Hamptons People

29:00And I still do freelance write because A, you know, I need to keep the lights on and B, I still have ideas in the fashion world that I want to write sometimes. And I still feel like a fashion person, even though I'm also a town board person now too. So when I have a fashion idea, I love the ability to pitch one of my great editors and write something, so. Well, it's all connected. Well, congratulations. Now we're going to go through a quick fire round of all the news that's been happening. and I'm curious if there are any Hamptons connections here. Let's talk about the business of plastic surgery really quickly because I'm curious.

29:46I have noticed that ever since living in LA, I've lived in LA for five years, the attention to physicality in LA, everybody knows about this. Yes, everybody's very fit. I would argue pre-GLP1s that they weren't super skinny that it was more about being fit unless you're you know an actor and you have to be a certain weight but it was more about being and most of the time I've lived here the GLP ones have been in a in conversation but they were they've really been adapted in the last year by like quote-unquote normal people but I would say that the the focus on perfectionism in the face and in the body is very clear here.

30:32Like a lot of people have their boobs done. And if they're not, if they don't have breast implants, they at least had a boob lift after they had a baby. A lot of people get tummy tucks. The face is, everybody does stuff to their face. And then you go to New York and I'd say there's more of a focus on presentation and looking really sharp. and all of the things, but you're a little more subtle with the surgery stuff. And then you go to Europe and it's like, there's people doing Botox, of course, but you don't want anything to seem phony. And I went to Aspen this past weekend, as I mentioned, and I was just like blown away by like the size of the breast implants.

31:20In the Pilates class I took, the amount of work that happens on the face and I wonder also if there we are returning to because for a while the trend in augmentation was sort of um at least with breasts like really tiny like the ballerina boobs or whatever I wonder if we're moving back towards something like more buxom and more like obvious in even as the face gets less obvious the body's gonna become I don't know it's just interesting And she is a sort of an example of that. Like, I don't know what her boobs actually look like, but she's not tiny. I don't know if you're around the similar people who I was around in Aspen, if you notice any changes in plastic surgery out there.

32:11That's a good question. I mean, Brooke Sneader has gone on the record to say that she micro doses GLP-1s. And I did a story for Vogue on how GLP-1s have affected the modeling industry and whether models are taking them and whether sample sizes have gotten smaller. And Brooks was one of the only models that would go on the record talking about her GLP-1 use. There's definitely this trend of, you know, body maxing and mommy makeovers and wanting to be absolutely flawless head to toe. I know a lot of people are getting surgery and injectables on their legs to make their legs look really perfect. Same with their butts.

32:56Even Dr. Laura Devgan, who I think is one of the most tasteful, elegant plastic surgeon dermatologist, does a lot of sort of very subtle butt work, which is interesting. my friend the great writer molly drongfast just had a wonderful op-ed in the new york times about being public with her face left at 47 and wanting to be transparent about it and tell her family and now the world that she got one because she didn't want young women to have unrealistic expectations around oh i guess people just start looking amazing when they're 47 or when they're 57 in. Totally. And it is, it's interesting to be in a sort of pre, I think we're around the same age, I just turned 44, a pre of that era, where I'm like, I don't want to do anything to my face.

33:52But I would not mind doing stuff to my body. And that's like, and also, where does everybody getting the money for all the stuff and the time, like the recovery for these things, if you do it right is long. I don't know how people have time to do it. And so that's the other thing. It's a, it is a time of wanting to look perfect, quote unquote. Like there's something because you can, you can sort of tweak everything. If you have enough money, you can look exactly the way you want to look. And that's a, I don't know if that's a good thing. You know, we all know that like wanting and desire and disappointment make us human.

