Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler [Patrickmcmullan.com]

"I met the boys who were sweet, eager, goofy, charismatic, and not much older than many of you in this room.” Cathy Horyn began, "Later I visited the boys in their studio in Chinatown." She was, of course, referring to Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the dynamic designing duo behind Proenza Schouler. The two were honored Wednesday evening in a spectacular dinner put on by Jack and Lazaro's alma mater, Parsons The New School for Design, which was capped off with an hour-long runway presentation of 49 finalist student collections from the prestigious school.

Editors, buyers, best friends, and even former professors came to show their support for Jack and Lazaro, so we asked each of them to describe Proenza Schouler in just one word. This proved to be a daunting task for many. Cathy Horyn took more than five minutes to contemplate, and designer Catherine Malandrino's replied with a lovely, accented "Non! Not possible!" The array of answers showcase the brand's quick rise to fame, it's constant evolution, and even the designers' good looks. Here's what we heard...

Simon Collins, Dean of Fashion: "Outstanding"
Joel Towers, Executive Dean of Parsons: "Brilliant"
Reed Krakoff: "Talented"
Beth Rudin de Woody: "Bagalicious"
Julie Gilhart: "Love"
Jenné Lombardo (right before she pinched Jack & Lazaro's derrieres): "Hot! They're guys I've been wanting to sleep with forever!"
Prabal Gurung: "Brilliant"
Leila Rose: "Downtown"
Christian Siriano: "Modern"
Cathy Horyn: "Progressive."
Nicole Phelps: "Crafty"
Narcisco Rodriguez: "Amazing!"
Sophia Lamar: "Dynamic"

“[The Met] was a change of pace,” says Rockefeller, “but it was really fun to see how people interpret very tangible themes. Punk is so tangible, so there was such a range of interpretation.” And while she didn’t have a favorite look of the night, she democratically admitted, “Some chose to march to the beat of their own drum, some chose to take it quite literally.”

One of our favorite looks of the night was certainly Indre’s color-blocked gown by Spanish designer Delpozo, who she regularly supports. She also wore a full Delpozo fall look to the polo match too.

So, what’s in store for Moda Operandi? The team of blonde beauties are obviously not strangers to worlds of business or fashion. Indre herself has a pedigree that includes a former position as Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief of Vogue (Yes, that Editor-in-Chief, Anna Wintour), and a degree from Stanford Business School. “In terms of partnerships in the works,” she told SCENE, “we are focusing on expanding our relationships with brands including offline events and launching exclusive collections.” We can’t wait to see.

David Stark

Last Tuesday night, on the seventh floor of Bergdorf Goodman, NYC’s leading event designer David Stark not only launched his new book, The Art of the Party, but also launched his signature paper décor line, sold exclusively at Bergdorf Goodman. Linda Fargo, Lizzie Tisch and other guests sipped cocktails and enjoyed the sounds of Avalon Jazz Band while getting their copies of The Art of the Party signed. Stark is one of the most sought-after event designers in the country, having designed for the Whitney Museum, the Joyful Heart Foundation and the Metropolitan Opera. The CEO and President of David Stark Design and Production talked to SCENE about his new line, new book, and what he has up his sleeve for the rest of the year.

You’re releasing your fifth book, The Art of the Party, which focuses more on the process of your events instead of the final product. How did you come up with this focus after having four books published?
You know, I always say to our clients, “Of course, the party needs to be special, fabulous, fun, exciting – all of the things that a party needs to be and more, but the journey to get there is just as important as the end product.” We take the service aspect of what we do at David Stark Design really seriously, and the photos show just how rousing, and action-packed a team sport event preparation really is.

What has been the biggest challenge for you when it comes to the publishing industry? 
Now that is a loaded question! Sure, the reality is that the digital world is giving the bookstore a really good run for its money, but I still believe that there will always be great love for a beautiful book, the object of a book.

You are also launching a signature paper décor line exclusively at Bergdorf Goodman. How did you decide to partner with them? 
I have long been a fan of EVERYTHING that Bergdorf Goodman stands for. From their mind-blowing window displays that have long been an inspiration to me, to the stores’ embrace of forward thinking design. The 7^th floor has always showcased exquisite, hand-made art pieces and I am honored to be included within that roster.

