Interview

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What accomplishment can't be attributed to Prada? Rejuvenating Downtown New York after September 11? Check. Transforming South Korea with a one-of-a-kind variable structure designed by Rem Koolhaas? Double check!

The time is nigh for Prada to write its own dictionary using its own visual language, designed by 2x4 and encased in Prada's signature skin. Here we recount five defining moments in the history of the brand—which you can see in full in the new book, PRADA.

1.Prada, after all, made a certain bookishness cool throughout the 1990s. Peek the decade's definitive backpack.

2.Stacking tubes of leather like it's rubber? Just ask Prada.

3. Can we even count the statement shoes ? (Looks like 8 pairs, by our count.)

4. Amber Valetta visibly freezing? She did it for Prada for Fall/Winter 1997.

5. Our perennial favorite is Miuccia herself. What will she wear when she takes a bow?


PRADA is available now in PRADA boutiques nationwide.

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Romanian-born Anastasia Soare has been dubbed the Eyebrow Queen by the media. With over sixty studios in the US, including those at Sephora 5th Avenue and Sephora Times Square in Manhattan, it certainly seems that she is deserving of the title. Our exclusive shop-talk is below. (PHOTO COURTESY OF ANASTASIA SOARE)

SARAH HOWARD: What makes a good brow?

ANASTASIA SOARE: This all has to do with having the right shape for your face shape. A good brow should make your eyes pop and balance your features without being overly noticeable.
 
HOWARD: Who has good brows?

SOARE: My clients

HOWARD:  What's it like being Oprah's go-to brow expert?

SOARE: Humbling and wonderful. I think back of all the hard work of my life to become successful and this is a huge reinforcement that I choose the right path for my passion.

HOWARD: Have you ever been nervous shaping a brow?

SOARE: Just when I did Oprah's brows live. Right before we started, she said "I hate plucking and I usually freak out when it's done." I was petrified that she might cry out during the procedure. She relaxed and smiled during the shaping and said I was "the best plucker [she had] ever had."

HOWARD: How long have you been doing brows?

SOARE: I started shaping brows in 1989.

HOWARD: Who was your first famous client?

SOARE: Cindy Crawford in 1989.

HOWARD: Has there ever been a brow you couldn't shape?

SOARE: No, of course not!

HOWARD: What's in-trend this season? Bushy or thin?

SOARE: Bushy is never in, unless you're 14, and thin is hard to pull off. Brows are very glamorous right now.

HOWARD: What's the one misconception people have about brows?

SOARE: That they can be altered to look exactly like a celebrity. Unlike the hair on your head, brows have a individual stamp due to your brow bone, so they can never look exactly like someone else's.
 
HOWARD: One must-have product?

SOARE: Clear brow gel.

Sarah Howard is the editor of Beauty Banter.

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"I didn't know anything about his story at all," says Ulrich Lang about Tony Clifton, the louche Las Vegas lounge singer whom Andy Kaufman and collaborator Bob Zmuda turned into one of comedy's most inscrutable characters. (Though Kaufman swore he met the real Clifton after ambushing Elvis at a Vegas hotel in 1969, many fans believe he's entirely a figment of the entertainer's imagination.) Whether he exists or not, in September Lia Gangitano, founder of the Lower East Side non-profit art space Participant Inc., asked Lang to make a fragrance for Clifton, which debuted last night at Participant's Up My Sleeve exhibition, curated by artist Jonathan Berger. (LEFT: NIGHTSCAPE BY MATT LICARI)

Lang was a smart choice. The German born fragrancer has always toed the line between art and commerce. For the packaging of his first two fragrances—Anvers and Anvers 2—he commissioned Erik Swain and Katy Grannan to photograph Belgian art dealer Roger Szmulewicz (of Antwerp's 51 Fine Art). An unlikely choice, perhaps, but in a world of mass-produced celebrity schlock, Lang's boxes are considered as provoking and mysterious as his cult-followed fragrances. For Nightscape, his new leathery patchouli-focused scent, he gave 24-year-old photographer Matt Licari a lab sample and asked him to shoot urban landscapes across the country.

Applying the same rigor to the Clifton project, Lang soaked up every clip of the singer he could find on YouTube, along with the hilarious Japanese ads for Mandom, which depict Charles Bronson bathing in the cheesy scent. He also took notes from Kaufman and Zmuda's script for The Tony Clifton Story, which he brought to the renowned Drom Fragrances so they could deliver "an aggressive cologne" peppered with Jack Daniels, Lucky Strikes, and BO. Drom loved the idea so much they even concocted a vile fragrance (which didn't make the final cut) based on the Limburger cheese Jim Carrey reportedly rubbed on his skin to prepare for his Clifton scenes in Man On The Moon.

"It's the same ingredient that's in Chanel No. 5, but they just use a drop," Drom's Robert Stapf told me at last night's opening. Meant to evoke dime store hairspray and stale cigarette smoke and showcased in a decanter-like bottle designed by Marc Rosen Associates, Stapf says the singer's scent "offended our lab assistants without even being there." Don't worry, Clifton (or maybe Zmuda) will get his chance to offend in person next Monday at Santos, where a team of burlesque dancers are going to spritz the crowd with the hot, spicy, and generally off-putting fragrance throughout the three-hour spectacle. And, if you leave the show actually wanting to smell like Clifton, you might be in luck. "It was purely an art collaboration," says Lang. "But we left it open ended."

Clifton on display through December 20 at Participant, Inc. and on November 16 at Santos Party House; Nightscape available at Barneys New York and Aedes de Venustas, www.ulrichlangnewyork.com.

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How can a fake Rolex become desirable in itself? Natalia Brilli has the answer. She covers a Nolex watch in subtle, high-quality glove-makers' leather and transforms it into a genuine item of understated intellectual elegance. The men's and women's versions of her "Nolex watch bracelet" are named for the faux bling brand so budget-priced that it hasn't bothered to invent a snappy original name like those used by Designer Impostors' Perfums de Coeur (remember: "If you like ‘Calvin Klein® Obsession®' you'll love ‘Confess'") and instead simply hopes marks won't notice the difference between an "R" and an "N." Brilli covers the Nolex in black, cherry red, or cracked silver leather that tightly hugs the watch's features, allowing only the bulges on the braided band and the raised dial to create sculptural texture identifying the object underneath.

Brilli's sensitivity to the statements that accessories make about their wearers' character and status comes from her work in theatre design and Olivier Theyskens's atelier, where she designed accessories while he headed Rochas. Brilli launched her own art and design label in 2004 by encasing drum-sets, skateboards, domino boards, medical alert bracelets, dog-tags, and bows in skin-soft leather. While most of her objects are black or silver, she has also used bright electric hues, naturals, and pastels to further scramble the associations between the original objects, her luxurious materials, and the artistic end-result.

Following fellow Belgian designer Martin Margiela's preference for signature anonymity, Brilli has created a sly logo based on subversive understatement. By encasing recognizable status-declaring items like the fake Rolex watches in leather, Brilli cloaks the clock's affectation, transforming them into genuinely desirable elegant objects which speak of their wearers' intelligence and good taste.

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