Sex and the Ghesquière Girl

0:04Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's Fashion and Beauty Memo Line Sheet. And today with me on the show is Liz Goldwyn, writer, filmmaker, estate, and so much more. We're here to chat about her life in fashion and collecting fashion. Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck, where I send an email called Line Sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industry. Line Sheet is scoopy, analytical, and above all, fun.

0:44Along with me, a subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance, the art world, and much more. If you're interested, listeners of Fashion People get a discount. Just go to puck.news slash fashion people to join Puck or start a free trial. Happy Friday, everyone. Hope you had a great week. It was a little crazy over here at the Line Sheet headquarters. We had Couture. We had Road vs. Rare Beauty. We had Aritzia. We had Anna Wintour succession theories and suggestions. We had a little scoop about Sidney Sweeney launching some sort of lingerie project, business, what have you.

1:35I'm sure more will be revealed in the coming weeks. but you really got to sign up for line sheet to get all the reporting. Fashion people is complimentary to line sheet. It's not everything. And if you want to be truly informed and entertained and just feel good about yourself, you got to sign up for puck. It's not that expensive. You can also expense it or write it off. Believe me, it's worth it. Anyway, if you were in Europe, I hope you had a great time. I'm glad I was here at the pool, but I did feel a little sad that I missed the OG Hermes Birkin auction at Sotheby's where the bag sold for$10.1 million.

2:16That same day, the brand itself hosted this theme day where everyone seemed to be doing crafts. I saw Peter Malachi posted Bettina Koric doing some sort of painting thing, and I felt deeply jealous, I think of this whole week, missing the Glenn Martin's debut at Margiela, missing Demna's last show, missing Michael Ryder at Celine. Honestly, seeing them painting stuff at an Hermes thing where there's delicious food made me sad. Anyway, I hope everyone had a great time. It was there. And I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Liz. She is a real lover of life and you have to love her for that.

2:54So see you at the pool this weekend.

3:00Liz Goldwyn, welcome to Fashion People. Lauren Sherman, thank you for having me. I'm so honored. I'm so happy you're here. What'd you have for breakfast this morning? I can't believe I get to answer this question. I'm in London, so I'm actually gonna go out to dinner when we're finished recording. But many hours ago, I start my day with I'm such a bougie hippie i make a matcha latte with matcha i get from tea master in little tokyo in la who has the best matcha powder from japan date right tip yeah dates um uh some cinnamon some cardamom um and i make here's where we really get hippie i make um homemade nut milk so i actually have I've traveled all the way to London with macadamia nuts from Hawaii.

3:58And I use, I have an almond cow in the States, but in London, in England, they don't manufacture those. I have like a jank version of that. So yeah, that's my like breakfast in a big Vitamix for like for the first couple hours of the day. Two things. You're speaking my language with the homemade nut milk. I don't make homemade nut milk. I've tried. I use three trees, which I find to be the closest thing to homemade in the U.S. that you can get that store bought. It's just it's there's nothing there's nothing other than the nuts in it. I really enjoy it. They also I don't think they do macadamia, but they do almond and they do a sesame seed milk.

4:42That is interesting, too. But it is the best. They do pistachio, but it's so good. And when I'm going out for coffee, I seek out places that do homemade nut milk because I either want homemade nut milk or just black. I can't do either. So that's very inspiring. And then the other thing, have you heard about what's happening in LA, the drama around the matcha world? No, but I'm so snobby about matcha because I worked for Shiseido for many years. So I'm very particular about getting my matcha sourced from Japan. And every time I go get it in one of those like, you know, like those. What's the name of the chain in New York?

5:29You know, the matcha is very millennial pink coated. The matcha chain. Cha-cha matcha. Cha-cha matcha. I mean, I'll fuck. Am I allowed to say that on the podcast? Yeah, yeah. I'll fuck with an Alfred, an Alfred matcha every once in a while in a pinch. But I don't know about the matcha drama, but it sounds like a Gia Tolentino New Yorker story that I need to read. Yes, I need to tell you about it very briefly. Are you familiar with Maru? Of course. So you lived in Los Feliz. Maru is on Hillhurst in Los Feliz. And also there's one in the Arts District. it's this coffee shop, but they also do matcha and other teas and it's very serious.

6:14And there's a line out the door and apparently, and I haven't read my husband relayed this all to me because I don't know. There's not as much food journalism as there used to be. I don't know if like eater has covered this, but apparently people were asking for, because they won't do a cream top matcha. And that's like a big trend on social media. So people were asking for an order of cream and then doing it themselves and posting. And now there is a thing on the door at Maru being like, we will not sell individual orders of cream. Because as you, I'm sure, believe, like that is a little sacrilege to, to put a cream top top on a matcha.

