Around Town: Out Magazine’s 100 Celebration
The fashion world was well-represented at the Out 100 celebration on November 17, with Peter Som, Lorenzo Martone and Phillipe and David Blond among the guests at Skylight Soho.
Included in the 2011 list of 100 influential gays, lesbians, and allies were Brad Goreski, Nicola Formichetti and model Andrej Pejic, who appears as "Stylemaker of the Year" on one of the magazine’s four December covers.
Wearing a Jean Paul Gaultier pantsuit and upswept hair at the party, the androgynous Pejic said he was not nervous about posing naked with a snake for the Out Magazine shoot.
“I’m not scared of snakes, but it was so big that I was, like, oh my god, that’s intense,” he said. “But once they laid it on me, it was soft and warm.”
However, meeting Queen Elizabeth II last month was somewhat intimidating. “I definitely was a little bit nervous, I didn’t want to f**k up the ceremonial rules,” Pejic said, laughing.
We spotted Calvin Klein’s Italo Zucchelli at the bash, who is busy working on his upcoming menswear collection, showing in Milan in January. “We’re very excited, it’s going to be great, and I’m doing the last fittings,” he told FashionEtc.
Zucchelli is using work as a convenient excuse to head to Italy. “Actually, this year, I want to avoid overeating, so I’m going for a fitting to Milan on Monday, and I’m going to—on purpose—stay until Thursday so I bypass Thanksgiving and I don’t overeat,” he explained.
Why skip the turkey? “Because I didn’t work out for two months. My trainer moved to San Francisco and I just realized that I gained a little bit of weight again, and I’m devastated,” the designer said. Can’t he exercise without his trainer? “I can, but I didn’t,” he said, sheepishly. (Designers are just like us!)
The other three Out cover models are Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson, comic Kathy Griffin, and Oscar-nominated writer and activist Larry Kramer.
All four covers were shot in homage to classic Vogue covers from the 1960s. “I got a chance to be a Vogue model!” Griffin quipped. 76-year-old Kramer said of the Out photo shoot,” I’m so much older than all the rest of them, I felt like everybody’s grandfather. To be with young people again was great fun.”
Designer Joseph Altuzarra made an appearance at the Out 100 party, at the same venue where earlier in the week he won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award. During pre-awards cocktails at the November 14 event, Altuzarra said that just being a finalist was an honor. “It obviously would mean a lot to win, because the mentorship is great, and, you know, you have to be honest, the money would help, but I think you’re also just happy to be part of the 10 finalists, and to be part of this kind of, like, a summer camp.”
Indeed, CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg confirmed that being a CFDA/Vogue Fund finalist is a huge break for up-and-coming designers.
“It’s a big deal, it really is, because your life changes,” she said. “But your life changes ... if you are a finalist, whether you win or not. So it’s a big deal. It really is, and you can see what happened to most of these people,” she said, gesturing around the room full of former CFDA finalists. “We have an amazing record, you know.”