New York’s grande dame, The Pierre, knows how to throw a soirée. Last night, the elegant Taj Hotel celebrated 95 years as a beacon of Upper East Side glamour with a ‘Red Diamond’ gala that brought together residents, diplomats, stars and influencers for an unforgettable evening of vintage Manhattan magic.
Nearly 500 guests, from silver-haired luminaries to fresh-faced Gen Z tastemakers, donned black tie finery to toast The Pierre’s storied history in its famous ballroom. Sipping champagne beneath glittering chandeliers, partygoers were transported to a more gracious era, when the hotel played host to everyone from Elizabeth Taylor and Aristotle Onassis to Audrey Hepburn.
The entertainment was a love letter to old New York: A Marilyn Monroe impersonator cooed while Deanna First sketched partygoers and professional ballroom dancers swirled across the stage in a swish of satin and sequins. Historic treasures, like archival photos and a $195,000 0.6-carat pink diamond, were displayed without fanfare (or security).
Getty Images Deanna First.
But while the gala paid homage to The Pierre’s glamorous past, the crowd reflected its vibrant present. Among those spotted in the sea of tuxedos and gowns: hotel residents, foreign dignitaries, reality TV stars, Instagram celebrities and even the odd baby or two nestled in couture-clad arms. The evening proved that after nearly a century, The Pierre can still create indelible Manhattan moments.
Courtesy of Lola Tash Lola Tash and Jessica Wang.
“I was transported back to the galas of the Gilded Age,” Lola Tash told Observer. The Canadian actress and brains behind the satirical, relatable meme account My Therapist Says was “reminded once more why New York is magical.”
Getty Images Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe.
“The Pierre is my American Home away from home,” Prince Mario-Max Schaumburg-Lippe told Observer. His godmother lived in The Pierre, the prince said, noting “the happiest of my memories are right here” and calling the historic property “the hotel love of my life.”
Courtesy of Grace Aki Grace Aki.
Experiencing the hotel’s cinematic history firsthand was a highlight for Grace Aki. The gallery of treasures glowing behind glass displays made the night “all the more special,” Aki told Observer.
“Like stepping into history,” was how Viola Manuela Ceccarini described the event. “The elegance, the legacy and the energy in the room—witnessing generations of excellence converge under that red diamond, a symbol of timeless prestige and the enduring spirit of New York.”
Courtesy of Lori Altermann The star of the show poses with Lori Altermann.
“Everywhere I turn, I see New York’s elite—beautiful celebrities and even Marilyn Monroe!” quipped Lori Altermann. “The fashion, the food, the hotel—everything is fabulous!” Altermann told Observer. “It’s a celebration of luxury,” said Namani Shqipe.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Boy meets girl, girl seeks adventure in Paris, then girl’s complicated feelings for said boy ultimately taint her ability to actually enjoy the city of love. That scenario factors into the plot of both The Summer I Turned Pretty’s final season and the newly released Netflix rom-com The Wrong Paris—although this time, our heroines, played by Lola Tung and Miranda Cosgrove respectively, make it to Paris—and get to stay, at least for a while.
On The Summer I Turned Pretty, Belly defers her acceptance to study abroad in Paris for premature marriage with Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno). She then comes to her senses, calling off the wedding and moving overseas, where she fights through homesickness and language barriers to build a nice little life for herself. Of course, that independence will soon be interrupted by Belly’s ex Conrad (Christopher Briney), seen buying a plane ticket to Paris in the show’s penultimate episode. But at least she was given the opportunity to test out both versions of her future before making a choice.
That’s also true of The Wrong Paris, a silly rom-com about a Bachelor-esque reality dating show that contestants are led to believe will be filmed in Paris, France, only to learn it’s actually Paris, Texas—population 25,000. Our heroine, Cosgrove’s Dawn, takes the twist in stride, vowing to compete on the show—not for love, but some prize money to fund studying at a Paris art school. “I don’t hate this,” she says of her hometown, “I just hate that this is the only thing I’ve ever known.” Then a cowboy named Trey (Pierson Fode—also, has anyone ever actually met a cowboy named Trey?) and his comically sculpted abs waltz in. “You ain’t gonna find no man like me in Paris,” he drawls, to which she replies: “Yeah, that’s the point.” Surprise, surprise, Dawn and Trey do fall in love and later strike a bicontinental compromise—she’ll finish school, then presumably come back to Texas.