7:03But I will say there's another coffee shop called Kumquat in Highland park in Los Angeles that I really love. And they have some novel novelty drinks that are, they have this one novelty drink called cloudy with a side of peanuts or something like that. It's really good. It's not too sweet, but it doesn't have enough coffee. So I always ask for an extra shot and they will not do it. So I have to order the extra shot and then I stand there in front of them and dump it in. But it's just a funny thing. Do you think the cream top matcha? Yeah, I just am like, see, you could put the extra espresso in here.

7:42You don't have to be rude about it. I love how niche this is of a discussion, but I also love bringing it back to fashion that like Maru and probably this kumquat place you're talking about is exactly the kind of locations that like men who wear high water high water pants with no socks and spend a lot of time thinking about fashion and are like you know listen obsessively to throwing fits and they you know read all the menswear of sub stacks that the that's their coffee shop of choice is like these 100 because they want to go to be seen it's also the scene where i get a lot of texts from women at mario of like uh la fuck boy sightings you know it's like these kind of places exist it's like uh yeah it's a fat it's a fashion lover's wet dream is like uh you know ways to get a good matcha have you been on throwing fits or how long gone i haven't not that they're the same thing i think both parties would be offended that i put them in the same you i mean you should definitely go on both i would what that is into them both they're really funny i like the way um uh what's i don't know i don't know him but is it chris that does how long gone i like the way he giggles on podcast it really cracks me up like he's like got this certain personality and giggles.

9:08I adore it. And I also, I really like throwing fits. I like how, how earnest they are about their, their love of fashion. I think it's really cool. And they really know, I respect anyone that like really knows their stuff when it, when it comes to. Yeah. It's funny. I was listening. I was on throwing fits like two and a half years ago. And I, I recently tried to, I didn't listen to the whole thing, but re-listened to it because I remember I was extremely nervous that I was going to get fired from my old job because it was so crazy. And I listen now and I'm like, oh, it actually wasn't at all. But my old job is very different from my new job.

9:50And it's very funny, but they're both such professionals. And when you brought up throwing fits, it reminded me of Chris going to Maru all these years ago and how he probably doesn't go to Maru anymore because it is very fuck boy. And he probably thinks he's too good for it. I'll ask him also. I'm definitely going to text them after and say they should have you on. I'm not as close with Lawrence and, and the other guy, but I'm definitely going to tell Chris and Jason that you would be a really good, they don't have enough women on. And they also, I think the, you are the, you can handle them. I think it would be great.

10:33Anyway, I have four brothers. I'm like very used to, you know, the male energy, the boys club. I grew up in the boys club, so I know how to handle it. And also, you know, my father and my grandfather were huge fashion, like so into clothes. My father had a bigger, bigger walk-in closet than I've ever had. He had all his clothes. He had his suits custom made on Savile Row. He has shoes custom made by John Lobb. He has ties from Charvet and his shirts from Charvet. And my grandfather, who, you know, died before I was born, he was also like a known clothes horse. So I actually like I really I love a dandy.

11:13I love a dandy. I think they're so fat. And that's why it's like spending time in England, because men dress and they don't dress in these high water pants that we absolutely have to outlaw. These hipsters. I agree. high water pants carrying around a fucking suitcase with like a typewriter in it so they could go and type out a poem at maru with their masha oh my god what a picture what a picture you know exactly what i'm talking about i do i do i do think that do you feel as someone who grew up in a family that was very interested in clothing and like you said you you grew up with fashion and started collecting fashion yourself and, and getting into it really young.

12:02Do you think how much has social media kind of ruined the way people dress? Or do you think that it's good that more people are in? Do you think more people are interested in fashion now? Do you think it has, what do you think social media has done to the youth and, and their, their, the way they engage with fashion oh my god you're not 80 but what is social media done to the youth in the way they engage in fashion i mean i'm not i'm closer to 80 than i am to zero at this point so fair um i actually went on a tangent on about about the whole what i think of like the okay hailey bieber great that she sold road for a billion dollars amazing but like the hailey Bieberification of like the athleisure wear as it proliferates, especially in Los Angeles, it drives me bananas.

13:01That's I think done. That's more of a disservice for authenticity and individuality in fashion than anything else is wearing all these like very expensive, but they're supposed to look casual, you know, athleisure wear with like minimal gold jewelry and like a blowout. I hate that look. I mean, I miss the grit and the grunge, but you still see that on the streets, I think. And you still see that in social media. I think just the algorithm is feeding us more of, you know, the kind of like air one goddess in like a two-piece aloe, like not even a two-piece aloe yoga set, a onesie, you know, a onesie.

