Pamela Skaist-Levy, Penn Badgley, Blake Lively, and Gela Nash-Taylor   more photos ›

It couldn't quite compete with Tuesday night's spectacle of hipsters dancing in the streets of the East Village and Williamsburg, but yeterday's over-the-top opening of the Juicy Couture flagship on Fifth Avenue was still heavy on the feel-good factor. Founders Pamela Skaist-Levy and Gela Nash-Taylor, in matching black gowns that were part Alice in Wonderland and part Alice Cooper, served Champagne and cake amid birdcages, ballerinas, and toy soldiers on stilts. As Sarah Silverman, Blake Lively, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Jay McInerney ran a gauntlet of male models dressed all in black save for pink peonies around their necks, the reigning queens of incongruous cool shared their secret pre-party ritual: "Drink a lot of wine." Then they ran off to greet Martha Stewart. The lovefest that ensued went something like, "Juicy loves Martha!" and, slightly deeper now, "And Martha loves Juicy!"

Breathing a collective sigh of relief that the White House went to Obama, the decidedly partisan crowd wasn't quite ready to give up talk of politics. Does Michelle Obama have icon potential? "She could wear a potato sack and pull it off," said Gina Gershon. The actress, looking fabulous in feathers, could apparently wear part of an ostrich and do the same. But can our First Lady-elect hold her own on the international stage with the likes of Carla Bruni-Sarkozy? The hostesses didn't want to take sides. "They're just so different," said Nash-Taylor. Skaist-Levy added what might be the last unknown fact about America's new first family: "They were just spotted wearing Juicy."

leggings get the designer treatment for spring

November 6, 2008  9:28 am

Do you enjoy the same things as Lindsay Lohan? By which we mean, do you share the actress’ scandalous taste for leggings? If so, you’re in luck (click for slideshow). The familiar silhouette was reinvented on the Spring runways in cutout patterns at A.F. Vandevorst and Rodarte, and in a flurry of slashes at Meadham Kirchhoff and Rad Hourani. Other designers went print-mad, with bold stripes, graphic patterns, and painterly florals all making appearances. “Leggings have gone to another level; they’re not just for casual wear,” said Adi Gil of Threeasfour. “We’ve used prints that will encourage the wearer’s self-confidence and consciousness of her body.” In other words, these statement-makers require a starlet’s fearlessness. Here’s the evidence.

free speech: hadley freeman gives barack obama a new kind of approval rating

October 29, 2008  5:44 pm

Less than a week to go and an intriguing prospect awaits us all. Yes, a real change may be on the horizon. Forget about an improved economy, never mind a foreign policy that actually works—a shift of more seismic proportions is approaching fast: a political leader who is genuinely hot. It’s a simple statement of objective fact: Barack Obama is hot. And I don’t mean “hot” in the “relatively speaking” way it is generally meant when referring to politicians, e.g., “Al Gore is hot”—mmm, maybe compared to Newt Gingrich. Or, my personal favorite, “Tony Blair is hot.” Listen up, magazine writers: Just because someone is under 60 and has a full(ish) head of hair, this does not make them desirable. I don’t care what anyone says—Bill Clinton, John Edwards, Gordon Brown, Hamid Karzai, and Nicolas Sarkozy are not hot and, yes, I will take that last one up with Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.

But Obama, on the other hand, is hot. Oh my God, did you see him dancing on Ellen the other week? That man can move like Timberlake! He is so hot that even if he wasn’t famous you’d find him attractive. Actually, if he wasn’t famous you’d fancy him a lot more. And that’s where the problem lies, really. You can fancy your boss, you can fancy your friend’s dad, but there is something weird about fancying the man you pay taxes to, isn’t there? I mean, it’s kind of like having a crush on your high school principal—just one step too far. It’s not that it detracts from his gravitas; instead, it detracts from yours. You’re there watching CNN and Obama’s talking ever so eloquently about Afghanistan this and Syria that and you’re trying to follow it because you know it’s, like, really important, but all you can think is, “Oh God, I so would—no wonder Michelle always looks so smug.” OK, enough of hiding behind the second person pronoun: I so would.

And it’s weird, because purely on a physical level he might not strike you instantly as hot material. There is something of the school nerd to Obama, particularly when he stands next to the second hottest man on the campaign, his delightfully named assistant Reggie Love. And that is because the man is just so damn cool, which is not an attribute one generally expects or even desires in a politician. But in the case of Obama, coming in the wake of an administration that has been crippled by ineptitude, clumsiness, and an apparent lack of any intelligence or awareness of the modern world, a bit of cool ain’t looking too bad. It’s like we’re all growing up in high school again: We’ve had the bad boy jock, we’ve learned our lesson, and now we suddenly see how cool the heretofore unnoticed head of the math club is.

I’m worried about the world’s subconscious. Everyone’s had sex dreams about a famous person, and most people, if they’re honest, have had a sex dream about a politician. Honestly, it’s not that we’re attracted to Gordon Brown, it’s just that we see him all the time on TV. Yes. Honestly. Um, anyway. The point is, imagine how many people are dreaming about Obama every night. Factor in his ubiquity, factor in his probable upcoming role as president, factor in his aforementioned hotness, and I would say it’s pretty much everyone in the whole damn world. Suddenly, on a nightly basis, the whole world is mentally possessed by Barack Obama. Well, I will say this: At least with him we get sweet dreams; with John McCain or Sarah Palin (not hot, incidentally, just female, and therefore different) we’d have full-on nightmares.