34:35And so if you can have everything you want, it might not be right. But on the other hand, like Molly John Fast looks great. And if I have friends who have gotten bleph or whatever, and they needed it, you know, like, or they didn't need it, but like, they look, they feel better. And if it makes you feel better, It's a fascinating time. I wonder if we'll ever swing in the other direction of like nothing. I doubt it. But the next 20 years of the way humans look, transforming is going to be crazy with AI and accessibility to all this stuff, too. like a tummy tuck is expensive right now but five years from now when all those people need one that were on glp ones and lost like 100 pounds like they're probably not going to be as expensive anymore so it's i totally agree and it used to be more people who were in the public eye like we knew when meg ryan got a facelift and we knew when a prominent actress or got a facelift but now it's really people who work in business and are running companies.

35:48One thing that I think is fascinating is the female executives and CEOs who basically take January because that's the quietest month at most companies to do their facelift then and how they're cloaking that and hiding, you know, the six week downtime while they're still running a company. That's fascinating to me. Yeah. Okay. Moving on to a topic that I have not a lot of knowledge on, but I'm aware of its importance, is this football player that has almost 700 million followers on Instagram, the most famous football player in the world, Cristiano Ronaldo, I guess other than Messi, is the most famous.

36:31He got married to his longtime love recently, and it was photographed for Vogue Portugal, I guess. I don't know. Or it was just photographed in Portugal for Vogue. But Vogue got the exclusives. They were photographed by Juergen Teller and dressed by Gucci. And the images were released this weekend. It seems like a huge deal that Vogue got these. I found these images like weird and eerie, but also incredibly compelling. And I'm curious what you thought. I totally agree. Weird, eerie, compelling. The aesthetic was like sort of strangely strict and serious. The main shot where they're in that church with the mural behind them and Georgina Rodriguez is wearing her white wedding suit.

37:22It reminds me of that Kate Winslet HBO show, The Regime, where she plays the leader of an authoritarian dictatorship. That's the aesthetic. It's not casual and romantic and gorgeous and family-focused. It's very serious. It almost feels because Demna designed all of the clothes. So she wore a suit. And I actually bought a Gucci skirt. And I'm like, it's very similar to this, but in navy. like a navy taffeta but um he designed all the clothes because they met at a gucci store yes because she was working there she was working at the gucci store in madrid and actually hadn't planned or wasn't supposed to be on the schedule for the day when cristiano came in but she covered for a friend so it was kismet that they met at the madrid gucci store and the only time they're not wearing Gucci is when they're working out and she's wearing her own brand called Momoa.

38:27Speaking of butts, like this woman's butt is amazing. She is, her body's amazing. Like this is to me an interesting example of like, she is not stick thin, but she's like perfectly curvy. Like there's not, it's not extreme. She's still petite. It's, I guess it is, maybe it's the lauren sanchez effect like it's it's an interesting but she's like perfectly curvy and and there's like all these photos of them in their gym at first i was like a little disturbed by it but because it's so the images are so harsh and just look like someone like in that juergen teller capturing real life way of the like crudeness of real life or whatever it's it feels i was like Like these photos, like they look like someone just took them on their phone and posted them.

39:23And then you're like, oh, now I understand. But but it's quite it's quite odd. It's it was a dream. Chris and Gio, it was a dream is the quote. Oh, my God. I mean, these are Cristiano Ronaldo's body is absolutely incredible, too. He works out all the time. He has, you know, an eight pack. So these are people that should not really be wearing clothes. And sometimes when people have such amazing bodies, they almost look weird in clothes. Like it's like the clothes are stretching to kind of contain their huge muscles. Yes. I don't know. Also, this, I think, was not their real wedding. This was sort of their quick civil ceremony type wedding.

40:09And they plan to have a real extravagant wedding in the future with all of their friends and family. So it's interesting that they did a digital cover with Vogue just for the smaller one. Yeah. I also wonder, I mean, the Gucci, we were talking offline whether or not Gucci, there was any money exchanged. My guess, and I have no intel on this, is that no, there wasn't. But I do wonder, like this guy is, I mean, one of the top five famous, most famous people in the world, right? So is there an opportunity for him to get some sort of Gucci campaign at some point? I wonder if that is part of... There was a really interesting report that came out through the research firm that's owned by Carla Otto or owned by the independents that Carla Otto uses about sports stars and how big a return on investment they are for fashion brands.

