster artwork. Although no photographs are allowed inside the gallery, on the night of the art deco party we did snap shots immediately outside the upstair gallery and the downstair reception. We persuaded a quartet of guests (in exchange for taking their group photo on their camera) to take our picture in front the poster which greeted us at the top of the stairs.

Glamorous Shien Lee (Shien@dancesofvice.com), whose Dances of Vice co-sponsored the evening and runs similar stylish events around the city, welcomed the crowd, outlined the evening's activities and introduced Kathryn Hausman, President of the Art Deco Society of New York.

Kathryn Hausman ((kathrynhausman@artdeco.org - on the left) and a friend posed with Patricia Fox (right).

These two terribly chic young ladies dressed for the occasion.

We ran into Lori Lewin (right) and her friends Martha and Jeff, all decked out in vintage finery. Sharp-eyed readers recognize Lori from our visits to the Metropolitan Vintage Show.

In a nod to the venue,  several of the guests (male & female) wore kimonos.

Valerie posed with Willard Morgan (aka Saint Hollywood) who curates the Ideal Glass gallery and event space (www.idealglass.org) in the East Village. Will was also in attendance at the March 16th opening.

This quartet of young guests enjoyed the swing band music while we all waited for the fashion show to begin.

Jean poses with actor & director Robert Ross (rpmproduction@nyc.rr.com), a tall English dandy whom we met back in March at the opening of the exhibit.

Danielle, an adorable flapper incarnate, appears in our Easter parade posting in the gorgeous vintage cream ensemble. She outdid herself this evening in a shimmery vintage metallic sheath with matching shoes and bag. Her chivalrous escort held her coat while we took photos.

Gentlemen as well as ladies wore event-appropriate attire. This fellow sported suspenders, plaid trousers and bowler hat with great aplomb.

Speaking of peacocks, how could we not feature the ever fabulous Julius and his ubiquitous fan and his crimson-coated companion of 21 Club fame (try saying that three times rapidly, Kiddies!)?

Top hats come in a variety of shapes and materials, based on their use. Jean (who has two) had the bright idea of lending one to Valerie (who has none) since we had both in the recent past bought a pair of tails. (Jean's is made by chic Israeli designer Kedem Sasson; Valerie's is made by After Six, and is almost certainly a boy's jacket.) Valerie wore Jean's silk opera hat, also known as a concertina, which can fold flat like an accordian while the wearer is seated in the theater. At the conclusion of the show, a gentleman merely taps the brim with his walking stick and it pops back into shape. NOTE: We do not recommend trying this maneuver with vintage hats whose silk housing and liner may have weakened with age. (Valerie handed it back to Jean at the end of the evening without ever daring to pop it one way or the other.)

In keeping with the spirit of the period, this woman wore a blossom in her hair, and a black dress decorated with red cherries.

Christine wore a fabulous doll hat.

Lana, who came with Patricia Fox, poses with Valerie.

This was the only person we saw in a top hat, so we had little trouble spotting & locating each other in the crowd. His lady friend wears a wonderful flapper hat. (Why are they called top hats, anyway? As if your hat would be anywhere but on top...)

Patricia Fox and friend.

Doesn't this woman have the quintessential flapper thing going on? The hair, the dress, the shoes...

Danielle just bowled us over with her wonderful dress. Then she told us where she'd gotten it, and what she'd paid for it (next to nothing), and we were bowled over all over again. You go, girl!  (She and Julius were so fabulous, they rated two photos.)

This dapper gent shows everyone how it's done.

The woman at the left did a stunning job of dressing and setting her hair in the Japanese style of the period. The woman on the right is also dressed for the period. The little boy is wearing an aloha shirt, now believed to derive from large Japanese floral prints of the period, and brought from Japan to Hawaii by immigrant families.

Japan Society screened the movie Avalanche, directed by Mikio Naruse, that evening. Avalanche featured well-to-do people with the very latest fashions (and philosophies) of the times. Some pieces shown in the exhibition indicated that it became socially acceptable for women to drink in public during this period. In the screen shot below, this woman perfectly exemplifies that point. (She was in love with an unattainable man, if you're wondering.)

For the evening's finale, there was an art deco fashion show featuring vintage clothing and accessories. Here (and below) a number of the models stopped for photos.

On the second floor was a room with a DIY cherry blossom tree created by hundreds of tiny pink notes in the shape of flowers stuck to the wall. Against this stunning backdrop, we strutted our stuff. Murray Head kindly took this picture of us.  Because it was threatening to rain that evening, we both brought umbrellas, which we used as walking sticks. (Jean's umbrella -- black with white skulls, of course -- somehow mysteriously appears in some photos but not in others.)

