Interview

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There are some real New York institutions that in spite of it all—gentrification, Giuliani-fication, new waves of Los Angelenos in town—will never die, because the town really couldn't function without them. One of those is Allison Sarofim and Stuart Parr's annual pre-Halloween party at their home. It even has a Wall of Fame; every year, Allison picks her top 10–15 costumes, and picture of those chosen guests are hung throughout the house. (I'm proud to say I've made the cut every year.

This year the theme was 80s. I dressed up as Prince Charles and my boyfriend, Jason Beckman, was Lady Di, on the couple's wedding day. I thought it was an original idea, but then I ran into another Prince Charles—although this one was a weekender, dressed as he was in tartan. I alrso ran into an amazingly inspired Carlos Mota, who was dressed some kind of French mime, with sequined spheres surrounding him.

Allison had set up a tent on the back of her townhouse. Breakdancers performed in the middle of the evening, and the entire thing was tagged. By the end of the night, even Lady Di got tagged.

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The line was out the door at Clic Bookstore and Gallery last week as animal lovers and anxious young girls straightened out their looks waiting for their moment with Vogue Creative Director Grace Coddington.

In celebration of the reprint of her book, The Catwalk Cats (2007, Steidl), Coddington sat before a backdrop of Christophe Von Hohenberg's black-and-white photgraphs of Pee-wee Herman and Britney Spears, scribbling well wishes and cartoons of hissing cats. The book is a compilation of Grace's charming sketches, anecdotes, and feline photographs by hairstylist Didier Malige, Codington's boyfriend of over 20 years and perhaps the only bi-pedalcapable of capturing her full affections.

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Phillips de Pury & Company specializes in high-end fashion photography, and have held both exhibitions and auctions in their New York and European spaces for Guy Bourdin, Mario Testino, Annie Leibovitz and Helmut Newton. Yet auction house head and auctioneer Simon de Pury hasn't not exhibited his own photographs until now—when he unveiled them for his PUREPURYGRAPHY show at Berlin's The Corner concept store on Friday night. (LEFT: COURTESY SIMON DE PURY)

Most of the 40 large-scale, single-print photographs on view are pleasing colorful abstract images that de Pury took during his travels over the years, and melded into a slick, softback catalogue akin to those produced for the auction-house's top shows. The breathless PR material coos that "PUREPURYGRAPHY is synopsis and extension, allurement and coolness, bewilderment and calm—a myriad of paradoxes through which Simon de Pury establishes yet another of his many personifications; that of a passionate and widely-off-the-beaten-track photographer."

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For the past two seasons, we (my Sophomore partner Madeline von Froomer and I) have thrown a party during Paris Fashion Week at Le Baron. We're a New York-based band, but we've g0t lots of French friends, like André and Olivier Zahm. They always bring a party with them to New York, so why not return the favor?

This year photographer Cass Bird and I made a film for our Spring lookbook. Every season we shoot my peers, young New Yorkers like Donald Cumming, Bijoux Phillips, and Jen Brill. This year artists Rita Ackermann, Aurel Schmidt, and Lucien Smith messed around, with over a half-dozen of my friends. The film is a ten-minute short, shot documentary-style, to get to know the kids we shoot every season, and the new ones.  We showed the film while Harley Viera Newton and Cassie Coane DJ'ed. I just told them to play the kind of music you would hear at a Bar Mitzvah—which is pretty much what comes natural to them. I don't remember much from that night but the photos look like everyone had fun!

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