41:06like more than and and especially football more than anyone football stars like if you want a return on investment for your celebrity sponsor you get a football star that's who everybody connects with it's it's you know it's one of the last remaining elements of monoculture and obviously the world cup made it even more so in the u.s this past year but um i just found this whole thing like extremely bizarre in a great way and was also like I guess this is it and it also it kind of did throw back to last summer with the Lauren Sanchez wedding digital cover stuff too this this may be Chloe Maul's like um sort of mark in her early days of vogue are these like taking these sort of tacky people you want to look away from in culture and forcing them on you in this way that you can't stop looking.

42:10It's really interesting. That's so true. And just in terms of impressions that this wedding is going to get between his and her following, it will be the biggest Gucci campaign that happens in the next five years. And we all know that Demna is very savvy about that and aware of that kind of pop culture impression. So I'm sure he's completely delighted and sees this as a kind of just such a pop cultural moment.

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45:31Really quickly, Jonathan Anderson by Zara fake news that went wild on Friday. Why do you think this became, I guess because it was on, so for anyone who didn't see this, who isn't on Instagram constantly like me, there was this post on Dumois, the celebrity gossip site that just said, Jonathan Anderson's designing for Zara. And I was like, this is not possible. He has a deal with Uniqlo. There is no way that Tadashi Yanai, the owner of Uniqlo, is going to let Jonathan Anderson go. That collection he does for them does super, super well. He's also, you know, he's just like a very proud person. And I think he would do a lot financially to keep Jonathan Anderson.

46:15I have no idea where this came from. I talked to people at JW Anderson. I talked to people at Zara and everyone. I mean, look, maybe they had a conversation there and they're lying to me, but everyone was like, We don't know. It came out of nowhere. But it became such a big thing that J.W. Anderson issued a denial, which I actually think was the smart thing to do. And everyone covered it. Like WWD, who usually ignores stuff like this, covered it. But I'm curious from your perspective why you think it spread so fast and why everybody cared so much.

46:54first of all poor jonathan anderson he is doing enough collections why do we want him to do more collections on top of his online and your and men's and women's and the home stuff he does with jw anderson which is so incredible yeah in terms of why it's spread like wildfire i think there are a lot of fashion pundits at the moment right and there's a lot of pile on so with the amount of sub stacks and tiktok reels with all the little heads and people chiming in on collaborations and i think that kind of has come to a fever pitch with all of the john galliano stuff people are very quick to to to pile on i guess why do you think that it became such a thing i think that's uh i think it's no one has anything to do right now it's it's um slow news time.

47:46I think the fact that it was on Dumois, which is not if it had been, if I had posted that, um, or, you know, it, it would have, it would have been big within our community, but not as Dumois is like mass market. It's a, it's a bigger, that's a different audience. But also the thing that is interesting to me is there aren't, I just did, and we're going to run it in a couple weeks I just interviewed a bunch of college interns and fashion students about the fashion industry and like what they think about it right now going in to working in it like AI everything and the and I've noticed this meeting with fashion students over the years most fashion people who want to be fashion designers are not that interested in the designers themselves like they care about like McQueen and Galeano but they don't like care about the the modern designers usually and this group of kids they brought up some some of them had like individuals and it was through the uh fashion scholarship fund so they have a relationship with the Virgil Abloh foundation so a lot of those kids you know feel a closeness to Virgil which is he was larger than life like he wasn't just a fashion designer He was a cultural icon in many ways.

49:10So it's like Karl Lagerfeld, same kind of thing. But a lot of them brought up Jonathan Anderson. And they brought him up specifically by name. No one brought up Mattou Blasi. Like no one brought up, they mentioned Chanel and liking those collections. But many of them brought up Jonathan. And I think what he has done by like doing costume design, designing with Luca Guadagnino and all that kind of stuff, I think it has made him into a little more of a celebrity than a lot of, especially in the context of Hollywood, than a lot of other designers. And he's also very online, like generationally. He has an Instagram account that he posts from, whereas, you know, I'm sure Demna's lurking, but he's not like posting day to day.