Here's the view from the rear, courtesy of photographer Murray Head.

What we're wearing:

Jean: Vintage beaver Stetson top hat; Kedem Sasson tails; Indian harem pants; Uniqlo t-neck; Trippen geta boots; vintage aluminum and marble earrings; bakelite rings; Made Her Think leather and metal bracelet; Issey Miyake Pleats Please drawstring backpack, black skull umbrella from Beacon's Closet.

Valerie: Jean's concertina top hat; After Six ("Dynasty Collection") tails; Josephine Chaus shirt; Nuno pleated polyester ascot tie; Kedem Sasson pants; Melissa spats-like sandals designed by Gareth Pugh; Metropolitan Museum of Art umbrella.

Fred shows us all how it's done. (Hint: it's done with mirrors.)

East Side, West Side, All Around the Town

This Wednesday we'd like to present you with a little tossed salad of photographs collected over the past several months. They're the kind of moments that are so small and so brief that without a camera you might not consciously remember them, but at bedtime you'd have some indefinable notion that you'd had a really enjoyable day.

Above, Jean and Valerie at the New Museum, in a darkened room, on a multiple screen near the ceiling, wearing the upside-down goggles.




Have you seen this woman?
If so, please notify us. We want her coat.

Photo of fabulous femme fatale...

...flogging frankly phallic phials.

This woman flouts the unwritten law about invading others' space in tight places, but we sympathize and empathize for obvious reasons.

The Empire State Building, wrapped in fog. You can barely make out part of the pinnacle rising above the corona of light.

Debra Rapoport, larger than life on the streets of New York, demonstrating that money can't buy style.

We LOVE it that we have YOUNG readers. So many younger people have complimented us on what we wear, and say 'young people have no style'. Well, sometimes that's true, but sometimes it isn't. Three cases in point:

This woman definitely has style! We hope you can see her marvelous beehive hairdo. And she's wearing Eamz ("aims") sandals by United Nude. Check out the heel. The shoe is named in honor of Charles and Ray Eames.

And this student at Parsons has great style. LOVE that hair color!

This lady has great style too, and they're all completely different!

This gent has knee length dreads. Talk about dedication! Isn't he great?!

We often get to see film production trailers on the streets. Film crews are very tight lipped, and won't give away so much as whether they're filming a movie or a tv show. Note the pink and blue signs on the doors that say 'Lucy' and 'Desi'. Parts of Mr. and Mrs. Smith were filmed just blocks away from here. That time, the Lucy and Desi signs read 'Mrs. Smith' and 'Mr. Smith'. If only we'd known!

Great hair style!

Construction sites are often eyesores, but here it looks like someone got a hold of a bucket of paint from Franz Kline's studio and painted this barrier with a sense of civic pride.

A locksmith's threshold. Subtle, wry, easy to miss, and so charming.

A full moon peeks out from behind a building.

And a little full moon music to close with. This video pre-dates MTV, so cut it a bit of slack, and focus on the great sounds. Love that last line...


Warren Zevon - Werewolves of London by PigLips

Now If We Just Had a Bugatti...

Here we are in our Louise Brooks art deco helmets, courtesy of artist and milliner Carol Markel. For the story behind them and our adventures in them, read on.

Readers of our recent Metropolitan Pavilion Vintage Show post will remember that we had to leave early to make it to Carol Markel's open studio. We were the last guests to arrive that day. A look at Carol's blog, Femme et Fleur, details some of those who came and went before us.

Here are Carol and her husband, Richard. Richard is also an artist, but this was Carol's day. Behind them is some of Carol's work. Both Carol and Richard love color, and express it with great flair in their wardrobes.

Carol introduced us to these three lovely ladies who had included the studio as one of several stops in their tour of the Lower East Side.

Here is a wall of work. When we arrived, there were all sorts of tasty treats on the table, including bottles of Prosecco. Great minds think alike!

In addition to paintings and puppets and videos, Carol makes these colorful necklaces for which she hand-dips each of the wonderful wooden beads. They looked like huge, shiny, round gum balls.

But we digress. We didn't come for the hats, but those were what wound up capturing our attention. (Big surprise.) We'd seen Carol wear one of her helmets, and we both admired - and secretly drooled over - it, but it didn't occur to us that there might be more where that came from. In fact, it turns out Carol took FIT's certificate course in millinery.

