My Chat with Alexander Wang

Alexander Wang’s spring collection, like so many of the spring runways, was dominated by white and pale pastels, which is a scary thing when you live in a city full of dirty park benches, grimy subway turnstiles, and jostling crowds who spill their coffee on you and then rush off without so much as proffering a napkin. Wang himself is the first to understand: “It's just more risky to wear something like that, in the sense that you don't want to sit down on the subway and things like that,” he explained at his spring collection trunk show at Barneys last week. “How to keep it clean? I don't know. Carry a Tide pen with you?” He was, however, careful to feature fabrics and prints that could weather the abuse of city living: “Why I mixed it up with some rubber and some prints, and if you get a nick on it or a stain on it, you just play it off like it's been there the whole time.”

And how are things going with his forthcoming store, whose blacked-out windows and locked doors have been taunting shoppers from the corner of Grand and Mercer for months now? “It’s opening sometime next year,” he said, laughing. He wouldn’t give many details, but likened the process to putting together a collection:

You're still figuring out the language, and you're perfecting all the details, and it's like working on a show or a collection. It's not done until it's done. But yeah, there are definitely those moments when I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, or come up with something on the subway. It's always unexpected where you get inspiration.

He’s being very careful about bedbugs, the scourge of retail stores across New York City. “We've definitely had our fair share of taking those precautionary steps to make sure that our office and our store will be clear. It's all safe here at A. Wang,” he said. And speaking of bedbugs and retailers, how did he enjoy Wednesday night's Victoria's Secret show, which he attended as a guest of Carine Roitfeld? “She goes every year. She says it's her favorite show," he said of Roitfeld. "I mean, I know most of these girls in the show, and it's great to see them in a different light. Some of those girls are rarely seen with hair and makeup like that, and it's cool to see them all dressed up like that.”

Cocktails and Underground Dancing on the LES

The pillow mint is a close second.

But at this point the hotel bar is well established as the best part of the hotel.

Which is why we’d like to point you in the direction of the Hotel Chantelle today, a charming new hotel bar that comes without the burden of the actual hotel, now open on the LES.

You’ll find Chantelle—based on a bar in Paris—on a (relatively) quiet corner of Ludlow, in a (deceptively) drab and squat building. On the other side of those unmarked doors is a vintage wonderland of plush pin-tucked leather banquettes under colored globe lights, meant to whisk you and your date away from the LES and deposit you somewhere in Paris circa 1940.

Ordering a couple of blackberry brambles and making the rounds among a friendly neighborhood crowd, you may notice some closed doors toward the rear.

If you prefer to be surprised by what you will find on the other side, please stop reading now and go back to your blackberry bramble...

But if you prefer to know what the future holds: in a few weeks, a classic French restaurant will be opening on the roof under an all-weather retractable ceiling.

Then there’s the basement dance club, a subterranean gem of drinking and debauchery, accessible only to those who receive an actual skeleton key from the owner. This last level is not slated to open for another few months, giving you sufficient time to secure your key.

Now, back to the blackberry bramble.

Dressing Like a British Gentleman in NoHo

Don’t be fooled.

Sure, you bathed yourself in this past weekend’s warm blue skies, filming your own personal remake of Duran Duran’s “Rio” video on a yacht on the Hudson.

But like all endless summer dreams, this one has to end.

Or at least get covered up with a heavy overcoat.

To assist with this soon-to-be pressing matter, we’d like to introduce you to a hidden gem called C’H’C’M’, previously known only to a dedicated online following, now open in a (semi) secret NoHo basement.

Now, before you descend into C’H’C’M’ hungry for the latest in silk micro-tie and vinyl/flannel plaid shirting, you should know that you will find yourself in a shop that has embraced what can only be called the hipster British grandfather look...

As you climb down the stairs into the minimalist basement locale, laid out before you will be all manner of cardigans, tweed trousers, wool overcoats and other gear that suggests the poise needed to stoke the fireplace without spilling the brandy in your other hand.

What you’ll find are the best, most trim-fitting options from old-school brands—blackwatch plaid rubberized cotton Mackintosh coats, polka dot Drakes scarves, Sunspel henleys, Gloverall toggle coats, S.N.S. Herning nautical sweaters and Hentsch Man wool pants—ensuring that your regal continental gentleman of leisure look will be ready just in time for winter.

