Month: May 2017

The color red made a dramatic show Monday night in the grand parade of fashion at the Met Gala, including co-chair Katy Perry’s look, as did glittery gold and blue feathers on the back of Blake Lively. But many of the evening’s highlights were courtesy of luminaries who channeled honoree Rei Kawakubo, including Rihanna encased in fluttery petal-like pieces by the Japanese designer.

WATCH: Met Gala Red Carpet Looks

Rihanna gestured to the crowd from the carpet in her Commes des Garcons look with stagey pink on her cheeks. Her look was two pieces and a sliver of stomach peeked out from the freewheeling design.

 

Perry wore a veiled dress created just for her by John Galliano, while Pharrell’s wife, Helen Lasichanh, wore one of Kawakubo’s avant-garde, bulbous and armless jumpsuits. Lively’s movie star gown with the feathered train was Versace.

 

While some of the celebs from the worlds of film, TV, fashion, sports and music were inspired by Kawakubo, others made a splash in more classic looks, including Jennifer Lopez in 1950s elegance, a baby blue Valentino gown by Pierpaolo Piccioli.

 

Perry wore a silver head piece and black accents around the eyes with an embroidered wool coat layered over a red tulle and silk chiffon dress, her sleeves elongated in a nod to Kawakubo, all by Maison Margiela Artisanal.

 

Music mogul Diddy, meanwhile, laid down on the carpet to watch girlfriend Cassie pose in a black gown with a huge, spikey train she wore with large, glittery ear cuffs. He wore an embellished cape in a spider web design that carried over to his Rick Owens tuxedo.

 

“It took a half-hour to get ready. We dress like this on the weekends,” he joked.

 

Speaking of the weekend, Selena and her date -The Weeknd – smooched on the carpet in a classic white, delicately embellished gown from Coach designer Stuart Vevers. Madonna went for green camo from Moschino, Tracee Ellis Ross in royal blue Comme des Garcons and Kim Kardashian West – without husband Kanye West – in understated, long-sleeve white from Vivienne Westwood.

 

Nicki Minaj, in a black bustier romper with a huge black-and-red cape from H&M, is a pro when it comes to arrivals.

 

“I stood up in the van the whole way,” she said of her trip to the Met in her larger-than-life ensemble.

 

Missing from the carpet: Stalwarts Sarah Jessica Parker, Beyonce and Lady Gaga.

 

Serena Williams in green Versace put in her first carpet appearance since announcing her pregnancy. Kylie Jenner was whisked up the stairs in a revealing sheer gold Atelier Versace gown, her platinum locks styled close to her head. Sister Kendall Jenner stunned in a revealing black look covered in 85,000 hand-painted crystals from La Perla Creative Director Julia Haart. It included a wide diagonal slit from shoulder to below the waist and took more than 160 hours of work by 26 craftsmen in five cities, the designer said in a statement.

 

Lasichanh, her blond hair high on her head, smiled from within her signature Kawakubo suit. Claire Danes also channeled the Japanese designer, whose work is featured in the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute’s spring exhibition, “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art of the In-Between.” The sleeves of Dane’s flurry of ruffles in a white blouse extended well beyond her hands, paired with a simple pair of black pants.

 

Vogue’s Anna Wintour kicked off the star-studded gala a bit earlier as one of the evening’s co-host. The gala feeds the annual budget of the Costume Institute. Wintour opted for encrusted gold and ostrich feathers from Chanel and said of Kawakubo and her brand: She’s a genius. Not only does she think outside of the box, she doesn’t acknowledge the box.”

 

Priyanka Chopra’s floor-sweeping trench coat evening gown in camel from Ralph Lauren took up a lot of real estate on the carpet, which is actually blue this year. Gigi Hadid went with the color fawn in a geometric design that was short on one side and longer on the other. Her sister, Bella, dressed in a sexy sheer catsuit by Alexander Wang.

 

Thom Browne dressed Solange Knowles in a black coat dress, a quilted down-filled puffer with a train and a pair of his ice skate-inspired booties on her feet.

 

Lilly Collins, her hair in a black, banged crop with dark red lips, paid homage to Kawakubo in a black strapless bodice paired with a high-waisted full skirt in pink, from Giambattista Valli. Zendaya, was just Zendaya, her hair down and red parrots adorning a full, off-the-shoulder ball gown in gold by Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda.

 

Celine Dion, in a silver bodysuit by Versace paired with high hair sculpture, was the last to walk, praising Kawakubo and saying: “To wear something, to be recognized, the whole thing is overwhelming. It’s great to be here.”

