Health Advice and Summer Plans at the Urban Zen Awards

New York’s power elite showed up Thursday night to support Donna Karan’s charity, The Urban Zen Stephan Weiss Apple Awards, but many weren’t exactly talkative: Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Uma Thurman posed for photos and waved as they bypassed reporters on the red carpet. The typically taciturn Robert De Niro was positively chatty by comparison. “Yes, I’m working on it,” he confirmed about reports that he may reunite with Martin Scorsese to shoot The Comedian (from Art Linson’s screenplay) some three decades after 1983’s The King of Comedy. PHOTO OF ASHTON KUTCHER AND DEMI MOORE, LEFT, COURTESY OF CHANCE YEH/PATRICKMCMULLAN.COM

Michael Douglas, looking healthy and fit, also confirmed that he’ll be shooting Steven Soderbergh’s Liberace. His wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones, was in Miami, doing the musical Rock of Ages. Douglas said his summer plans include a family vacation to Spain for the 4th of July. Kelly Klein will be spending the summer “at the beach in Easthampton” (naturally!). And Keith Richards, who was photographed last week after dining with Urban Zen honoree Bill Clinton, said, “We had a great time; we talked about music.”

The designers and editors in attendance were more gregarious. Betsey Johnson, after a few trademark twirls, told us that her upcoming collection “is going to be beautiful and evolutionary.” Her inspiration? “The Tree of Life. I really loved that movie.” Almost as much as she loves Lady Gaga, whom she met at last week’s CFDA Awards: “She’s my monster favorite of all time in life,” said Johnson.

Kenneth Cole arrived fresh from the appointment on Thursday of a new CEO. “It gives me a little more time to focus on design, which is what I love to do. I continue to be chief creative officer and I oversee all creative pursuits and marketing.” Cole said the motto for this fall’s accessories is “The bigger, the bolder, the better.”

Of her still-newish position as Newsweek’s editor-in-chief, Tina Brown said, “I’m currently working on the next great issue of Newsweek, but I can’t tell you about what, or someone will steal it and it’ll go somewhere else!” The former editor of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Tatler and Talk told us that “I’ve known Donna Karan for many, many years, since the days of Vanity Fair. She made my dress for the famous Talk magazine Liberty Island cover. It’s one of the best dresses I’ve ever worn.”

We asked Harper’s Bazaar editor-in-chief Glenda Bailey about which emerging designers and trends are interesting her at the moment. “There are so many great new designers, it’s hard to single out one. Generally, there is so much talent and so much energy at the moment. The resort collections were fantastic. I saw Balenciaga today, which was truly fabulous. For fall, I love all the parkas and the wide pants and little fitted leather bomber jackets. Also, the oversized knits. I really enjoy the jewel colors. And I’m actually quite keen on the tie-bow blouses, which sort of take me back a bit to Margaret Thatcher. It’s embracing the past to make it new again. With the Margaret Thatcher movie coming out, why not?” 

About the Urban Zen awards, which honored former President Bill Clinton, Dr. Mehmet Oz and Courtney Ross, Donna Karan said, “They celebrate my husband, the tenth year of his passing, and really the legacy of what Urban Zen is all about: create, collaborate and communicate change in healthcare, education and culture through mind, body and spirit.”

Honoree Dr. Oz, who told us he “will be taking over Oprah’s time slot this fall,” is still a working cardiac surgeon at Columbia-Presbyterian, while balancing his daytime medical talk show. “I operate on Thursdays. We shoot on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. Monday is administrative stuff. Weekends I play with the kids.”

Dr. Oz also shared his top three health tips for a long life: “Number one, walk 30 minutes every day. Number two, make sure the foods you eat come out of the ground looking the same way they look when you eat them; real things, whole foods—not processed, packaged, preserved. Number three, give your heart a reason to keep beating, or else it won’t.”