Hopefully you’ve been practicing fireplace stoking and brandy sipping.

Loose Threads

• Simon Spurr has been tapped as a creative consultant for Tommy Hilfiger menswear. His first collaboration with Hilfiger will be the fall men's runway line.

• Paz de la Huerta chronicled a week's worth of her outfits for the New York Times, none of which included undergarments: "I don’t wear underwear; that’s something I kind of don’t wear," she explained.

• Lara Stone is on the December cover of Vogue China.

•The fashion and food industries are weirdly obsessed with each other these days, reports The Wall Street Journal.

• Christiano Ronaldo and his model girlfriend, Irina Shayk, hung out with Ronaldo's mom and surrogate son in Madrid last week.

• Stephanie Winston Wolkoff gave necklace-layering tips to The Wall Street Journal.

• Brooklyn Law School administrators didn't even know about the racy photo shoot for Diesel lingerie that took place in their library last spring until the photos appeared on the company's website last week.

• Todd Selby shot the ads for ASOS's holiday campaign.

• Sunglasses retailer Solstice has revamped its website and added an e-commerce component.

• Paris-based jewelry designer Carole Midy is launching her business in the U.S.

Long Live McQueen

Vogue's annual Costume Institute Gala is poised to be an even more fabulous, heart-stopping, and emotional affair next year than it has been in years. The ball on May 2 will kick off the the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Alexander McQueen exhibit, titled "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty." The showcase, which will be open to the public from May 4 through July 31, includes roughly 100 pieces and already sounds beyond incredible.

The museum gathered pieces from everywhere from the graduate collection McQueen showed at Central St. Martins to items from the designer's days at Givenchy, where he worked in the late nineties, to works from his personal collections, including things he made for the late Isabella Blow, whose entire wardrobe Daphne Guinness now owns. "His catwalk presentations were outstanding and straddle art and fashion," the Met's Costume Institute curator, Andrew Bolton, says. "We want to get across two elements — the spectacle of the runway presentations and the beauty of his craftsmanship." The exhibit will also include runway pieces McQueen made with milliner Philip Treacy, among other collaborators.

The exhibit is sponsored by Condé Nast, the PPR-owned Alexander McQueen label, and American Express. Gala chairs include PPR chief François-Henri Pinault and his wife Salma Hayek, along with Colin Firth, Stella McCartney, and Anna Wintour. If you thought past red carpets at the ball were spectacular, just imagine all the vintage McQueen gowns fashion people will rustle up for next year's affair. If you already have a tingly feeling, you're not alone.

"The Fashion Show"

The Fashion Show's second season debuted on Bravo Tuesday night, and the makeover has done the show well. As soon as the designers arrive they are randomly split into two teams of fashion houses who must work together to create a collection, yet against each other to win the challenge. Last night's challenge was to design a dress for Iman, who is emerging as the best thing to happen to reality television since André Leon Talley joined America's Next Top Model. Where Mizrahi deliberates how to put his thoughts into words so he's not so mean, Iman, and fellow judge Laura Brown from Harper's Bazaar for that matter, absolutely do not. It becomes instantly clear in judging that if anyone dares to show a piece of garbage that looks like it came from the mall, Iman and Laura are likely to say, "Your dress is a piece of garbage that looks like it came from the mall. Women don't want to walk around in clothes like yours that make their asses look bigger."

As soon as the designers are dismissed to get to work, they must name their houses. One team comes up with "Nami," which is Iman's name spelled backward, and much less offensive than the other team's "Emerald Syx." Emerald Syx refers to not their favorite porn star, but the six people in the group who landed on the green (or emerald, if you want to try to be fancy about it) team when they arrived. The misspelled "Syx" naturally only makes them sound cheap, which was actually exactly how their clothes looked on the runway.

One of the great things about The Fashion Show is that the teams have to work with a runway producer to stage an actual fashion show, with a set and choreography and everything else real designers have to worry about. Emerald Syx's presentation fit perfectly with their name, which, if not a porn star, might refer to an automobile body-painting contest in which chicks in pleather bikinis unveil the top entrants by ripping white sheets off of them. This is how Emerald Syx presented their shoddy runway looks: by ripping a sheet off of each model positioned at the end of the runway in an elaborate and unnecessary yoga-esque pose. In the end Emerald Syx loses to the house of Nami, and loses one of its team members.

