A night view from a Coldwater Canyon mansion

We were at the Polo Lounge. I was laughing to myself because the orchids, the players , the hyper-polished woods, the dress sense, the body language and the conversation was every cliche you ever wanted from a Beverly Hills power lunch venue . Thank god for a consistency of line! Our party consisted of our stealth Overlord with fingers that tap between the talent , real estate and nightlife industries, as well as a certain legendary television magnate who by the mere mention of his name got the hostess to spin you straight to his customary corner booth. Flanking him was his lieutenant in arms, a very sharp legal eagle and his new business partner: one of those tech whiz types whose standard dialogue combined business-speak with tech slangs that just turned musical to my untrained ears. Later on, the Magnate's overwhelmingly charming wife , a former Bond girl, swept in to join us. I loved the team work these two executed through the room. Though I did not know who anyone was gathered at the coveted tables, it was clear that this was a very clubbish room marked by a very discrete form of table hopping. One Beverly Hills dowager came over to say hello, giving us the newsflash that the Roberto Cavalli line had sold out in less than half an hour that very morning and that the inventory was so controlled, not even her best friend Roberto or his wife could get the extra pieces she desperately wanted "Very smart! Those people at H&M" she announced before returning to her booth.
A not very happy Tommy Hilfiger was at the table across from us , halfheartedly nibbling his hamburger and looking so much like a sullen kid I didn't realize it was Tommy Hilfiger. In the Polo Lounge. The ironies were abundant and I love this. I am starting to learn what a peculiar and esoteric language high fashion is outside of its customary corridors. Mastering the editorial branch of the trade makes you almost like a medieval monk fluent in Latin. The language of the Roman Empire may have been dying, but boy does it sound good at the castle table. Pretty soon every king worth his Gobelins tapestries had to have a Latin spouting prelate on the premises. While the big guns power talked, the compulsive journalist in me compressed and stored as much information as I could. Big plans and schemes were being weaved. I thought "So this is how America's entertainment gets brewed". Towards the end, the Magnate gave me a pretty big homework assignment. How does one say "sieze the day" in Latin?
This meeting was actually the second of the day. My breakfast downstairs at The Fountain had been with Ali Kay, the force behind the "Keep Me" loungewear line. AK had worked a few summers back as an editor at MDC before scheming up her very own clothing line which had since then steadily been sold out at shops like Bendel's. I felt so much pride for the success that this enterprising young woman was finding. The tabloids had been very happy to decide that the cheeky title of the line meant AK was merely content with been kept by her beau, Alex Von Furstenburg. But AK's talent and smarts are very real.I'm really looking forward to shooting some cool original imagery for "Keep Me" circa Feb 2008 when the new line hits the stores. AK's vision for "Keep Me" was so concise, so targeted, so patient and selective that it really could serve as a blue-print not only for building a fashion line, but any kind of brand. Namely, to make sure your product had a lot of integrity, to guard your quality control like your life depended on it, to bring back the hits that sell but expand the brand vocabulary very slowly and very carefully.
That was the nature of the conversation I had with Dean May, a rising party promoter on the LA scene at the 4.00pm meeting on my schedule. Dean gave me a crash course on the different demographics that make up the LA nightlife crowd. "Is it all Hollywood Hills trust-fund brats, the studio nation and the hoping-to-be stars?" "Pretty much" affirmed Dean. Of all the many promoters I met, (though they all had their strengths), Dean is the one I bonded with best. He was smart...smart enough to align himself with the Bolthouse/SBE empire as well as position himself as a brand manager for 944 magazine. Yet he was humble enough to entertain my proposal for building a cool little night to service all the many fashion kids who flit in back and forth from NY without a great spot to party in. The idea I pitched was that there was a circle of urban nomads ricocheting from city to city with fantastically advanced tastes in interiors, music, art, film, fashion and design. The limitation of the LA club scene was the music being played. It is not what you get in NY, London, Paris, Tokyo or Berlin . But maybe I'm insane but I think U-Roy would sound genius booming through the canyons and hills. Dean's Q+A is one of the many I have to transcribe as soon as I have a day off. Literally the last few weeks have been so social (I'm by nature a recluse but its been an average of 5 meetings a day recently), I'm really starting to miss my writerly solitude.
But there are nights when you can't complain, not when the scene segues to evening's end with a cocktail party thrown for TI at a gorgeously appointed Coldwater Canyon mansion with the glittering lights of the city sparking and twinkling in the distance. Unlike a lot of the other houses in this gated community owned by studio heads and pop stars, this one was very cloistered and private, wrapped in ivy and hidden behind these beautifully varnished sliding gates. I loved the compulsive detailing of the rooms, especially the loggia screening room and I loved that it was personal not decorated by committee . Best of all you got a feeling of a private world ("private"...that great word again). Boy did it stroke my ambition. Our Overlord was in attendance, as was The Magnate and his beautiful wife, the Tech genius and his elegant wife. A very serene make-up maven from Stockholm and the PR Director from Ports 1961 were all gathered around the bar. The conversation had gotten much lighter and social. I confessed to the The Magnate's wife that I didn't know how to drive, which is pure scandal in LA. She kindly offered up the driveway of her Beverly Park manse as the perfect place for me to take my driving lessons. I thought "Now this sort of kindness didn't happen in Paris!" The Ports PR Director was quizzing me about my position on the lack of black models on the catwalks. Ports had done a show for SS08 that featured 19 models of African descent in a cabine of 21 girls. They had also gone with a kind of consistency of line and used an African-American model for the campaign. My response was " I don't want to put my energy into complaining and picketing or crying. I want to put my energy into winning. Your company made a great great move and actually now you'll look like a market leader and a forward thinker. Congratulations" I know I promised to draft a piece about this very issue weeks ago. This weekend however, I finally get to do a long delayed tete a tete with Bethann Hardison. I'm going to print the conversation and I hope it will be dynamic. Ms Hardison and I have the same objectives but a different method. It should be interesting. Carpe Diem no?