Saturday, February 13, 2010

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres



"'Uh-oh, I see no food, not so good,' the model Helena Christensen said backstage at the Bryant Park tents. Then, spying a goat-cheese sandwich on the craft services table, she added, 'Now it’s good again.' This was on Friday evening, and the usual mosh-pit atmosphere behind the scenes of a fashion show had been raised a few tumultuous notches because this particular event was a benefit for Haiti, convened by Naomi Campbell, who, when she isn’t flinging a phone at her personal assistant, has a prodigious executive ability to deploy one forspeed-dialing powerful friends to aid in a worthy cause. In this case Ms. Campbell had called on scores of models, designers, celebrities and stylists to donate goods and services to benefit CARE, the relief organization, to rebuild Haiti’s health care system. And so, at 6:30, in one of the three areas curtained off backstage for hair-and-makeup and wardrobe, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, sat patiently on a stool with her face upturned as a makeup artist patted foundation around her neck and earlobes, one of them torn from a long-ago piercing, while alongside the duchess sat the Covergirl model Tasha Tilberg, wearing her customary nose ring and chatting about her recent wedding in Canada." (SundayStyles)



(Fabiola Beracasa and Sylvana Soto-Ward via VF)

"Off to MAC & Milk Studios in the Meatpacking District to catch the Preen show, I caught up with Olivia Palermo making her way to her front row seat. 'MTV released me,' said the thankful Palermo of the network agreeing to let her walk in the Fashion Relief show to benefit Haiti yesterday afternoon. 'I was like, I am not saying no to this,’ she said. Not far from The City starlet was Fabiola Beracasa, who is currently in the Fashion Week vortex, blogging for Interview, shooting videos for AOL, and also working on a project with LVMH. Wearing a pair of dark shades to the show, she explained that her indoor eyewear choice was the result of getting up at 6am to interview recipients of the Ecco Domani Awards, despite staying out to 1am the night before. 'I’m absolutely not a diva,' assured the socialite. 'This is just me trying to be kind to people around me, so they don’t have to see my bloodshot eyes.'" (VanityFair)



"I bumped into my imaginary BF Jared Leto last night at the Erin Wasson show and did what any self-respecting journalist would do in that circumstance: put on some lip gloss, flipped my hair, and dropped to my knees (don't judge -- he was sitting on the floor, so I had to.) What proceeded after was a messy, unprofessional affair which is not was not even transcript worthy, but I'll share because I care." (Zandile Blay/Papermag)



"IF designers are not terribly, terribly worried that Snooki and Pauly D will show up and spoil their party — don’t be alarmed, dears, it’s only Fashion Week — it may be because they have excellent gatekeepers like Billy Daley of Michael Kors. 'I just said no to three celebrities who wanted to come to Michael’s show,' sid Mr. Daley, the communications director for Mr. Kors, identifying the type as very obscure and up-and-coming actresses who may or may not be the next Blake Lively.' Their Hollywood publicists had requested seats to the show, which is on Wednesday. Of course. You don’t think all those fabulous stars turn up at fashion shows to pay homage to the designer, any more than Nicole Polizzi, known as Snooki, the loud, devouring star of the controversial MTV reality show 'Jersey Shore,' is dying to put on one of Mr. Kors’s cute twin sets. Media reports last week that cast members of the Italian-American beach-house rumpus might be seated with the style mavens at New York Fashion Week produced groans of 'Oh, no, not them.'" (NYTimes)



"Gwen Stefani came to her LAMB after-party without her flashiest accessory—18-month-old son Zuma, who'd been with her at her show earlier that day at Milk Studios in a matching leather jacket. She had her hands full without him, though—the cocktail hour at Milk's eighth-floor Surf Lodge Outpost was as much a receiving line as anything, with publicists and security guards telling photographers to cool their jets and let people like Estée Lauder's John Demsey in for a chat. 'It was a challenging couple days with the blizzard, Chinese New Year, Federal Express, child with an earache,' Stefani told us. 'But I feel like all that stuff brought on a lot of creativity. We came up with a lot of looks that we wouldn't have thought of without the pressure.'" (Style)



"It's getting down to the wire for Smallville, Community and a slew of other network series stuck in Nielsen purgatory -- with just weeks left to go before final verdicts on their fates are handed down. For shows 'on the bubble,' these are the times that try showrunners' souls. Every week of ratings data between now and May, when fall schedules are revealed, brings glimmers of hope or new evidence suggesting damnation is near. 'Being on the bubble is incredibly stressful,' says Chuck co-creator Josh Schwartz, whose NBC series came back from the brink after fans rallied behind it. 'You are living and dying every week. Those moments before the ratings load onto your iPhone, your hands are clammy, your vision blurry, your stomach doing flips. And then, since you're on the bubble, inevitably the rating is exactly low enough to guarantee you remain on the bubble, yet not so low as to ensure you are canceled. So that feeling persists for the entire week until the next ratings come in. Rinse and repeat.'" (TheWrap)

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