Loose Threads

• Gisele, who closed Balenciaga’s most recent show, is rumored to be starring in the label's spring 2011 campaign, shot by Steven Meisel.

• Seven for All Mankind is issuing a line of anniversary jeans in honor of its tenth birthday. There will be five style’s incorporating the brand’s signature elements, and prices will range from $255 to $750.

• Turbans are having a moment, according to the Times.

• Alber Elbaz unveiled the Christmas window displays at Parisian department store Printemps, which feature puppets based on his sketches. Elbaz quipped, “It’s quite bizarre to see your cartoon in the windows dancing and running. I was just told that each puppet will be running in two months about 200 kilometers, so I’m thinking, God, how many calories are they burning there?”

• The New York Times’s critical shopper visited all of Marc Jacobs’s West Village shops, and his children’s store was the clear favorite. “The most respectful of the Jacobs stores emphasizing actual clothes was the one for children, which carried pieces chipper enough that most adults wouldn’t look sensible in them, and fantastic enough that one might legitimately get angry at a child for outgrowing them.”

• Former Lucky creative director Andrea Linnett just launched a new website called I Want to Be Her. It features fashion illustrations by Anne Johnston Albert, who drew Linnett for the back page of Lucky each month, and each item in the drawings is attached to a real product that viewers can click to buy.

• The Gap just opened its first Chinese store in Shanghai. About 70 percent of the inventory comes from American collections, while the other 30 percent is from Japan, and all of the products have been resized for Asian body types.

• TV shopping is entering a “golden age,” according to The Wall Street Journal. Online shopping has actually helped TV shopping, since people are now more comfortable buying things they can’t actually touch or try on.

• Tom Sykes, who co-authored the Isabella Blow biography Blow by Blow with Isabella’s husband, Detmar Blow, was not happy about the launch party Lauren Goldstein Crowe threw for her rival biography, Isabella Blow: A Life in Fashion. Sykes said, “Isabella loathed her stepmother, so I would not take her presence at a book's launch party to be a particularly powerful endorsement of its integrity.”

Karl Lagerfeld Explains CoCo Chanel's Two Biggest Mistakes

Karl Lagerfeld recently unveiled a new take on the classic quilted Chanel bag, with little enamel ladybugs crawling all over it. An odd choice in the age of bedbugs, or a genius take on making what's now (bugs) what will always be cool (quilted Chanel bags)? The Kaiser emphasized the importance of fashion designers not ignoring what's going on in the world at the moment at the International Herald Tribune's Luxury Heritage conference this week in explaining the two big mistakes Coco Chanel made toward the end of her career.

"The first was when she said 'Not one man I have spoken to likes a woman in miniskirts.' I think no one dared to tell this 86-year-old lady that miniskirts are great and really sexy," he says. "Number two was when she decided blue jeans were horrible. This was the fashion of the world at that partuclar [sic] moment — it was the Sixties. No one wanted to be told by an old lady that miniskirts and jeans weren't chic. The result was that she lost her power and in the end no one cared about what she did."

Karl showed both jeans and minis in his last Chanel show.

Caviar and Cocktails in Tribeca

You’ve always kept a close watch on the topographical caviar map of the city.

You were a familiar face during the limited run of the caviar Pop-Tart. You’ve experimented with off-the-grid roe treatments at Russian bathhouses. And your apartment is known in certain circles as “the caviar of fifth-floor walk-ups.”

So you’ll be especially interested in today’s late-breaking caviar news—the emergence of a new white-tiled wonderland of champagne cocktails and caviar in Tribeca called Weather Up, soft-opening this weekend.

Now, you may know the lounge’s cozy Brooklyn location, which has similar crafty cocktails but is lacking any sort of fish egg program. Not a problem here, where an after-work sojourn will have you entering a parlor of white tiles and flickering candles, set up perfectly for those nights when beers with colleagues morphs into a low-key after-hours feast of champagne, oysters and caviar.

Which is where the intimate banquettes built for two come in. It’s here you’ll want to ensconce yourself in the company of a late-night, embargo-defying date, and realize that it all comes down to one simple yet complicated task—choosing from among 20 rotating varieties of caviar.