How did you develop the concept for this line? 
We started making hand-made, paper pieces as décor elements for events a couple of years back. The guests and our clients were so taken by them that requests poured in for us to create more works independent from the events we design. We’re excited to share the new pieces, making them available exclusively through Bergdorf Goodman.

At what type of event do you suggest New Yorkers to use the Paper Tale pieces? 
The pieces make wonderful displays on buffet tables, on fireplace mantles and sideboards for parties at home–they are wonderful conversation starters! The smaller pieces even make wonderful centerpieces on dining tables. I am excited because they all contain the charm, surprise, and magic that appeal to children, but they are so exquisitely made with the finest craftsmanship that they are serious adult statements too. It’s wonderful to own art pieces that can enhance your home and world every day but provide built-in décor for your next party.

What are three things every aspiring designer/artist in New York City needs?
Passion, fortitude, and commitment. New York is a wonderful place, but a hard place. If you work really, really hard and give your dream your ALL, you can totally make magic. There are so many artists who are the New York dream that have spurred me on over the years. They are the examples that everything is possible and more.

What do you have up your sleeve for the rest of the year? 
We have amazing event projects we are working on–from very special weddings to product launches and Museum galas, and I am getting my toes wet creating a collection of ceramic tableware. Knock on wood, that all works out, as that would be really GREAT fun.

Click to view slideshow.

Kate Moss for St. Tropez

It comes as no surprise that Kate Moss is announced as St. Tropez's er the ultimate self-tanner's new face—and body. The beauty, and the product make being in-the-nude fashion's hottest trend.

What products did Moss use to achieve her glow, you ask? St.Tropez Self Tan Bronzing Mousse applied with St.Tropez Applicator Mitt for a streak-free and natural look. Followed by contouring with the Powder Bronzer! Consider this your friendly reminder that Memorial Day is two weeks away! You're welcome.

Rogue & Canon

What does it take to get a drink in this town? Just good taste and some insider knowledge, if Rogue & Canon co-owners Johnny Swet and Larry Poston have something to say about it. Together, the pair has opened two venues this year: the swanky Cole’s in Greenwich Village and its more rugged older brother, Rogue & Canon.
Everything about Rogue & Canon, the West Houston bar and restaurant, is an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting’s nightmare: the room’s biggest attraction is a long, winding mahogany bar topped with shelf after shelf of seemingly never-ending liquor. A warm amber glow permeates the entire room, putting patrons into a warm, fuzzy lull. And the menu tempts with a tongue-twisting litany of cocktails, like the Midnight Train to Georgia and the Slow & Low.
“We have six different kinds of Bloody Marys,” boasts Poston of the restaurant’s growingly popular weekend brunch. But the real brains behind the boozy madness is Johnny Swet, who is known in the industry for his focus on mixology; something he brought to another one of his projects with Poston, the rooftop bar JIMMY at The James Hotel.
“I tend to the bar program and all the consulting stuff,” Swet, a friendly, yet slightly quiet, bearded fellow says of his part of Rogue & Canon. “I stay in my wheelhouse; I do what I do.”
Meanwhile, Poston, who met Swet when the two worked together at Pastis in 2000, is a natural born entertainer. “I was a maître’d for a really long time, so one of the things I do is the social aspect,” he explains.
There’s no need to start planning now to get a table for next year; Rogue & Canon’s seating policy is as relaxed as its atmosphere, which encompasses an upscale bar scene, decorated personally by the owners with hand-picked photographs and paintings, and exposed brick walls.
“For the most part, walk on in,” instructs Poston. “It seems to work.” That doesn’t mean you might not want to call ahead—just to be on the safe side.
“We have a nice happy hour right after work, then we get a lull, but then we get a nice little buzz around 8 or 9, then get another hit around 11,” explains Swet.
As for who’s strolling in to browse the brews, the co-owners said it’s a wide range of just about everyone, with some familiar faces thrown in. “We’ve grown a bit of a following,” says Poston, who also worked at the Waverly Inn and Balthazar before venturing out on his own.
“You have all different people,” says Swet, a Freemans veteran. “You have the people who have been here for 20 years to young couples to students to New York Rangers.”
The biggest surprise to some isn’t a guaranteed good cocktail; it is the food that comes with it. “The food I think is the surprise, because the bar gets all the attention,” says Poston, mentioning the Hangover Lo Mein served in a Chinese take-out box as a fan-favorite. Another dish worth name-checking: the Rogue Burger, served with peanut butter and crispy pork belly.
While both owners juggle Rogue & Canon with their other properties, it’s Swet who spends the most time on location. And like him, he feels the restaurant and bar is just one more option for their clients to choose from.
“I think it’s just what you feel for that night as a New Yorker,” he says about the differences in his venues. “I’m all different things.” And aren’t we all?