13:42Oh my God. old jewelry. Like, come on. I just went to this workout class in Studio City called Burn, which is, and they have one in West Hollywood, obviously. And there were so many women. I wrote about it and I forgot. I noticed SET that it's basically Aloe, but it's a set instead. It's this smaller brand has really proliferated, but so many of them were wearing onesie. And I was like, I guess that that would be more comfortable because you're not adjusting, but I would just be so embarrassed. My big thing for that generation and generally, honestly, my, our generation too is don't leave the house in stretchy pants.

14:27Like every once in a while an elastic waist is okay, but your default should not be stretchy pants. Your default, if you, I dress extremely casually, but when I go even to school run, most days I wear jeans. I just think it puts you in a different mindset if your pants don't have an elastic waist. And unfortunately this is the way the culture is moving and there's no going back, but it does. There's so much more to the world if you don't just wear stretchy pants. It's very all you can eat buffet, you know, not having to unbutton your whatever top button of your pants. But that's the cool thing for me about vintage is, you know, I think that there's almost what we're talking about is like that people want to look the same.

15:21They want to fit in like that that New York cover story about the West village. Whereas I think it was always for me and like the whole point of being like of youth and fashion and rebellion and being punk rock is not wanting to look like anyone else and not having the same thing that everyone else has. And that's almost like in terms of fashion, like when we came up that kind of look was the look of people who did not have taste, but who had money, but not taste who wanted to buy like the this expensive designer piece that like everyone else had but anyone who really had a sense of style you didn't want that one piece that was in all the magazines or whatever you wanted the thing that was different that was hard to trace yeah it's in the west village piece really i found it really fascinating because brock i love amazing writer and almost all the people in that piece were people I know or I write about.

16:23It was so funny. It was just it was such an interesting. And I had stayed in the West Village in a friend's place a year earlier. And I remember saying to to people like. Who lives in the West Village now? It just seems like all these young 25 year olds without jobs and they're all wearing sweatpants and I don't understand. It's so strange. But the point being that as that's happening, there's also this sort of real, real phenomenon where people are thrifting and buying secondhand stuff. And I see that on the east side of LA a lot. I remember coming back from Europe the last time and I went to breakfast at Squirrel the next day.

17:02And there were a lot of 20 something girls on sort of girl dates at 11 a.m. on a Saturday. And so many of them, it was right after the Miu Miu show. And so many of them looked like Lata had styled them. They were wearing old Fendi bags or old Balenciaga bags with boots that you could tell were thrifted and everything was thrifted. So there's this sort of parallel path of thrifting is so much easier than it used to be. and for a lot of young consumers, it's a part of how they shop. But then there is also this homogenization that's happening more clearly than it did in the past. And so what do you think about that?

17:49As someone who was thrifting before it was that word existed, probably, what do you think about those two things happening at the same time? Well, I love it. I mean, I feel like I have several group chats that are just about everything that I've bought and returned on The Real Real. I just absolutely love The Real Real. I used to be eBay before The Real Real or thrifting. And as someone who, like I grew up in California, my mom grew our food. Me and my brother got our allowance from recycling. So I was coming first at vintage clothing from that angle of just being conscious about the planet. And I love that like so many younger people now are also thinking about fashion in a sustainable way.

18:37Because when you talk about the homogenized look, to me, that just reeks of like shine. Shane, how do you say it? Shine, whatever that. Oh, Shein. Shein. Yeah, Shein. Like, you know, just all these sort of mass produced will end up in a landfill, kind of high street stuff. So I think it's really cool that it's much more like an immediate reflex for a lot of young people to be like, well, why would I buy something new when I can buy that thing that already came out 10 years ago and it has a certain value to it? Yeah, I think it's I think it's fabulous that it's so much more accessible than it used to be.

19:20So that's a long intro, a long prelude to the question I probably should have asked first. But Liz, who are you? Tell us, give the elevator pitch of your life. There's also a great, we should say, Marissa Meltzer recently profiled Liz in the New York Times and I ran into you all. You were down. I was meeting my family. We were going to dinner in the arts district at the row down there. Not the row, the row, the row. The row is a shopping center in the arts district in Los Angeles. And I went to go into Arcade Vintage and it said, we're closed for a shoot. And I look and I see Marissa's hair. And I was banging on the door.

20:09I walk in. It was a big sale with them of some of your most amazing pieces. But before we get to that, let's get to you and why are we chatting? You tell me, Lauren. We're chatting. I'm an author. I've written three books and I'm starting my fourth. I'm a director and an artist and I have a substat called Star where I spill all the tea on Hollywood and fashion and the art world and all the amazing scenes I've been privileged to come up around and in. But also I am someone with a serious addiction to vintage clothing, which started when I was probably like 12 or 13. And it has not stopped. And I've had a number of jobs, especially as a younger person, in and around auction world.