50:05And so he feels a little more accessible. So I think it was the combo of those two things. And I also think it's really good that they just were like, it's not true. Because if they had said, if they had not said anything, it would have just gone on for months. And so they're really smart. They just like nipped it in the bud super fast. But yeah, it was interesting. say i'm curious that i have a piece on monday about this brand studio nicholson which got investment from 1686 which is the david wertheimer investment fund it is not associated with chanel or moose the the wertheimer's family office but it is he is a chanel air and he has this investment fund that's based in luxembourg and they've invested in a lot of interesting stuff including satisfied running and alum glasses it's very consumer products but with a particular point of view.

50:59And I found out that they did a deal with Studio Nicholson last week. And I was thinking about how people consume today. And contemporary brands are basically, there are so few traditional contemporary brands, but there are these brands that are like sort of mood board brands. And it doesn't really matter who the designer is. It's more about like the feeling that the brand gives you and um nick wakefield who does i don't know her but um who does i follow her on instagram and she does studio nicholson she founded it in 2010 she seems really cool like everything i hear she's like cool she's down to hang she's a lot of people are friends with her um but generally i think that that brand is more about uh the idea of the brand and less about a person and another mood board brand I like a lot of Sporty and Rich which Emily Oberg is an influencer but like I've I think Sporty and Rich is not about her it's about this like idea of this this uh sterilized Ralph Lauren lifestyle or whatever and the product is really good like I have a bathing suit from there and yes I feel silly wearing something that says Sporty and Rich sorry Emily but like the bathing suit looks amazing like she does she does good stuff but I'm curious what you think about this sort of genre of post-contemporary mood board brands and if you think they have staying power in the same way that, you know, a bigger, a designer-led brand does?

52:32Yeah. Well, my first bosses in fashion were Ezra Petronio and Suzanne Collar of Self Service Magazine, who are just very visionary and great thinkers and real fashion purists. And when we would go to shows together, they would always say, what's their vision of the woman, right? And if often when we were leaving, I would be like, that was amazing. I loved it. And they would go, yes, but what's their idea? And who is this woman that they're introducing into the world? So someone like Phoebe Philo, or Hannah McGiven for Chloe, or even Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel, and now Matthew Blasey for Chanel, they all have an idea of who their woman is, what they do all day, what they should look like, what's new about them.

53:19And I think these, as you call them mood board brands, which I think is really clever, don't necessarily have a vision of a woman that's new, right? Oftentimes it's pulling from, you know, pulling from Pinterest, pulling from photos of Carolyn Bessett Kennedy, and then more contemporary muses and sort of putting that plus the row in a blender and mixing it up and coming out with the$300 version. And it's less like we are looking to these brands to find out what to do. And they're looking to us to find out what they should do. So it's not like we're going to Rohe or Lulu de Saison or Studio Nicholson to find out, you know, what's your vision and how should I be dressing?

54:10But almost with the algorithm, them, they're looking at Instagrams of us. I mean, not me necessarily, but Daphne Javits and the newsletter girls and coming up with their next season. Yeah. If anyone wants to make something work, just follow Daphne Javits and just copy all of her clothes as I have been for the last 15 years. Same. I think we share this and I was so happy that Daphne is now in the Shop my world because I will actually go to Daphne Javitsch's shop my storefront and just shop from it. It's incredible that she has one. Oh, I didn't know that. And I'm going to go on it right after we get off on this call.