Hepburn and Astaire, near 30 years in age between them, leave Paris as husband-and-wife in Funny Face.LMPC/Getty Images
Paris has long been a place for lovers onscreen. Casablanca (1942) famously ends with Humphrey Bogart’s Rick telling Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa that they’ll always have their time in Paris, even if they can’t end up together. The European city has gotten in the way of a whole lot of love affairs ever since. Perhaps no one was more familiar with this than poor Audrey Hepburn, who starred in six films set in the City of Light throughout the 1950s and ’60s, most of which end with the idea that her lovelorn character would presumably rather return to the United States with a man twice her age than walk along the Seine solo. (Case in point: Hepburn choosing Bogart in 1954’s Sabrina—a frequent reference on TheSummer I Turned Pretty, and then Fred Astaire in 1957’s Funny Face—which has been repeatedly mentioned on Netflix’s Emily in Paris.)
Somewhere along the way, Paris became the go-to plot device standing in between a single woman and her love interest. The city represented female independence and agency—a culturally rich alternative to the happily ever after established in fairy tales.
On ’90s to early aughts TV, Paris became a surefire tactic for injecting drama into long-running “will they or won’t they?” couples. Shannen Doherty’s Brenda flees her dramatic on-again-off-again dynamic with Luke Perry’s Dylan on Beverly Hills, 90210 for a summer study-abroad program. Sarah Jessica Parker’s beret-clad Carrie Bradshaw now famously hurls a McDonald’s “le Big Mac” upon learning that “Big is moving to Paris,” in Sex and the City season two. Then her own Parisian journey with Frenchman Aleksandr Petrovsky (Mikhail Baryshnikov) is cut short in the series finale once Big (Chris Noth) shows up to bring her back home. On another hotly anticipated final episode, Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel Green considers moving overseas with her toddler-aged daughter for a fresh start working at Louis Vuitton after years of across-the-hall pining for David Schwimmer’s Ross. But these flights of fancy don’t last long—a brief layover on the way to domesticated bliss right back where they started.
Anthony Bourdain once called Le Veau d’Or, New York’s longest-running French bistro, “a restaurant that time forgot.” The restaurant arrived on the Upper East Side in 1937, from the same family behind Benoit Paris. It quickly became a New York society favorite and A-list haunt—Orson Welles preferred the corner booth by the bar, while Audrey Hepburn and former presidents’ names and numbers were frequently penned in the reservation book. For decades, bon vivants folded themselves into red banquets and drifted, for the night, to a bygone era.
While time may have forgotten—and incidentally, institutionalized—Le Veau d’Or, Frenchette’s Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson did not. Beginning in 2012, they periodically rang owner Catherine Tréboux (whose father, Robert Tréboux, ran the restaurant from 1985 until his death in 2012) for seven years, resolute in their efforts to purchase, renovate and reopen the iconic restaurant. In 2019, Tréboux finally conceded and closed the restaurant to solidify the sale.
While Nasr and Hanson hoped to restore the tired kitchen, worn floors and other aging details of the historic bistro and open within a year, the coronavirus pandemic stymied their efforts, and Le Veau ended up under construction for another five years.
The same, but different. Erica Chayes Wida
On July 16, 2024—12 years after Nasr and Hanson first began their mission to take over Le Veau d’Or—“The Golden Calf” finally reopened its doors.
I entered the back-streets-of-Paris-sized bistro between Lexington and Park for the first 5 p.m. seating on a steamy Tuesday evening, two weeks after the reopening. I held the door for a younger couple in baggy denim, half-buttoned dress shirts and glasses as we made our way through the rouge velvet curtain. Joe Cocker’s saturated howl crackled over the speakers as the soles of my sandals tapped against the replicated red-checked linoleum. Petite floral arrangements in white and blush porcelain calves perched on each table (I spotted one gold outlier in the farthest corner of the snug space), and the original handwritten dinner menu, tattered under conservation glass above my table, included dishes like Filet de sole Grenobloise for $2.50.
An original menu hangs on the wall. Erica Chayes Wida
The Art Deco light fixtures, red vinyl booths and pint-sized bar; the faded oil painting of the iconic sleeping calf; the large mirror etched with the wine regions of France: everything was an echo of the past. The art display thinned out in this incarnation to allow the inlaid wood walls, one of the only salvageable components of the original build, to exhale warmth into the room. Many pieces, including the faux French street sign and a collection of black and white photos, had been there since the Benoits started Le Veau.