Fortunately, there is no lack of liquid encouragement, like the Revolver (bourbon and coffee liqueur) and the Via Vero (rum and pear liqueur), both served with chunks of slow-melting ice created in a $6,000 ice-block maker in the basement.

Also known as the caviar of ice machines.

Four-Star Dining at 4AM

This Morning at 2am, it was 1am.

Daylight Savings. For one magical night, you and the hard stuff will have 60 glorious extra minutes together. After which you’ll be feeling especially peckish. And while we don’t want to disparage the cheese slice, on this special occasion you deserve something a little more... critically acclaimed. Allow us to present your guide to four-star dining at 4am. Also known as 5am.

The Place: Forte Baden Baden
The Dish: Sliced Pigs’ Feet
The Magic: You’re in Koreatown. You may have stayed for one karaoke song too long (“Hungry Eyes” wasn’t going to sing itself). This hidden gem on the menu of a hidden gem of a Korean restaurant is pigs’ feet, deboned, sliced and dripping with enough sesame oil to soak up all the excess soju you’re carrying.
411: Forte Baden Baden, 28 W 32nd St (between Fifth and Broadway), 2nd Floor, 212-714-2266

The Place: The Standard Grill
The Dish: End-of-the-Night Omelette
The Magic: You boom boomed. And now you need a buffer between what happened on the 18th floor and the cold world outside. We’re thinking eggs. Accompanied by an exceedingly large bottle of truffle oil.
411: The Standard Grill, 848 Washington St (at 13th St), 212-645-4100

The Place: Employees Only
The Dish: Reuben Croquettes
The Magic: You’re in the West Village. The Rusty Knot called, and you answered. At this point, a regular Reuben won’t do. Instead, take pastrami, sauerkraut and Swiss cheese, ball them up, and then deep, deep fry them. And carry on like nothing happened.
411: Employees Only, 510 Hudson St, 212-242-3021

The Place: The Ace Hotel
The Dish: The Breslin Burger
The Magic: You’re in NoMad. The Ace Hotel has been a gracious host. You don’t want to leave. A charbroiled beef burger, peppered with sharp aged cheddar and bacon, is something rare, precious and greasy in all the right ways.
411: The Ace Hotel Lobby Bar, 20 W 29th St (between Fifth and Broadway), 212-679-2222

The Place: L’Express
The Dish: Escargot
The Magic: You’re in Gramercy, you just had your own Rose Bar session, and energy is running low. 24-hour L’Express lets your 4am lust for snails drift into what others might consider breakfast time but you think of merely as a buttery nightcap.
411: L’Express, 249 Park Ave South (at 20th St), 212-254-5858

Redemption?!?!?!

Last night at the Accessories Council's annual ACE awards, Kanye West accepted the prize for — what else? — style-maker of the year. It has been quite a fashion journey for West over the past 365 days: He reinvented his personal style so that his clothes would complement rather than compete with him in a movement he dubbed "Rosewood"; as part of this seminal moment in fashion history, he shamelessly wore women's clothing, if that's what looked best on him. He's also designed a sneaker range for Louis Vuitton, sort of interned at the Gap, and has been toying with the idea of his own line — an exercise in perfection, to be sure — in the works for some time. Yet, he told the crowd in his acceptance speech last night, he is struggling with his position in the industry.

"Why, if someone is good in one field, can they not be accepted or given the slightest opportunity to express and be creative in other fields?" West asked the audience of designers, editors, and other fashion people. "I thank Marc Jacobs so much for giving me the opportunity to design a shoe for Louis Vuitton, but the thing that broke my heart most was when they said, 'You're finished. The shoe's finished.' When it was ready it was like the dream of putting together the fabric and having the energy that I knew of being a street kid, of being a boy out of Chicago, and enjoying every day and the way I can connect with this. It's like, you can't play the video game anymore."

His questions continued: "What compromises do we have to make? How many compromises do we have to make every day in this field just to keep things going? Just to be able to sell a product?" The pain of that onetime LV line still clearly resonated: "Fashion breaks my heart. You know, when they do a magazine of number one New Yorkers or something like that and I'm blatantly left out I feel like ... it hurts me. And I just appreciate the people in this room that are open minded enough to remember when they were a five-year-old. To remember when they could color outside the lines, to remember when they could give their opinion, honesty without affecting their job, without it affecting their well being."