 
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If you’re someone who likes a lot of guidance and explanation at the museum, you might want to dramatically recalibrate your expectations before heading into “Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art of the In-Between,” the lavishly presented new show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

Arriving in a brilliant white space containing a series of geometric structures, you’ll find no one pointing you in the right direction, and no explanatory text next to the garments. That’s because for Kawakubo, the revered Japanese designer who’s been reinventing her clothes for nearly a half-century — to the point that she no longer calls them clothes, but “objects for the body” — there is no right answer. 

“I don’t like to explain the clothes,” the Comme des Garcons founder, now 74, was quoted as saying in 2013. “The clothes are just as you see them and feel them.”

There is a bit of guidance available. Andrew Bolton, star curator of this and other blockbuster Met fashion exhibits, has provided paper brochures with maps and context, though he cheerfully welcomes you to ditch them. And even this much explanation for the visitor was a hard-fought compromise with Kawakubo.

“It was a battle,” Kawakubo says in an interview with Bolton. “Are you going to write that we fought?”

They seem to have fought over various things. Showing a reporter around the exhibit a few days before opening, Bolton noted that although Kawakubo approached him 18 months ago saying she was ready for a show, she was resolutely opposed to a retrospective. She hates focusing on the past, because she has moved on.

“She finds it physically painful to look at her work. So, that took months of negotiation,” he said.

Fans of “Comme,” as fashion-lovers call it, would have been “screaming in my ears,” Bolton added, if he hadn’t included collections like “Broken Bride,” where Kawakubo explored the concept of marriage, and “Ballerina Motorbike,” in which she juxtaposed the very feminine — a filmy pink tutu — with the tough, muscular look of a black motorcycle jacket.

Her ‘ruptures’

Kawakubo wanted to focus exclusively on the last few years of designs — following her second “rupture” in 2014, when she said she was no longer making “clothing” in the sense of wearable garments.  (Her first rupture, in 1979, is known as the moment she decided to ditch her early, folklore-inflected designs and “start from zero.”)  “This was where her mind was at,” Bolton said. He convinced her otherwise, and sprinkled through the show are juxtapositions of the older, more functional clothes, and the new.

Pointing out a 2009 dress, he noted: “This still has arms, still has legs, still has openings.” Then, pointing to a post-2014 version: “Now you see the priority of form over function.” An example of her later work is three jackets, fused into one — with two of the jackets forming sleeves of the central jacket.

It is rare that the Costume Institute focuses on a single living designer — the last was Yves Saint Laurent in 1983. But Bolton had long wanted to work with Kawakubo. “For me Rei is not only the most important and influential designer of the last 40 years, but the most inspirational at the same time,” he says. “Her influence is enormous — especially on the vocabulary of fashion that we now take for granted, like asymmetry, like the unfinished, like black as a fashionable color.”

“She summarizes the last 50 years of fashion. She’s that important.”

‘Least dissatisfying’ collection

The exhibit, which began with the glitzy Met gala Monday night and opens to the public May 4, is divided into nine themes, all of them dualities in Kawakubo’s work: Fashion/Anti-Fashion, High/Low, Design/Not Design, and Clothes/Not Clothes are a few.

Passing by one display, Bolton notes that the collection is one of Kawakubo’s favorites — and then stops himself. “Well, she wouldn’t say favorite — she would say `least dissatisfying.”‘ That 1997 collection was called “Body Meets Dress — Dress Meets Body.” Garments in gingham-like fabric are stretched over bizarre protrusions on the body, coming out from the stomach or the back or the hip.

“I didn’t expect them to be easy garments to be worn every day,” Kawakubo has said about that collection. “It is more important … to translate thoughts into action rather than to worry about if one’s clothes are worn in the end.” (Of course, she has made more commercial collections that end up in stores, if not the runway.)

Scurrying around the exhibit the other day, Bolton described a classic anxiety dream he’d had two nights earlier: The exhibit opened, but it was in a huge airplane hangar — and nobody came. No one at all.

And Kawakubo, too, has not been immune to anxiety about the show. “Do you think the space is disorienting?” she asks him during the interview. “Do you think people will get lost?”

Getting lost, he assures her, is rather the point.
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Showtime cable network is presenting four hours of director Oliver Stone interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin on four consecutive nights in June.

The network announced Monday that “The Putin Interviews” will air first on June 12 at 9 p.m. Eastern, with three additional hour-long installments on the following nights. Showtime said Stone interviewed Putin more than a dozen times over the past two years, most recently in February.

 

Showtime is comparing the project to conversations held by British TV host David Frost and former U.S. president Richard Nixon in 1977.

