In Search of Hip Hangouts
The international fashion crowd doesn’t travel all the way here to hide in hotel rooms at day’s end. When the last corset is loosened from some model’s 19-inch waist, the scramble’s on to find the hippest hangout.
It’s a tricky business. Do you settle for supper at an anonymous bistro with perfectly lovely colleagues? Or hold out for an invitation to one of the city’s hot spots? We mulled that one over for about 30 seconds.
Call us superficial, but darn it, the duck at Dave, the grooviest Chinese restaurant in town, tastes better when you’re in the company of Clint Eastwood’s daughter, model Allison Eastwood, and her handsome photographer boyfriend. And when the love-struck couple showed us their matching tattoos, well, please pass the plum sauce!
Allison, a tall blond with a turned-up nose and unweathered skin, made her runway debut at the start of the spring shows last week. With the help of a backstage walking coach, she didn’t fall once (which is more than can be said of Claudia Schiffer in her inauspicious debut).
Over at a corner table, designer Helmut Lang hosted a post-show gathering of models and photographers, while holding court at a banquet-size table opposite were L.A. attorney Jack Quinn and his well-connected wife, Joan (Chatter magazine), who shared platters with Paris-based modeling agency owner Marilyn Gauthier.
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Celebrity Model Score Card: MTV’s resident right-wing sex pistol, Kennedy, so enchanted designer Jean Paul Gaultier during a recent meeting that he invited her to model in his show. We suspect the designer was impressed with Kennedy’s skillful handling of the microphone at the recent MTV Music Awards. We certainly were. At any rate, Gaultier flew in Kennedy and her mother (face it, the girl needs a chaperon).
Kennedy looked amazingly great when she hit the runway, but she undercut the effect by stumbling and joking her way down the catwalk.
But the Friday show’s biggest draw was Gaultier fan extraordinaire Madonna. We adore her but had to agree with ruthless observers who declared her “stocky.” She appeared last, in the post-bride position, dressed in a see-through gown and pushing a carriage. The “baby” was--surprise!--a little white-haired doggy. Get it?
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Instead of Pastrami, Cassoulet: Billed as the gathering spot for the most beautiful women in Paris and the local intelligentsia, La Coupole looked to our untutored eye more like Canter’s on a Saturday night. If, that is, Picasso, Chagall and Brancusi had gussied up the place. And if Fellini had cast the parts of the diners.
Well, perhaps he had. Midway through our steak frite, Zsa Zsa Gabor and her husband, the Prince, appeared at our table. “You know, darling,” she said, “I’m leaving for Hungary tomorrow to make a film.” Then she opened up her tres chic corduroy jacket to show off a stylish gauzy black dress. “These are all from London,” she said, as if someone had actually asked.