One man who has, perhaps in Kanye's opinion, made compromises for his fashion company is Gap designer Patrick Robinson, who recently put logo-gate behind him. "I mean we heard the little bit of a rumble that that was too far too quick but we're going to continuously challenge people to look at the brand in different ways," Robinson told us, explaining that he did not have the final say in the logo; Gap's CEO and president do. "But I'm glad we did pull it back and I'm happy with the decision that we made but we're going to continuously challenge people with this brand," he explained. "Like, if you look at other brands in the world over a 40-year period, we're 41 this year, and other iconic brands, they've adapted their logo as they go forward. This has been a wonderful logo that we've had, and I agree, I love the blue box, and maybe we have to work more within that, but you'll see us be a little bit more thoughtful when we come back out with something."

Best of........?

You’re pretty good at sniffing out a “best of” claim.

You’ve shed light on countless “best slice in town” braggarts.

Your undercover work leading to the sexy cop being named “best Halloween costume” is now taught at detective school.

And yet, there’s still one “best of” claim hanging out there that could use some cold, hard, investigative indulgence…

It’s called Lotus of Siam, it’s been dubbed the best Thai food in all the land, it hails from the Thai hotbed that is Las Vegas, and it’s opening next week in Greenwich Village.

Now this “best of” claim comes not from us, not from the owners of Siam, not from a hungover showgirl yearning for Pad Thai, but from a certain journalist who also happens to be the first to ever to win a Pulitzer for food writing. And while you can understand how he may have been lured in by the wafting aroma of curry and sticky rice, you know what you have to do here.

There’s not much in the way of decoration to distract you from your mission—just some white walls, light wood tables, a few rice lanterns and an overconfident waiter or two.

So as you begin your investigation, set up shop at a corner table, start with steaming plates of crispy rice with minced sour sausage, keep the dialogue to a minimum and the deep-fried catfish bathed in curry coming. And don’t stop until you can confidently say one way or another if their Pad Thai stands alone.

Feel free to consult that showgirl if you need a second opinion.

Beauty Marks

FRAGRANCE
• Taylor Swift has signed a fragrance deal with Elizabeth Arden, following in the perfumed footsteps of Britney Spears, Mariah Carey, Hilary Duff, and Usher.

• Perfume company Le Labo has entered into another fragrance collaboration: They’ve made a limited-edition scent with Jefferson Hack of AnOther magazine, called AnOther 13, on sale now at Le Labo stores.

SKIN
• Cindy Crawford’s anti-aging skin-care line, Meaningful Beauty, is making its retail debut at Sephora store-in-stores at JCPenney.

• Japanese skin-care brand DHC makes cotton swabs that are pre-soaked in virgin olive oil so that you can apply it more easily to super-dry skin (or to a baking pan).

HOW-TO
• So, you were Snooki for Halloween and you secretly really liked your pouf. Here’s how to give it a more high-fashion, trendy edge, Vera Wang–runway-style.

Loose Threads

• Georgia May Jagger wears a floaty dress and lace-up boots on the December cover of Australian Vogue.

• The Bloomberg administration plans to unveil a six-point plan to help New York City’s fashion industry today at the WWD 2010 CEO Summit at the Plaza Hotel.

• Henry Holland designed a capsule collection for Roxy, and the clothes are covered in his signature graphic prints.

• Dutch menswear label Suit Supply is getting flack for its "Shameless" ad campaign that depicts men looking up women's skirts.

• Women’s Wear Daily is celebrating its centennial with a commemorative magazine chronicling the publication’s fashion coverage.

• Jak and Jil posted a preview of Thom Browne’s womenswear collection.

• Sixties supermodel Veruschka on how today’s models are too young: “I was in my twenties when I made the movie [Blow-Up by Antonioni] and found success. We were women, not children."

• Kate Moss unveiled her final Topshop collection last night, and she wore a custom-made black lurex jumpsuit for the occasion.

What is Your Creed?

