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I love Guy Trebay - his incisive sarcasm, the sharpness and accuracy of his observations. A truly excellent commentator immersed in Zeitgeist.
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New York Is King for a Week
New York Is King for a Week
IF nightfall in New York has a
sonic equivalent of the cock?s crow, it is the chatter of taximeters
ringing out fares. And as if on signal this past Thursday, an armada of
cabs glided to a stop at the Box, a month-old club on Chrystie Street
on the Lower East Side, which echoed with the machine-gun staccato of
machines spitting out useless receipts.
The Box was the location of a party to kick off the latest cycle of
Fashion Week, which ? most parties essentially being branded business
events these days ? was sponsored by Mercedes-Benz. Although hardly
anyone bothers to mention the fact, it seems worth noting that Fashion
Week, at this point, has become as solid a fixture in the New York
social calendar as the opening of the opera or Belmont were in other
and earlier times.
In those days, the tabloids fervently followed the exploits of
society people with old names and old money that they used, among other
things, to purchase their own clothes. Now the papers track celebrity
nonentities and socialite freeloaders so cookie-cutter that door people
are forced to carry clipboards with photocopied pages of snapshots,
just to tell Fabiola Beracasa from Tinsley Mortimer.
?Everything in New York has gotten so homogenized now that night
life has been really boring,? said Simon Hammerstein, the 29-year-old
grandson of Oscar Hammerstein II and boarding school dropout, whose
latest toy is the Box. ?We wanted to have a place that was different,?
and a concept that would mess with people?s expectations, he added,
although mess was not the actual word he used. ?Where is our Mudd
Club?? Mr. Hammerstein asked.
?Where is our Stork Club?? added Richard Kimmel, a partner in the
new enterprise, as the two sat in a balcony surveying a small empty
stage that would soon be jammed with musicians from the Los Angeles
band Shiny Toy Guns and an apron-size dance floor that would soon be
packed with all the shiny types who religiously come out for these
things.
Located in a former sign factory and set up as a modern spin on a
balconied dinner theater, the Box was conceptualized by a third
partner, the downtown fixture Serge Becker, and designed by Cordell
Lochin in low-life archaeological style. There are booths and
overlapping layers of bordello-type wallpaper and glass showcases
arranged with encrusted old bottles and curious nooks of the sort Mr.
Becker always seems to build into his clubs, with the clear
understanding that, while the implied invitation to undertake
questionable activities may not correlate directly with revenue, it
does seem to guarantee that a club will become irresistible.
It may seem odd to say so, but as much as the hundreds of shows and
presentations that will take place over the next week are officially
about the trade in garments, something more important is being tested
during these twice-yearly cycles. That is the belief, perhaps a fantasy
at this point, that New York is still a culturally necessary place.
It is not just Mr. Hammerstein and a few aging downtown types who
have been scratching their heads lately about what became of the yeasty
city whose great historical virtue was its surprisingly relaxed
relationship to the boundaries between high and low. Paper magazine
dedicated its latest issue to the thriving art and fashion scenes in
Los Angeles.
?The energy in L.A. feels so amazing right now,? said Kim
Hastreiter, an editor of Paper. ?New York feels like a stagnant city
that doesn?t have artists in it anymore, because the artists have to
have trust funds to live here.? Not that a person with a trust fund,
she added, can?t be good.
Scholars, too, have been puzzling over the fate of the city, in
books like ?The Suburbanization of New York? (Princeton Architectural
Press, 2007). In a cover note for that volume, Mike Wallace, the Pulitzer Prize-winning
co-author of ?Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898,? questions
how New York will manage to retain ?its edgy pre-eminence as global
crucible, the place par excellence where the world?s peoples come to
clash and fuse and create the future,? or whether instead it will
continue along its current course, sloping inevitably toward big-box
banality.
?That?s ridiculous,? said the designer Diane Von Furstenberg. In her role as the president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America
and charged with what looks to some people like a moribund local
fashion scene, Ms. Von Furstenberg has a considerable stake in playing
civic booster. ?New York is quite vibrant right now,? she said.
?There is a lot happening,? she added. ?Brooklyn is coming up and
that?s quite exciting. Everyone in the world looks at the kids on the
streets here and how they put themselves together. Every designer in
the entire world comes to New York to get inspired.?
Whether for inspiration or not, it is certainly true that designers
come here from throughout the world, as even a cursory glance over the
roster of shows taking place this week makes clear. To a startling
degree, fashion remains an immigrant business. Among the top 25 models
ranked on Models.com, the industry?s favorite reference site, only one is American.
And while it?s true that fewer arrivals to the industry come fleeing
political oppression, as did the Eastern European Jews who
substantially built Seventh Avenue, or escaping poverty and
joblessness, as did the thousands from the Caribbean basin who found
work here as cutters, patternmakers, porters and seamstresses, they
still arrive with hopes of grabbing some corner of a global market they
see as located here and not in Paris or London or Milan.
?It?s still the center of the world for us,? said the Brazilian
designer Alexander Herchcovitch, one of dozens of foreigners who will
show here during Fashion Week, among them the British design darlings
Alice Temperley, Matthew Williamson, Alexander McQueen and Luella
Bartley; the Turkish designer Atil Kutoglu; the Israeli-born designer
Yigal Azrouël; the Spanish brothers Custo and David Dalmau of Custo
Barcelona; the Brazilian Carlos Miele; the Italian Isabella Tonchi; the
Korean designers Hanni Yoon and Gene Kang of the label Y&Kei; the
Norwegian Elise Overland; the Russian Alexander Terekhov of the label
Terexov; and Yang Ziming, a men?s wear designer who goes by the name of
Cabbeen and who is the first designer from mainland China to show in
the Bryant Park tents.
?Honestly, I don?t have a lot of experience of New York, but I do
have this sense that it?s the most fabulous fashion city in the world,?
Mr. Yang said last week, speaking through an interpreter. ?It?s just my
feeling at this point,? he added, although one supported less by
emotion than concern for the bottom line.
New York may be slipping as the capital of hip, yet for now it is
holding position as a nexus of the global rag trade. ?To be recognized
as a designer on an international stage,? Mr. Yang said, ?the reality
is you have to show here.?