21:07I helped start the fashion department at Sotheby's when I was like 17 in New York. I worked for Karine Rotfeld when she first started French Vogue. I was the New York editor there. I worked for Shiseido, which is a Japanese beauty company. I've worked with a lot of designers as sort of, I guess, I hate this word, but like muse. or, you know, done ad campaigns and stuff like that. So and I'm friends with a lot of designers and, you know, worked with curators on like with Thelma Golden when she did Patrick Kelly's retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum. So I am someone who really loves the history of clothes and really loves not as much.

21:49I'm interested in the business of fashion. I definitely would steal my dad's financial times when I was a kid. And I knew who like Bernard Arnault and Francois Pinot were when I was like 14. I was just kind of obsessed with like the business of fashion. But more than anything, I love the thrill of a hunt. I love the thrill of a treasure, you know, and that's why I love vintage. Do you think growing up in Hollywood and coming from this big Hollywood family, that history part of it is part of what drew you to fashion as well because you do seem to have a reverence for the past. That's fair. Well, my grandfather actually was the first person to bring Coco Chanel to America back in the 20s.

22:41He hired her to make wardrobe for his stars and built her a replica of her atelier in Paris in Hollywood and hired, brought her to, he brought her first to New York, got a white bullet train to take her and her best friend, Misia Sert, who there's a great biography of her, if anyone's interested. She was also a patron of the arts. Hired this white bullet train, filled it with French champagne, Russian caviar, and American journalists to take her from New York to Los Angeles. And by the time she went to LA, she was a household name in America. but actually the wardrobe was kind of a disaster because Hollywood stars did not at that time they didn't want to look androgynous chic and this is a time when Chanel was synonymous with her jersey dress you know her black jersey dress that was made from maids fabric Hollywood stars wanted to have big shoulders and a small waist and look voluptuous so it was kind of you know a bit of disaster.

23:40But I think it's probably in my DNA, this, you know, interest in bridging in both like European design and the history of design, like high fashion, haute couture, but also Hollywood costumes and how clothes are used to create a character. So I think I always thought of clothing that way. And especially vintage was that I could, it was almost like armor, a character, You know, you don't really need to you can't you don't necessarily have to be yourself. You can kind of try on a different personality through through what you choose to wear. And and as I said, my father, you know, I grew up with him taking me to these fittings for his suits.

24:24I just absolutely loved it. I loved everything about it. Like the idea of getting your wardrobe made is I mean, it's like a total luxury. And we should say your grandfather is the Goldwyn of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Well, actually, MGM stole his logo. They stole our name and our logo. So we never had anything to do with MGM. He made the first movie in Hollywood with Cecil B. DeMille called The Squaw Man in 1914 or 1916. And then he founded a lot of what are now the present-day studios. But Metro Pictures bought the Goldwyn lot. and named it and then sold a guy called Louis B. Mayer to run it and then stole the Goldwyn Pitcher's logo, which was the lion roaring.

25:11And I've written about it on Starfucker. And then they took my grandfather to court to try to sue him to stop using his own name, but he won. So I'm always a little prickly when people reference MGM. But yes, in fact, that is the same name. Long-winded way. Well, you really are ground zero for Hollywood. It's very cool. Well, okay. But did you go to high school in LA or did you go to boarding school in Europe? How did you end up getting to New York when you were 17? I went to a private school in LA called West Lake that is now Harvard Westlake. It became Harvard Westlake. Yes. I was just reading this morning about you getting kicked out.

25:59No, I was not kicked out. I was invited to leave. There's a big difference. There's a big difference. Tori Spelton was a senior when I was a freshman and 90210 was on the air. So it was like I got invited. So cool. I went to boarding school on the East Coast, which was such a trip because 90210 was on the air. So everyone immediately was like, oh my God, 90210. I was mortified. Yeah, I really didn't. I didn't even know any other people whose families weren't artists or in the movie business until I went to boarding school. And I was like, oh, there's a whole other world out there. So that's how I got to New York at a young age and was just like, I don't want to go to a regular college.

26:47I've just done, you know, three and a half years on an East Coast campus. I want to, you know, start my career, go to art school.

