Supermodel, super cakes …
‘Too skinny! Too much hair! What do we do with it?’ So said Irina Lazareanu last week, reporting what the fashion world made of her when she first came on the scene. The shaggy Canadian-Romanian supermodel, whose face recalls that of Shelley Duvall and whose coiffure is roughly what Neanderthal man might have ended up with had he popped into Charles Worthington for a blow-dry, lent new meaning to the phrase ‘It Girl’ as she was anointed one at last week’s New York Fashion Week. Spotted at all the best parties, feted in the daily fashion press, Lazareanu became the belle of the seven-day ball.
Some may feel the urge to check her facts (too skinny? Ah yes, that’s like the time they said Rockefeller was too rich), but facts schmacts, the point is: that was before Karl put her in couture. Before Kate took her under her wing. Before Pete went into rehab.
Lazareanu, who was once the drummer in Pete Doherty’s band Babyshambles (they bonded over Oscar Wilde and Nina Simone, and later became lovers), is due to record a solo album this autumn. It will be produced by Sean Lennon. From time to time, she pops into Nicolas Ghesquiere’s studio at Balenciaga (and there is no darlinger darling du jour) to bash out lyrics on an old-fashioned typewriter, inspired by the era of Marianne Faithfull. She has become Ghesquiere’s muse - and the star of the new Balenciaga campaign - and Lagerfeld’s protegee too. Kate Moss, with whom she shares intimate knowledge of the shambolic Doherty, put her in her guest-edited edition of French Vogue and has been, Lazareanu says, her ‘protector’.
Last week, music and fashion were in each other’s pockets from day one (and we’re not talking about what Paris Hilton was up to after-hours at Bungalow 8 ). The festivities opened with a performance in Prada’s SoHo store by the Raconteurs, the new band put together by Jack White, who is married to red-haired model Karen Elson. Meanwhile, New York magazine canvassed young models on whom their ideal mate would be. An overwhelming majority said: a rock star. Presumably that makes it official - bad boys are back in style.
Dare one detect a hint of rubbed-off subversion? Even as Lazareanu was declaring that she looked forward, very much, to seeing Anna and Oscar (that’s Wintour and de la Renta to you), others were biting off the establishment luminaries’ heads. In the tents at Bryant Park, where snacks patented by the South Beach Diet people are more usual fare, a chic Manhattan bakery called Eleni’s was doling out graven cookies in the images of Wintour, de la Renta, Diane von Furstenberg and Vera Wang.Meanwhile, the irrepressible sexagenarian party girl Betsey Johnson, sometime mentor to Edie Sedgwick and ex-wife of Velvet Undergrounder John Cale, introduced an edible element in her Babycakes collection. All along the catwalk, cafe tables in lieu of a front row were draped with pink tablecloths and piled high with pink-iced, ‘BJ’-inscribed cupcakes. Girls for whom merely looking at such concoctions would be career suicide marched past in romper suits reminiscent of Thirties St Tropez. At the show’s close, your sweet-toothed correspondent observed with improper joy how many of the cupcakes remained uneaten and overrode dietary protocol to swoop down and grab one. Planet fashion took on a speedy, sugar-induced aura as the turret of rosy buttercream settled into her system. ‘Think pink’ was surely never meant to taste so good.
Add comment September 18th, 2006
Former supermodel