Here are three of Carol's felt helmets. The card under the photograph says: "Louise Brooks was a silent film actress in the 1920's. My helmet-style hats are based on her fabulous bob haircut."

Two more examples of her handiwork flank a 1940s figurine. No two are alike. Even the shape of the helmet (e.g., how long the side panels extend forward) varies from hat to hat.

One black and two brown hats show some of the different embellishments she adds to the basic hat for variety.

And for those of you to whom Louise Brooks is not a household name, here's a picture that shows where Carol got her inspiration.

Carol and Valerie model two of Carol's stunning helmets. Valerie ended up purchasing the one that she was wearing.

Jean couldn't resist trying one on. They are surprisingly comfortable and lightweight, hugging the head like a glove hugs a hand. Although she always gravitates first to anything black, Jean surprised herself by buying the one Carol is wearing in the previous photo. Behind and beside Jean are some glimpses of Carol's paintings and her inspiration wall.

The hats are as amazing for their construction as for their looks.

Valerie couldn't resist accentuating her selection with her newly purchased gloves from the vintage show.
 

Back in our own headgear, we started home with our purchases. Giddy as kids emerging from the proverbial candy store, it seemed a good time to celebrate. While walking down Essex Street, we passed CO-OP on the ground floor of the Rivington Hotel. As we were contemplating stopping in, we came across these fabulous youngsters, who seemed to recognize us. We did the Mutual Admiration Society thing, taking pictures of one another. Now that everyone has a cell phone, this can take a long time as everyone gets a shot of their own!

The temperature was balmy and we were hungry and suddenly in the mood for a cocktail. It wasn't quite opening time at CO-OP, but Brad Rosenbloom, the maitre d'hotel, spotted us, gave us the nod of approval and seated us at a table right up front. That sealed the deal for us! And how could we not be charmed by a bar with huge sets of photobooth photos blown up on the wall, each face blotted out with a huge colored dot?

We ordered some sort of lovely concoctions to drink (Jean's had tequila and some sort of jalapeno flavor in the salted rim; Valerie thinks she got the strawberry margarita with cilantro), and had a hard time choosing between nibbling on the french fries flavored with truffle oil and the truffle-flavored popcorn. Jean went for the fries. But Brad came to our rescue and brought us the truffled popcorn -- on the house. How fab! We thought Brad had made our day with truffled popcorn, but we were in for yet another surprise. Brad topped that by bringing Jean a latte and Valerie a bowl of fresh berries mit schlag (no one seems to say 'with whipped cream' anymore), also on the house! Every last thing was Delish! For our part, we were no slouches either. Passersby kept stopping to photograph us and call out to us, and several decided to come inside to sit down.

Valerie, mit schlag.

Jean, mit Brad. Brad rocks!

With the check comes a slip of paper covered with pink candy dots. (Hmmm.  Dots on the photo booth faces on the wall behind Jean.  Dots on the paper that comes with the bill.  Hmmm.)

But the story of the helmets doesn't end there!

The following week, we took advantage of the Guggenheim's "pay what you wish" Saturday evening admission policy to see the John Chamberlain metal sculptures and the Francesca Woodman photographs. We also took full advantage of the drop in temperature to wear our new helmets before having to put them away until next fall. In our continuing efforts to be ever so slightly beyond parental control, Jean sneaked the photo below of one of John Chamberlain's sculptures on display at the museum (while other visitors were less discreetly doing the same thing, we might add). Made of crumpled parts from automobile and other bits of salvage (we think we recognized bits of semi-disguised air conditioner and refrigerator, among other things), the monumental works are free-standing on pedestals or mounted on the walls. We would have LOVED to photograph ourselves in our helmets standing by a crumpled car. Next time.

Both are great shows, by the way, and we highly recommend them.

When we emerged from the museum, we ran into a quartet of young people, and were surprised when both of the young women recognized us from our blog. They did us the favor of taking our picture.

(The Valerie version of a smile, below.)

Since we were on the Upper East Side, we decided to drop into Cafe Grazie, one of our favorite après musée haunts. In celebration of the fact that our photos were featured in CNN.com that day, we toasted each other with champagne-based cocktails.

Sometimes there's nothing like a little comfort food, so we dropped into a favorite diner where Valerie chowed down on a BLT and Jean on a grilled cheese sandwich. At both of these stops, a number of people stopped by our table to admire our fabulous new hats and inquire about them. We gave Carol's name out several times, and regretted that we didn't have her business cards with us.

And in closing, the best rendering ever of a woman in a helmet:

Tamara de Lempicka, Auto-Portrait (Tamara in the Green Bugatti), 1925.