This is one reason why I want to work for Vanity Fair once I get old and bitchier and learn a lot about socialites: October 2009 issue, page 231, the dek and byline read:
“The sudden death in February 2008 of Badri Patarkatsishvili, Georgia’s richest man, rocked the ruthless world of the Russian oligarchy, pitting his widow, Inna, against his partner, exiled billionaire Boris Berezovsky, in one of the biggest estate battles ever, and landing an American lawyer in a Belarusian penal colony. Talking to key players in New York and London, Suzanna Andrews reports on suspected forgery, secret marriage, and an alleged private-jet kidnapping.”
DUDE! Writing for them is the real-life equivalent to Danielle Steele novels! GRAYDON CARTER IF YOU NEED ARTICLES ON THE SALACIOUS INNER WORKINGS OF RAP MOGULS, YOU KNOW MY NUMBER! Actually you don’t, but you are the journalism illuminati so you can easily retreive it! I’m super good at florid language!
Also, RIP Dominick Dunne, one of my favorite writers ever, he of the dark dry wit, inventor of Gumshoe Fabulous, inspirer of Thom Browne billiard room chic, deliverer of seen-it-all nasal New England monologues. His column presaged Carter’s current direction for the magazine.
When “TruTV” (nee Court) releases “Power Privilege and Justice” on DVD, I will purchase it, and I will watch every episode in succession. If you have never seen it, you have a problem.

But this Times mag joint is as profound an objective yet intimate piece as I’ve read in mainstream media about being a woman in the workplace: “The Place of Women on the Court.” Q&A with Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Supreme Court Justice.

During the first spring of her stay at SeaWorld, J. J. was always found floating off to one side of her pool, and caretakers feared that she was perhaps suffering from boredom and depression. It soon dawned on them, however, that she was facing north, the direction of the gray’s spring migration. Subsequent necropsies on gray-whale brains revealed that they contain tiny particles of magnetic iron oxide, inner navigational ball bearings of a sort that whir in concert with the earth’s magnetic fields, guiding the whales toward their Arctic feeding grounds and, in the early winter, back down to Baja’s birthing lagoons. (Russian scientists, meanwhile, conducted sleep studies on J. J. and found the first definitive evidence that whales do, in fact, dream.)
-From the most fascinating NY Times Magazine cover story since that one about the Israeli diamond magnate*, “Watching Whales Watching Us”
*hey what’s that guy doing? wonder if he got the madoff blue plate special..

The A/W ’09 haute couture lines keep crappening in Paris, and after perusing the disconnected Chanel show wherein design house doyenne [sic] Karl Lagerfeld indulged his apparent fascination with tinsel and doilies, this look from Givenchy reminded me 7th grade Home Ec is in the distant past:

(via Jak and Jill blog)
The whole Givenchy show was stunning, but this dramatic, Mad Max goddess frock/romper (fromper?) is the high point, for its beauty and mysterious/vampish nomadic headpiece-and for its apparent inspiration, the Islamic abaya, a loose-fitting black hooded garment worn primarily in Arab countries (and plenty in my Brooklyn neighborhood too). You could also argue the gilded headpiece is a reverse take on the niqab, or somebody’s cartoon-riches idea of the ancient world colliding with some unknown future goddess–the crown the Neverending Story princess wears before she dies. An interesting image from a classic French design house the day before France began its discussions on the burqa ban, after all the controversy about hijab–it’s in the discourse at least, whether the ensemble is some sort of thrice-removed statement or not. And lo! “Harem pants” will apparently survive the harsh winter! Givenchy has them in mesh made of golden thread and silvery, billowy calf-lengths, topped by almost oppressively structured, angular blazers and black turtlenecks. Whether this show was a think piece, a continuation of high fashion’s richie rich “ethnic” (ugh) “borrowing,” or merely respect for the oeuvre of Stephanie Meyer (those glittery gothic fabrics! aHhh), Givenchy was exactly what my currently-cutoff-jeans-wearing heart wants couture lines to be: fantastical, artistic, glamorous, breathtaking, thought-provoking, the runway equivalent of Versailles, etc. I mean it’s a recession but fuck it, since like .00000000000001% of the population will even see these designs in a museum. Even Angelina Jolie has to get it on loan.
Diane Pernet said this was her favorite Givenchy show ever, and she loved every piece, but keep in mind that statement is coming from a woman who wakes up every morning and gets dressed like a 17th century Spanish princess. If you fux with that (duh), watch the full video of the show on her blog.

MORE SOON. THIS GUY IS A DOUCHE.

So much for this not being personal, but these things are about people I know.