54:50I should I need to have her on the podcast. She I went to Jacob Soboroff's book launch in Altadena, I guess like six or seven months ago with Natalie Krinsky and Nicole Carey, Jacob's wife. We're the curly crew. We have a text chain about curly, even though I never wear my hair curly anymore and their curly hair is better than mine but Daphne had on these Manolo mules and I was like what are I bought them immediately and so did Natalie on the real real and just like then I posted them and I credited her and then all these other people were like I bought them she's just been literally since she modeled for Scott Sternberg in the opening ceremony catalog or something which you may maybe you worked there when she did that I was like this girl is the coolest person she is the best style of anyone it's it's so good but yeah I think the interesting thing about these brands is you can they can really like Totem which I love and huge respect to them started out as this and I I would argue that they they went a step beyond and they really understand their customer if you make a good product and you're one of these brands you can become your own brand but I think a lot of them what ends up happening is they just kind of get stuck in this algorithm thing and this was before there were it was an algorithm these brands existed um so they're they're necessary because like I remember when Studio Nicholson first came out she was making like knitwear that was of the Phoebe vibe and it was before I wrote on Monday, it was before you could find like a graduated hem sweater on Amazon.

56:32Like she was making really nice, well-made sweaters that had a similar vibe as the Phoebe Celine Tech Cashmere jumpers. In the end, I ended up just buying one of those Celine jumpers. And it's because for years, I tried to find one that was like similar enough and nothing was the same. and I just, I got one for my birthday and I never, I still own it and I wear it every winter, like three days a week when I'm in cold weather. And sometimes you just have to like bite the bullet and buy the real thing because the inspired things never fulfill. But if you're something like Totem where you actually start to make stuff that people, they want your version, not the other version.

57:21That's when there's real success with those kinds of brands. Totally. And I agree that Totem has gone above and beyond the sort of classic$300 to$500 price point mood board brands. But price is such a huge consideration for people. And I think that gets forgotten. If you have a good$300 pant, people will buy it. And then just to go like to kind of tie it together with the Jonathan Anderson thing. Maybe people wanted a Jonathan Anderson Zara collab just because they wanted it to exist, because they wanted to buy it. I don't know why they're not buying Jonathan Anderson for Uniqlo, but they probably just loved, you know, it was sort of like a wishful thinking thing.

58:05And I was thinking when, I don't know if you saw that Catherine Pohl collaboration with Zara home that just came out she she's a she's a kind of textile sorcerer she collects antique textiles and she did this fabulous collection with zara home which came out i think it's probably going to sell out within a few days but it's like beautiful cushions and chairs and things for the home and i was like oh my god what if jonathan anderson did one of these as our home collaboration and you know because he's he's so good at like bringing back Wedgwood and Lucy Rhee and bringing back Eddie glue baskets so like a sort of moderate low price point version of that for Zara home would just sell out let's secret it maybe they had a conversation about that you never know like everyone did not they were like this is bullshit everyone I talked to said it wasn't true but maybe they had a meeting about it.

59:07But that makes a lot of sense. Let's make that happen. One can dream. That could be great. One can dream. I do really like Zara Home, but the colors are a little dusty for me. I'm like a more saturated color person. But in Europe, Zara Home is like everyone just buys everything from there. It's really interesting. Totally. Check out this Catherine Pohl stuff because there's some red, although they did sort of put their dusty muted thing over this palette too. I do like the red and white striped pillow. It's nice. Maybe I'll consider for my new apartment. Rory, this was so fun. Congratulations on the launch of the Hamptons Chronicle.

59:48Everybody subscribe to the Substack. Really only ask Rory for an issue if you're desperate because I don't want her to have to spend a ton of money on shipping and handling. but hopefully they'll be available to purchase soon too. Yeah. And that first issue is still available all throughout the Hamptons. Go to the Sagoponic General Store. You can pick up a copy and the new one will be there in a couple of weeks. I just have to make it. Amazing. Congrats again. Happy summer and I'll see you in September. Thanks Lauren. Great to see you. Thanks for that. Fashion People is a presentation of Odyssey in partnership with Puck.

1:00:27The show is produced and edited by Molly Nugent. Special thanks to Puck co-founder John Kelly, executive editor Ben Landy, producer Maya Tribbett, and director of editorial operations Gabby Grossman. An additional thanks to the team at Odyssey, Kelly Turner and Bob Tabador.