| Style File
10 Turns Ten
28 Oct 2010, 3:28 pm
A decade is an even longer time in fashion years, so for its tenth anniversary, Sophia Neophitou’s 10 threw an appropriately lavish bash. “It’s miraculous that I have made my dream come true and enjoyed it for ten years,” Neophitou said at her mag’s celebration in London last night. “I hope the next ten years bring more and more fantasies and the adventures that creatively challenge me and my readers—always.”
As challenges go, there are few people in the business better equipped to provide them. The Greek goddess (above, with Roland Mouret, left, and Tim Blanks and a partygoer, right) with the throaty laugh and penchant for combining a utilitarian parka with teetering, non-utilitarian heels has worn more hats, and worked with more people, than most. Included on her CV are the titles of editor (in addition to helming 10, she edits fashion coverage for Harper’s Bazaar U.K. and Russian Vogue), creative director (of Roland Mouret and Antonio Berardi), and stylist (in which capacity she had the enviable duty of touching “those bodies”—i.e., David and Victoria Beckham, for their 10 covers). In the course of it, she’s made more than a few high-profile friends and fans, including Christopher Kane and Tammy Kane, Jonathan Saunders, Katie Hillier, Dree Hemingway, Henry Holland, Mouret, and more, all of whom packed Il Bottaccio to raise a glass and sway to three of the hottest new DJs in town: Mez (of The Neat) and Michael Hibbert and Alex Parry (of Chapel Club).
A tenth anniversary issue demands an appropriately festive cover girl, and Neophitou snagged the prize of the moment: Anna Dello Russo. The ADR cover, she explained, “celebrated everything fashion should love, has a sense of humor—after all, we aren’t brain surgeons—and a real sense of fun. Also, there is definitely a sense of being a little addicted to fashion.” 10’s the perfect fix.
—Afsun Qureshi Photos: Courtesy of 10 |
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Because—sigh—we’re still interested in such things despite our better judgment, we must dutifully report that Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi is dressing up as a sexy pickle for Halloween. (She has an avowed appetite for the things.) Our suggestion for next year: turnip. [
She may have been at GQ’s Gentlemen’s Ball yesterday, but no chance that Demi Moore was going to step back and let Mr. Kutcher have the whole spotlight. Mrs. K stepped out in a gold-embellished frock from Christophe Decarnin’s red carpet-friendly 
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Jack Vartanian hadn't been thinking of snakes, per se, when he began working on his Spring '11 jewelry collection, the designer explained last night at an unveiling dinner at Le Charlot on the Upper East Side. But when he happened on a Brazilian rock, striated with epidote, which he turned into a chunky, faceted cocktail ring (above left), the combination of colors got him thinking. The stone resembled nothing so much as an abstracted python skin, and from it, the 25-piece Python collection was born. (Only part of it was on display last night, due to a customs snafu—snakes on a plane, indeed.) The pieces pick up on the theme of serpents—they’re prevalent in his native Brazil, Vartanian explained, where they symbolize the cycle of nature, birth and rebirth—in sapphire, black quartz, and that epidote stone. Snake heads became rings twining around fingers (above right), cuffs, earrings, and pendants, and the faceted cocktail ring found expression as a pair of dangling earrings, too. They were met with a hiss of approval by dinner guests like Zani Gugelmann, Bettina Prentice, and co-hostess Kate Young. But Vartanian’s best spokesperson has always been his wife, the gorgeous Brazilian model Cassia Avila. She sparkled in the new collection, looking every bit the serpentine beauty herself.
For its 
The fire trucks were summoned to Ciano in New York City’s Flatiron district—site of last night’s cocktails, hosted by Ed Westwick and Georgia May Jagger (left) for up-and-coming London designers—by a small fire in a wood-burning oven. The firemen had it under control in a matter of moments, but they didn’t seem to want to leave. Must’ve been all the pretty young things—Hanneli Mustaparta in Todd Lynn and Byrdie Bell in Holly Fulton, included—at the party. The British Fashion Council’s co-chief executive, Caroline Rush, was even spotted posing for pictures with a ladder truck for a backdrop. But it hasn’t been all play and no work for the Londoners. From the sound of it, they’ve been selling like crazy down at the Soho Grand this week. “What makes London different is there’s such a sense of camaraderie and creative vitality amongst these designers—it gives them the confidence to do what each of them want to do, and not worry if their things are different from everybody else’s. That’s why we have such colorful originals as Meadham Kirchhoff, Louise Gray, Mary Katrantzou, and Michael van der Ham,” Vogue’s Sarah Mower said. Thanks to the showroom appointments here and in Paris, she tells us, sales to international retailers have gone up by 50 percent over three seasons.
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