In a market overrun with celebrity and spinoff fragrances, Erwin Creed is a rarity: As the future head of luxury brand Creed Perfumes, he's a seventh-generation perfumer. The 29-year-old Parisian first started sniffing scents at the age of 8. "Early on, my father would do 90 percent of the work, and I would experiment with maybe 10 percent," he says. Today, he helps develop new products and handpicks the company's natural ingredients, traveling around the world to meet with flower, spice, and fruit growers (he's been to 35 countries so far). Creed is in New York this week — he'll be signing bottles and introducing the company's new Spice and Wood fragrance at Bergdorf Goodman tonight from 3 to 5 p.m. — before setting off on a whirlwind two-week trip through the U.S. and Asia. But despite the brand's worldwide recognition, Creed isn't looking to expand. "Some people think Creed is a big brand, but we want it to remain a small, prestigious brand," he says. "I don't want to be in the mass market." We caught up with the dashing French fragrance heir to talk about spices, suits, and extreme sports.

Did you always know you would join the family perfume business?
Before I was 18 I wanted to do something different; I wanted to create something by myself. But I matured — especially after I realized the care and craft that goes into the perfumes.

You're known to have rather adventurous hobbies.
I love extreme sports like skiing, base-jumping, waterskiing, and car racing. As a teenager, I did more motocross, but I stopped because it's too dangerous. From the time I was 8 to 16 I broke everything: my legs, my arm ...

You handpick many of the ingredients at Creed. What does that entail?
We use natural ingredients, so it's a little bit like a wine. The quality of the ingredients depends on a lot of factors: weather, the sun, the exposure, the country. We're very conscious about maintaining the quality.

Do you do much traveling?
I travel every year to China, India, and Iceland to sample ingredients. Bergamot is the No. 1 ingredient put in perfume. Then there's mandarin, lemon, orange, roses, jasmine, pepper, and ginger. The best roses are from France.

Any tips for finding the right fragrance?
I think with fragrances, you just fall in love, you know? Before you fall in love, you see a woman for the first time and develop a crush. It's the same with perfume. Some of it may just be marketing. It's very important to try a fragrance on your skin, because sometimes perfume can turn bitter.

Who are you favorite designers?
Martin Margiela, François Girbaud for jeans, and Isaia suits from Naples.

Where do you like to shop in New York?
I come to New York around twice a year and Adam makes a very nice, classic T-shirt that I can't find in France.

How would you describe your personal style?
Classical, with a good shape. Shape and texture are very important.

What are you saving up to buy?
I prefer to shop for food rather than clothes. I like to go shopping for vegetables, fish, and meat when I'm in different countries. When I'm in Japan, I like to bring back a gadget for the kitchen, and I bring back spices when I'm in Morocco. When I'm in New York I stock up on Bloody Mary mix — we don't have it back in France.

What should every man have in his closet?
A nice leather belt and a great pair of shoes.

What's something you never leave the house without?
My helmet, because I usually ride my scooter. I have a light-gray Vespa.

Loose Threads

• Fashion Toast’s Rumi Neely has teamed up with Danielle and Jodie Snyder of DANNIJO to design a capsule collection of jewelry, which launches this month.

• Tory Burch, Elie Tahari, Marc Jacobs, Zac Posen, and Michael Kors all designed limited-edition shopping bags for Bloomingdale’s.

• Hilary Riva has stepped down from her role at the British Fashion Council. She was previously the organization’s CEO from 2005 to 2009, when management was restructured and she became the non-executive director.

• Elie Tahari is thinking of launching a line of lingerie.

• Olivia Palermo and her boyfriend, Johannes Huebl, pose with plates of pasta in their latest ad for Mango.

• Patagonia is printing messages like “Don’t buy this jacket unless you really need it” on its hangtags.

• Gilt has reportedly been interviewing designers to collaborate with on its own clothing line.

• The Wall Street Journal talked to Tory Burch and Jenna Lyons about how “disheveled glamour” is all the rage these days.

• The New York Times put together a slideshow of the best stage looks from last week’s CMJ Music Festival, which included dip-dyed hair, animal hats, and a “stegosaurus outfit.”

• Dudes are looking dapper lately, thanks to the resurgence of the three-piece suit. The Wall Street Journal blames traditionalist designers like Hickey Freeman and celebs like Bradley Cooper and Usher for this look’s renewed popularity.