The coat closet was filled in under the stairs, and Tréboux’s upstairs office was transformed into a private dining room, but everything else looked the same, just refreshed and restored.
Within the hour, the cozy, U-shaped restaurant was packed. A group of women caught up quietly in the corner while friends in their 70s and 80s greeted fellow patrons as if they’d all been coming there every Tuesday for the past forty years. A couple arrived so elegantly dressed that it seemed athleisure never made its way north of 60th Street, as a man with a beard that screamed Brooklyn hipster ordered round after round for his table. By dessert, many patrons roared with glee, bumping into familiar faces from one table to the next.
I was seated at the center of the U-shaped restaurant, along the wall, which contained enough space for just two tables. The four-top had one outward-facing booth with no chairs, urging parties of two to sink into their courses—and one another—with an intimacy Parisians know best. For $125, the three-course menu delivered by chefsJeff Teller and Charles Izenstein had plenty of options: 16 appetizers (a few vegetarian), nine entrees (fish and meat), a salad for the table and seven desserts, including a cheese plate, Les Fromages Assortis. There were familiar dishes for the decades-long regulars, as well as some Frenchette-esque takes.
Pommes Soufflées Caviar Rouge à la Crème. Erica Chayes Wida
As many New Yorkers know, fine dining establishments with a who’s who reputation can sometimes take themselves a bit too seriously. Le Veau, refreshingly, does not. Remaining true to its history, dishes were inked on the menu in blue and red French without descriptions. The ebullient server, clad in a dusky pink chore coat, relished the opportunity to elaborate on any ingredient or cooking technique I requested. She remained as attentive in the mellower moments as she did with the bustling 7 p.m. crowd, and swept over at the same time as the maître d’ (Tréboux’s son) to pull the table out from its tight position when it was time for me to exit.
I began with a dry, deep white; one of two light colors available by the glass. To start, one classic was a must: the Pâté en Croûte. Guinea hen and duck provided a nutty, not overpowering profile balanced by the creamy, albeit gelatinous, aspic. A thin forkful of crust grounded each bite. The Pommes Soufflées Caviar Rouge à la Crème was presented a stack of airy potato vessels and a silver bowl of crème fraîche and trout roe. With each constructive crunch, I could hear the clap of inner satisfaction from some friturier who mastered the art of agitating oil. I made a mental note for a future reorder.
The Duck Magret aux Cerises, an entrée reviewed during Tréboux’s reign, was tender in a sharp vinegar sauce. Tart cherries touched by heat oozed a subtle sweetness that encouraged the crisp peppered skin to enliven a good cut of duck without much fuss. The summery Sea Scallop Rosace Sauce Vièrge was a wonderful addition to enduring selections such as Les Délices “Veau d’Or” Sauce Moutarde, Gigôt of Lamb and Onglet Frites. Thinly sliced, flame-kissed scallops on a bed of bright, briny vegetables spoke for themselves without the amplification of superfluous butter or spice.
Duck Magret aux Cerises. Erica Chayes Wida
For dessert, I relished an Île Flottante so light it would’ve floated off the gingham tablecloth, if not tethered to teardrop almond slivers and crème anglaise. Of all the dishes, my favorite— possibly informed by the oppressive 90-degree heat on this New York City summer night—was the Soupe de Melon. Orbs of watermelon, honeydew and cantaloupe floated like Monet’sWater Lilies amidst sorbet, blancmange and mint in a chilled melon soup. Following the precursor courses, it was an ethereal composition that was, if I may, la fin parfaite.
Did Nasr and Hanson call upon the culinary gods or Golden Calf herself to insist time forget, once again, this little Upper East Side bistro? Perhaps. But between the hum of patrons hugging from table to table and the balance of established, thoughtful French fare, I don’t think Le Veau d’Or will be seeing la fin anytime soon.
Irving Penn. ‘Hippie Family (Kelley),’ San Francisco, 1967. Platinum-palladium print. 16 5/8 × 14 3/16 in. (42.2 × 36 cm). The Irving Penn Foundation
The other day, Page Six dropped a gossip item about the pressure Anna Wintour faces over TikTok’s sponsorship of the Met Gala, in light of the app’s recent ban, and I thought about how hard it would be to explain all that to someone from the time when Vogue launched, at the turn of the last century. Technology aside, you’d have to explain that fashion has become perhaps the dominant form of culture, and that Vogue has become much more than a frivolity for Edith Warton-style ladies.