 

Stone had also interviewed Putin for his documentary “Ukraine on Fire,” which was said to take a sympathetic view of Russia’s involvement in the conflict there.
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The new federal spending bill would spare – and even slightly increase – funding for three arts-related agencies that President Donald Trump had proposed eliminating: the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

The agreement announced Monday calls for the CPB’s budget to remain the same, at $445 million. Spending for fiscal 2017 would go up for the NEA and NEH, each from $148 million to $150 million. The three organizations provide money for everything from public television programming to community theaters and scholarly research.

 

The arts community had denounced Trump’s proposed cuts, which have long been advocated by some conservatives. But members of both parties had supported the agencies, with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a Republican and Trump supporter, among those saying the NEA should be preserved.

 

The proposed arts budgets are part of a $1 trillion-plus spending bill that would fund most government operations through September. The 1,665-page bill was made public in the pre-dawn hours Monday and is tentatively scheduled for a House vote on Wednesday.
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The contract for television and film writers is nearing expiration and a costly strike looms that could send some popular televisions shows into reruns.

The writers contract expires at 12:01 a.m. PDT Tuesday and picketing could begin that morning. Representatives for the writers and producers are engaged in a media blackout, meaning it is unclear how far apart the sides remain or how likely a strike will be called.

 

The Writers Guild of America and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers have been negotiating off and on since March 13 but have been unable to reach an agreement on a new contract. The main sticking points are compensation and healthcare.

 

WGA’s members overwhelmingly approved a strike late last month. A strike would immediately end the jokes and witty banter on late-night talk shows, and could eventually impact everything from daytime soap operas to major motion pictures in development.

 

In a memo to WGA members Sunday, the writers’ negotiators warned to “be ready to strike Tuesday.”

 

“If you’ve got anything great in your office on a studio lot, consider packing it up on Monday — just in case,” it read.

 

The memo, though, also said negotiations could continue after the deadline.

 

A strike would be first work stoppage by writers in nearly a decade. In 2007 and early 2008, a 100 day writers strike halted productions on numerous shows, led to a shortened television season and even impacted major film releases.

 

The dispute is driven in large part by shifts in how television is consumed, with streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon joining broadcast and cable TV and garnering viewers, critical and audience love, and awards.

 

There are more television shows than ever, but the work for writers has changed. Most series run for fewer than the traditional 22 to 24 broadcast episode season.

 

The shorter seasons of eight to 12 episodes translate into less pay for writers, who are paid on a per-episode basis.

 

The film industry can better weather a shorter strike, but felt the impact of the 2007-08 strike. Several films, including “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” were affected and were met with poor reviews. Many of the filmmakers and stars involved later said the movies simply didn’t have the screenplay they needed.

 

That strike also affected numerous industries that support film and television production. A Milken Institute estimate found the strike cost the California economy $2.1 billion.

 
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It’s nearly party time for Britain’s Princess Charlotte, who celebrates her 2nd birthday on Tuesday.

Her parents marked the occasion Monday by distributing a snapshot of Charlotte taken by her mother, the Duchess of Cambridge. Here are five things to know about the family as the landmark nears:

Why haven’t we seen more of Princess Charlotte?

 

Prince William and his wife, Kate, want to protect their daughter’s privacy. It’s not surprising that Kate took the official photo to mark Charlotte’s second birthday on the protected grounds of the family’s country estate. The royal couple has tried to keep Charlotte mostly out of the limelight and away from the paparazzi that often follow senior royals at events in London. An important exception was an official trip to Canada in the fall. William and Kate brought Charlotte and her older brother, Prince George, on the trip and Charlotte even attended a children’s party.

 

What does the photo show? What impact will it have?

 

Don’t be surprised if there’s a run on fluffy yellow cardigans with cute sheep decorations in British stores catering to kids – that’s what Charlotte is wearing in the official photo. It’s possible the outfit was chosen by the clothes-conscious Kate, who snapped the photo. Earlier outfits worn by Prince George in public have become extremely popular with British consumers charmed by the young royals.

 

Charlotte looks very proper and very British, with her hair styled by a clip and her blue-grey eyes looking directly at the camera at the outdoors photo session in April.

 

What is the birthday girl’s full name?

 

She is officially named Charlotte Elizabeth Diana, in tribute to her late grandmother Diana, Princess of Wales, and her great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II. She is also known as Princess Charlotte of Cambridge.

 

What’s next for Charlotte and her family ?

 

The family is expected to spend more time in London and less in the countryside as William takes up more royal duties and Prince George, 3, prepares to start school in the fall. Their London base is at Kensington Palace.

 

Will she ever be queen?

 

Charlotte is fourth in line for the throne, behind Prince Charles (her grandfather), Prince William and Prince George.
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