Coffee Christmas

For Barneys' "Have a Foodie Holiday" window theme, Simon Doonan has crafted a full display out of Illycaffe espresso tins, cans, paper cups, and paper bags, including an elaborate ballgown worn by a coffee-sipping mannequin. “We were going to call her Contessa Caffeina,” said Doonan, “but we decided she’s no Italian aristocrat, she’s a nice Jersey girl.” So instead, her name is Miss Illy, and she is accessorized with Louboutin pumps, oversize sunglasses by the Row, and an espresso machine perched atop her head. Most of Miss Illy's dress is made from the foil of espresso bags, which "is so fantastic, you could stitch it and use it for hot pants," Doonan says. And just to take the cross-marketing even further, Illy is handing out free espresso and cappuccino in Barneys throughout the holiday season, so your Christmas shopping can be extra frenzied.

Wash Your .......

Maybe there's some veracity to the reports that this nation's elite business schools are harbingers of what's new, now, and next in fashion trends. All those Columbia University students who were warned that they had better start bathing and stop smelling are not an isolated people. The Times tracked down many more who are through with bathing, divorced from deodorant, and one with their personal scent and the microscopic skin bacteria they want to bring to work, on dates, and into their beds.

Jenefer Palmer, 55, chief executive of organic skin-care line Osea,

"showers 'no more than three times a week,' she said, and less if she hasn’t been 'working out vigorously.'"

She contends that a soapy washcloth under her arms, between her legs and under her feet is all she needs to get “really clean.” On the go, underarm odor is wiped away with a sliced lemon.

Katherine Ashenburg, 65, wrote The Dirt on Clean: An Unsanitized History.


“I’m going to sound like dirty Katherine in this article,” she said, “but it doesn’t matter. I’m still invited to dinner parties.”


Todd Felix, early 30s, is an online producer for Sony who "doesn't want to be taken for a hippie," and doesn't use deodorant.

The few times Mr. Felix has mentioned on a date that he goes without deodorant, he said, things have quickly turned, well, sour. “It’s weird, but I don’t smell,” Mr. Felix will announce. Then, he said, “the comment is always, ‘You think you don’t smell.’ ” (Mr. Felix admitted that he lives in horror of having the rare fetid day.)

Paralegal Bethany Hoffmann Becker, 32, posted on the Internet this week:

"I get a lot of my runs in on my lunch break at work so I am all about the baby wipes :) I just shower before going to bed."

Law-school applicant Blake Johnson, 25, isn't worried about how shunning personal cleanliness will affect his career.

“Right now it’s cool to appear like you don’t care about what you look like,” he said. “You have to invest time, and often money, into making it look like you’ve done neither, or you can take the easy route, and just don’t wash your hair for a week and a half.”

The Times, ever thorough in its reportings, consulted Elaine Larson, a professor at the Columbia University School of Nursing with a Ph.D. in epidemiology, on the health implications of going dirtbag. She said if you go to the gym and ride the subway, you should bathe: "If it’s cold and flu season, you want to get rid of the stuff that isn’t a part of your own normal germs." So you need soap, not lemons. Besides, the act of not bathing is a selfish one indeed: Our subway system smells adventurous enough without the B.O.

Hidden Upstairs Cocktailing on the LES

That was messy.

Great fun, sure. But perhaps Monday’s Halloween after-after-party, coming on the heels of two nights of tangling with gangs of sexy Chilean miners and tall Snookis, wasn’t entirely necessary.

Or maybe it was.

Either way, you’re going to be needing some quiet time.

Preferably in a secret upstairs bar, where standing is prohibited and cocktails come with the gracious accompaniment of chocolates. Chocolates filled with bourbon...

Allow us to present the welcoming shelter that is 2nd Floor on Clinton, a little cocktail attic opening Friday on the LES.

To find this refuge in the LES maelstrom, escort your date through Barramundi to a door in back marked “Private.” Pay no mind to this marking. Walk through and your night will begin.

You’ll be greeted by a hostess who will lead you upstairs, where the stress of a thousand Lady Gaga costumes will melt away as you enter a living room of overflowing bookshelves, classic paintings, mismatched chairs of varying plush textures and sizes, subtle jazz wafting on the air and room for only 35 other quiet revelers.

Taking a seat—and everyone must take a seat—you’ll want to start with a Brown Derby (rum and maple syrup), or else warm your newly winter-bitten bones with a hot Maiden’s Prayer of Armagnac and lavender.

And if you want to avoid a full house, 2nd Floor has a secret text-only phone number for requesting a table that we’ve managed to procure for your convenience.