Peter, second from left.
My friend and colleague, Peter van Agtmael, has a book forthcoming entitled 2nd Tour Hope I Don’t Die (on Portland’s Photolucida imprint), comprised of award-winning photographs taken over the course of 3-4(?) years while he was embedded in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus some domestic follow-ups with troops at home and families of men he had befriended who died in combat. It is incredibly powerful, gut wrenching work, and you need to purchase it. A majority of the photos are on his website, linked above, but seeing them online doesn’t have the same impact as on paper–a more meditative, sacred experience–with Peter’s detailed captions. The title comes from a wall of graffiti Peter shot, the graphic is in the writer’s handscript.

Photo Peter van Agtmael
Peter and I first met a year and a half ago, on assignment in Milan for a story on Italian house monsters Crookers. Milan is a storybook city, maybe more so than Roma–Il Duomo is photographed but not to the extent of the Coliseum or ruins, so there’s a more acute sense of wonderment and discovery at the castles, now urban, that double as homes, the cobblestone streets and tiny parks–plus everyone there is impeccably dressed and fucking beautiful. Peter was exhausted, and after Milan going straight back to Afghanistan, so he was determined to live it up (not hard when hanging out with Crookers) because when he arrived in rural Afghanistan he would, he said, be eating “like a dog.” I did not doubt him. I bought him a steak and forgot to expense it. He insisted on having gelato every meal, and one night when the Crookers were elsewhere we wandered around the city for 2 hours searching for the best gelatatero (not a word). We drove with DJ Bot up to Phra’s apartment on the border of Switzerland and drank wine and limoncello under the shadow of the Alps. Peter got very, very drunk (ok we all did) and started overemphasizing his thank yous to the waiter: every time, a robust “GRAZ-EEE-UHHHHH!” I went back to New York, he took a flight to Kabul and I saw him again a few months later in the city, fresh with more tragic and terrifying stories from the warzone. I would tell them but they’re not mine. You need to buy his book. Knowing him has irrevocably changed me. And he is a really rad dude.

Bot and Phra of Crookers with Phra’s Jack Russell Terrier Spino (translation: “spliff”) shot by Peter van Agtmael on Lake Maggiore north of Milan under the Swiss Alps. Idyllic day.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE. Last year we had this really awesome intern named Bethany Cosentino from San Diego who basically ruled at life.
She decided she hated New York and moved back where she rejoined her band Pocahunted. Perhaps related to her disdain for the city: the name of her new band Best Coast, whose crackling guitars and sunsetty vocal longing is the psychic feminine to Wavves, not just cause that is her homeboy. Her song “Sun Was High (So Was I)” is THE FUCKING SUMMER OF LOVE ANTHEM ’09. I have this shit on repeat and I’m not convinced that the Summer of Love is not in fact the Summer of Hate (see: band, Crocodiles, NYC summer sucking). I can lose myself in it, a cloak from bullshit. You need to listen to it like right fucking now. In fact I will help you, press the little “play” arrow on the Best Coast fan vid below (she’s been a band for three months and she already has a fan vid! RULING AT LIFE!)

Also she does a style column for us called Thrintage about thrifting and it is great!

On the eve of President Obama’s June 30 Iraq withdrawal deadline, I’d like to use this moment to send a bunch of hearty fuck-yous to Senator Boobsworth and the Dark Father for manipulating the American people and making an utter mockery of the values they purported to uphold. I’d also like to extend the official title of “American Hero” to the first person who scans and bittorrents every page of Cheney’s forthcoming memoir, which I will definitely be reading but most certainly will not be paying for. Bonus points to anyone who can get James Earl Jones to narrate the audiobook in Darth Vader respirator rasp.
It’s over, I guess, but what does it all mean? I couldn’t even tell you at this moment.*

*PS. This blog is officially resurrected. I can only attribute my three month absence to the lifestyle constant of putting out a magazine and a website and, to a more prominent degree, the devil’s web app. It will be far less personal and far more political and um, when the twain meet it will be about fashion. So yeah.

Not only are Rita Ackermann and Lizzi Bougatsos two of the most compelling women in downtown New York and beacons for contemporary American feminist art, they have the best style like, maybe ever.

The water may be shitty, the traffic may be deadly, the rent may be retardedly high, the yummy tacqueria around the block may have closed cause of the economy, the dudes who moved out next door may have left their entire living room furniture set on the curb blocking your front door, the bodegas may never have decent produce or fresh milk, the kids down the block may be slanging, the older kids down the block may be popping shots, the taxes may be astronomical, the MTA may be cutting service and raising prices, the old governor may be a John, the new governor may hate you, the Mayor may be an asshole trazillionaire, the dudes your age may all want someone younger than you, the younger dudes may all want you but don’t have jobs, the weed may be overpriced, the alcoholism may be rampant, the streets may be dirty, the rats may be bloated, the yuppies may act like assholes pushing strollers down the sidewalk, but AS LONG AS THINGS LIKE THIS EXIST I will never, ever, ever be sad I live here.