27:02I know you worked with Fabian Barron in the early days as well. What was it like with him and kareen and that like late 90s early 2000s fashion world okay so i when i worked for fabian i was like 17 and he was working he was working the creative director of harper's bazaar under liz tilbaris and he was also doing calvin klein and right the summer i started he it was when i think it was like the fbi like raided cal i don't i might be making up stories but they got upset about the ads the ads with the wood panel thing that um and i showed up like everyone dressed in all black okay i'm from california i'm into vintage clothes vintage clothes are not a thing at all at that time especially not in new york and i show up and i'm wearing 1940s print dresses with like wooden japanese platform shoes and and we're in this philippe stark you know concrete office everyone's in black Patrick Lee who's still a close friend to this day what like took me under his wing there and I'm clomping around this these concrete floors and I would go to they'd send me to drop things off or pick them up at Calvin Klein and they would get calls about my wardrobe about how I was not getting in I was like not dressed appropriately because and I I wasn't wearing all black and didn't look, you know, like chic.

28:30But Fabian was fabulous. And he really liked me and let me get away with a lot. Like he let me come in on the weekends and use the laser copper copier for art school. And once one time, this is so bad, but it's a long time ago. One time I, you know, they did all he did all the perfumes, right? Which is like a huge big deal. Like I would get sent in a car to Queens and like you'd go behind these armored drawers because it's like all top secret, like the perfume world and the perfume bottles. One weekend I was using the laser copier during the weekend and I broke all of the perfume samples accidentally.

29:09And the whole Philippe Stark like copier room stunk like perfume, but I didn't get in trouble because I think Fabian got a kick out of me just because I was so different probably than like the rest of the office but he was fabulous and kareen was so much fun i took her to i met her through um nicola gasquier who made my wedding dress and i took her shop vintage she was really fun to take vintage shopping she's got such good taste um i took her vintage shopping at the store cherry in the east village in new york which is no longer around um and she was just fun you know she was like a lot more, you know, laid back than the American fashion editors because it was like sort of a different, you know, is a different vibe than not maybe not as much pressure.

30:01Yeah. I mean, that is to me. Just hearing you talk about it's also interesting because there was that minimalist thing happening, but then there was that was the first era when anyone was. I feel like I know in the 70s people were buying stuff from the 40s, but it really was the first time when people were started to like I all my friends wanted vintage dresses for their prom dresses, that sort of thing. But it still was so, so rare. It must have been really fun to be in the mix with those people in particular because they were the ones who were shaping kareen with tom ford fabian with harper's bazaar they were shaping how the world dressed at that point it was such a different ecosystem and fashion totally although i felt i was sort of disconnected from that i mean i knew like tom i know tom a little bit and stuff but i wasn't wearing those kind i was probably too young to wear those clothes back then because it was quite young at the time but also it wasn't I was more into like Martin you know deconstructionist Japanese fashion and young design I worked with Shiseido I worked with a lot of younger emerging designers so it was always you know I didn't really dress like so you know high fashion I didn't wouldn't have bought those kind of things I think if any if I was going to spend money it would have been like you know I would have wanted I would buy stuff at the staff USA sample sales.

31:33Yeah, that's awesome. And my friends like from that I'm still friends with from that period who are also collectors like Chloe Sevigny, we would, you know, if we were going to buy new stuff, we would probably buy it at a sample sale like Comme des Garçons, Margiela, Junia, Yoji, or we were wearing a lot of our young designer, like friends our age who are designers or we were shopping vintage. You know, we were into like, you know, Victorian, you know, shirt like linen and lace or yeah. When you were shopping and collecting at that time, were you thinking at all of it being a collection and whether you would save it or was that not part of the or was it just more sort of a flow of your friend, your friends with Nicola, he makes you something you go to the sample sale you go to cherry or or was even at that time are you thinking oh this is I'm sort of building something oh definitely because because of Sotheby's um when I was when I was 13 I was collecting with well I wear this when I'm in my 40s and then by the time I was 17 and working with Sotheby's I realized because I got connected to a global group of dealers and museums and curators and like and collectors in that world um I realized oh my god I've already been building a collection like I've already have all this crazy stuff and now I better learn how to take care of it and that's when I started like people like for example when Eddie Slamin who was a good friend of mine when he left um Dior um he was like I'm sending you stuff to put in your archive for me like when he knew that they were gonna you know like so design same thing with Nikola he sent me a bunch of stuff just because people started to know oh like I'll hold on to this and I will either I'll like loan it out for museums or I'll give it to museums later you know I had a relationship with the Met Costume Institute like people kind of knew that I would take care of it um so yeah no yeah no by that time I definitely was like I was I was I was seeing it as a collection how do you manage it do you have storage in different areas is it all in LA like how and through the years how did that change um I have climate controlled storage in LA if anyone that's listening to this knows of any people in London I have a little closet purge that I need to do here with some more shit because it's such a problem.