The photographer Irving Penn played no small part in the growth of the magazine, to which he contributed for six decades. He brought an artistic sensibility to a medium that wasn’t thought to be particularly high-minded. All of his career is celebrated at a new show that bears his name at the de Young Museum but was, in fact, organized by the Met. The exhibition brings together around 175 diverse works that showcase his range, showing his ability to capture blue-collar workers alongside Marlene Dietrich, audrey hepburn, Gianni Versace, Yves Saint Laurent, Truman Capote and Joan Didion.
There’s a dedicated section that taps into the local flavor with Penn’s photographs from the 1967 San Francisco Summer of Love. There are nude people hugging, the Hell’s Angels and of course, the Grateful Dead, and then a curious series on hippie parents and couples that stands out because it shrugs off obvious narratives about radicalism and promiscuity. You can tell much about a person by seeing their partner and the body language between them. These families all exude a great deal of love, and not necessarily the free kind. I’m sure the photos were a revelation at the time for the way they humanized these hippies. They might even manage to make you feel warm toward the baby boomers of today.
As for the celebrities, it is somewhat impressive that the same man photographed Marcel Duchamp and Nicole Kidman, but aren’t all of these big names known for their charisma? Penn really shows his muscles when he’s getting weird, as in his series of smoked cigarettes. Anyone can make Gisele look good, but luxuriating in the other kind of butt shows real talent. The catalogue draws wise parallels to Phillip Guston and Kurt Schwitters.
Also great are his abstract nudes from 1949 and 1950, a specific period during which he was obsessed with the tummies of headless women and how they change and move in various positions. Around the same time he would capture small trades like Steel Mill Firefighter (1951) and here too the body’s position is important. If you’re defined by your job and asked to fall into its muscle memory positions, you can’t help but notice the way some always seem to make you look happy, as in Butcher (1950). Pity the Coal Man (1950). If anyone ever captured the VoguePhotographer (1940s-2000s), he probably looked like he was having a blast.
“Irving Penn” is on view at the de Young Museum through July 21.
There is no photographer in history quite like Irving Penn. He built a bridge between commercial photography and fine art photography. He helped define the Vogue aesthetic and overwrote popular ideas about beauty with his trailblazing fashion photography. And he shot everything, from celebrities to still lifes, with the same thoughtful intensity. He’s arguably one of the top artists of the 20th Century, and his work is as relevant as ever.
It’s also the subject of a new exhibition at the de Young museum at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: a retrospective simply called “Irving Penn.” Roughly 175 images are on view, spanning every decade of the famous photographer’s storied and celebrated seventy-year career.
Installation view of “Irving Penn”, de Young, San Francisco, 2024. Photo by Gary Sexton. Image courtesy of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
The show starts with documentary scenes of New York from the late 1930s, when Penn first took up a camera and took his first amateur snaps, and then segues into his famed celebrity portraits and fashion photography. It also includes his vivid photos of counterculture featuring, among others, members of the Hells Angels and then-local rock band, the Grateful Dead. And his still-life photography is exceptional. My favorite photo of Penn’s is After-Dinner Games, New York, shot in 1947, with its playing cards, chess pieces and dice gathered artfully around a cup of coffee, or maybe Still Life with Watermelon, New York, also taken in 1947, which is composed with all the care of an Old Master painting.
If this all sounds familiar, that may be because “Irving Penn” first opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and has since traveled. The only West Coast showing of the retrospective adds a local bent. De Young visitors will see Penn’s shots from the Summer of Love in 1967, which chronicle bands, hippies, youth culture and activists who revolted against the Vietnam War. He was in the city on assignment from Look magazine and invited regular people into his studio, where he rolled down a concrete-colored backdrop and took beautifully honest portraits. He also photographed the experimental dance group San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop, led by founder and post-modern choreographer Anna Halprin.
Remember, Penn shot long before Photoshop could magically touch up our flaws. The perfection of his analog photos is in the light, the composition and the shadows. There are experimental shots, like the mouth covered in various shades of lipstick for L’Oreal taken in 1986, and of course, the portraits of iconic celebrities that take us back in time.
Standouts in the exhibition include stunning shots of Marlene Dietrich looking back in awe in New York, a smiling audrey hepburn shot in Paris, as well as images of Yves Saint Laurent, Truman Capote and Joan Didion. There are also photos of street vendors in Peru and several photos of Swedish muse, Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, who was Penn’s wife from 1950 to her death in 1992 and is widely considered the first supermodel. Some of the best photos in the show feel like photos of friends, from his portrait of the architect Le Corbusier from 1947 to shots of artists like Georgia O’Keefe and Pablo Picasso.
Looking back on his studio portraits, one only wishes one could go back and be a fly on the wall. Penn’s former assistant Robert Freson, who worked alongside the photographer for thirteen years, has described in detail how Penn approached portraiture. “He had his own method: very isolated in studios or sometimes on location,” Freson said in a 2022 interview at age 95. “It was just Penn, the subject and I. No unnecessary sounds. He would concentrate by speaking to them very peacefully while sitting on a high stool behind the camera.”
Conversation was apparently key to the photographer’s studio-based process and how he managed to capture such authenticity in his subjects.
“Penn knew all about the people he photographed and was able to lead the conversation to get people to react to him. Then he would photograph them. Once he established the circumstance to take the photograph, he would stay with it. At a certain point, he got through to the reality of the person behind the facade—and that moment is valid forever.”
“Irving Penn” is on view in the de Young museum’s Herbst Exhibition Galleries through July 21.
Along with her enduring legacies in film and style, Audrey Hepburn’s wedding dresses continue to influence sartorial perspectives and individual expression. Her cultural impact can also be traced to her on- and off-screen bridal style, most famously to the designs she wore over a 40-year friendship and collaboration with Hubert de Givenchy. At the forefront and creation of everlasting fashion trends, Hepburn even inspired the contemporary bridal fashion world to embrace the black-and-white wedding dress after she debuted a strapless embroidered organza Givenchy gown during a stunning party scene in 1954’s Sabrina.
“She is what people mean when they say they want to look ‘classic and timeless,’ or ‘elegant but no fuss,’” says Lily Kaizer, owner of luxury vintage wedding-dress salon Happy Isles.
The “Lucky” (Almost) Wedding Dress
While filming 1953’s Roman Holiday, Hepburn was engaged to English industrialist James Hanson. So she commissioned the Fontana sisters, who also collaborated with Edith Head on Hepburn’s costumes in the film, to design her wedding dress.
Elegant and pared-down, Hepburn’s first wedding dress offered a glimpse into a fashion icon’s definitive perspective: demure boatneck, long sleeves, and a playful high-low hemline. Ultimately, she called off the nuptials and asked the sisters to donate the design. “[I want the dress] to be worn by another girl for her wedding, perhaps someone who couldn’t ever afford a dress like mine—the most beautiful, poor Italian girl you can find,” the future UNICEF ambassador reportedly said.
Audrey Hepburn’s first wedding dress from the 2009 auction.By Tony Trasmundi/Courtesy of Kerry Taylor Auctions.
The couturiers found a recipient, Amiable Altobella, and invited her to their Rome atelier for alterations. “The whole experience must have been incredible for [Altobella and her fiancé],” says Kerry Taylor, founder of London-based Kerry Taylor Auctions, of the couple’s visit from the city of Latina.
“They had three daughters and five grandchildren. Amiable said, ‘I’ve had a happy marriage, so the dress brought me luck’ and that was very much the feeling when the dress was handed over,” says Taylor, who auctioned the dress in 2009 for $23,000. “The whole family felt such pride at having had something so special and so unique.”
The Balmain Wedding Dress
After a whirlwind romance, Hepburn married American actor Mel Ferrer on September 25, 1954, in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.
25th September 1954: Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer on their wedding day. Dress designed by Balmain. By Ernst Haas/Getty Images.
Like a certain once-beloved apricot exfoliator, skinny jeans seem to have developed a bad reputation. If you balked at clicking on this article, I get it. Skinny jeans seem downright passé compared to the other myriad of denim options on the market. But hear me out: Sleeping on this style may mean missing out on a highly versatile category of bottoms.
Think of Audrey Hepburn in a turtleneck and topknot. An effortless French woman like Emmanuelle Alt breezing past in a Breton-stripe top. Evergreen Itgirl Kate Moss slinking around London in yet another flawless outfit. What do these looks have in common? All three are anchored by black skinny jeans, cropped at the ankle. The look is equal parts sophisticated, chic, and cool.