Click to view slideshow.

If you are like us, then you know what a bad case of the winter blues can do to a Scenester. With Spring teasing us with its fickle weather, now more than ever, we need an extra dose of vitamin D before we officially kick off the summer. After all, there's nothing like being the first to hit the beach with a perfectly sun-kissed tan and being a source of envy to all those winter-pale sunbathers.

Eric Fischl, Self Portrait: An Unfinished Work, 2011

Why now? Was this memoir something you’d always wanted to do? I had no intention of writing this. I play tennis with Michael Stone [who co-wrote the book] and he wanted to write something about CalArts, exploring the preponderance of young precocious people who show up at one place at one time. He interviewed a lot of artists, but didn’t know a lot about art so he came to me with questions. I kind of laid it out and we got deeper into it, going into the creative process. When his publisher said we should focus on just one artist, we made it more personal and it turned into a memoir. But if [Stone] had approached me at first to tell me he wanted me to do a memoir with him, I would have said no.

Who is bad boy’s intended audience? The focus of the book is to give people a window into the creative process, to demystify things that are falsely obscure and over-romanticized. People say they don’t know anything about art because they can’t draw a line—I wanted to reach out to that population as well as art students who will go on to become professionals. I wanted to shed light on the external pressure of making art and the professional aspect to it.

You take a couple stabs at some of your contemporaries, calling Damien Hirst “shallow” and Jeff Koons’ work as “all smoke in mirrors.” Yes, I guess I probably am burning bridges here. But they are the most public examples of something I’m criticizing, which is their approach to art and marketing. They are the greatest examples and greatest targets.

What about their approach do you take issue with? I don’t know where to start! There’s a lot I find fault with. Aesthetically, Jeff Koons’ objects aren’t compelling—they stand in for an experience that isn’t coming from the object. There is a literalness to it that is devoid to what I value more, which is empathetic and transcendent experience. They are not objects to empathize with. You don’t trade spaces with the work; the objects are not to reflect on, but to reflect by. It’s a very decadent kind of thing. The scale of production is also an example to which it is consumable and can be manufactured. Damian Hirst’s dot paintings are as dumb as they get. He produces them by the truckload and people buy them. And why? They are about the emptiness of art. It’s not that it’s not right, it’s just incredibly depressing. We are way too polite. Artists make art out of profound belief of something, so lets make it seem like it matters. In fact, the most difficult part of writing the book is becoming public in that way. I have already been dealing publicly with my biographical past life and so it was easy to go into that again.

You talk about how professionalism and the high stakes of sales changed the art world in the 80s, turning artists into rock stars. Do you think the art world has changed much since then? These days the institutions and galleries are less important, art fairs are more important. Short term, short hit, sensational aspect. That’s how people buy art nowadays—buy it fast and it doesn’t even leave their storage warehouse before they sell it off again

Go to the next page for an excerpt from Fischl’s memoir, Bad Boy: My Life on and Off the Canvas.

Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas, By Eric Fischl and Michael Stone

Chapter 9, from BAD BOY: MY LIFE ON AND OFF THE CANVAS

I finished Bad Boy in 1981 and showed it the following spring at Ed Thorp’s, where it made a splash with critics and the public alike. But I didn’t stick around for the fallout. Exhausted from the effort of putting up a show, I took off to Europe with April, landing first in Venice. Later on we discovered St. Tropez.
We’d been driving around northern Italy, making our way along the coast to Aix-en-Provence, which April was eager to show to me.
We stopped over in Ramatuelle, a pretty village outside St. Tropez, where an art dealer I knew had invited us to visit with his family. They introduced us to the beach life there, and we fell in love with it.
We also fell in love with their home, a beautifully restored villa, parts of which dated to the eleventh century, with a walled-in courtyard and a gorgeous magnolia tree. Over the course of the next several summers, we rented it in exchange for drawings.

After leaving St. Tropez, we drove to Aix. But since April’s last visit, the town had been overrun by condos and suburban sprawl, so we quickly headed back to St. Tropez. There our lives settled into a cozy routine, one that we would repeat over the next nine years. Mornings tended to be lazy. After late coffee, there was tennis and going to market, and around noon we’d hit the beach. It was six weeks during which April and I could be alone with each other, rediscover each other and what we were thinking. We hardly saw anyone else—1983 was still precomputer and precell—and didn’t give out our phone number.
That time of year—May to June—the beach was never crowded, but there were always enough people around to make things interesting. Surrounded by unclad sunbathers, armed with my little camera, I would shoot picture after picture as the people lolled and gabbed, read and slathered sunscreen. My camera was so innocuous, they paid little attention to me. Even if they caught me photographing them, they almost never expressed concern or disapproval, perhaps because the French are inherently exhibitionistic/voyeuristic.
The beach was a revelation. Had I not experienced it, I would never have thought to paint it. We’d go every day. April would read, we’d talk, and I would photograph. I never questioned why someone doing something unusual held me spellbound. I trusted my instincts and just took the photo. Back in my studio, months and even years later, as I went through the photographs, I would become once again entranced by that gesture. What photography did for me was capture the body in motion. I wasn’t interested in big motions like running or jumping, but small gestures like someone shifting their weight or leaning forward. These small movements were the trigger for narratives. This woman twisting and bending was longing for something. This man turning away was afraid. And because these beachgoers were unself-conscious and unaware of being watched, their body language often betrayed how uncomfortable they were with their physicality. I often felt that I was witnessing minidramas between the body and the soul, the inside and the outside, being played out at that interface where skin touches the air and light.
What St. Tropez gave me was a way of painting people, of viewing their bodies as a currency of exchange—the dynamic relations that take place between people at the most basic, physical level. Naked, stripped of social indicators, they revealed attitudes and intentions hidden from everyday cosmopolitan life. I felt as if I’d stumbled into a primitive fantasy world, my Tahiti.
At other times, though, their naturalness seemed incredibly false. Their nudity struck me as so brazen and inappropriate, it felt forced, even farcical. And later, as our vacation wore on, tourists, mainly Americans—loud, obnoxious “garmentos” in their cowboy hats and bling—added another layer of artificiality and hedonism to the scene. I felt as if I was at the circus. Degas, Beckmann, and Goya had haunted places like this—carnivals, dance halls, cabarets, fantastic settings where the normal mores of society were suspended—and made paintings full of parody and pathos. It was incredibly stimulating for me.
April and I tried different beaches, but we always returned to La Voile Rouge. I loved the red-and-white color scheme of the umbrellas and matelas. I also liked the music, much of it a kind of pop-flamenco provided by the Gipsy Kings, whom we met and befriended. The group, which would become an international success in the late eighties, was then playing weddings and parties, and sometimes serenading tourists on the local beaches. April and I brought them to New York and tried to introduce them to the music scene. But the trip was a flop. Either our timing was off or our music connections weren’t very good. But we did spend one memorable day with them at a church in Brooklyn—the Kings wanted to hear gospel music—where we witnessed a spiritual rite of passage that would influence much of my later work. More about that later.
Meanwhile, the experience of being on a beach in St. Tropez and seeing nude men and women interacting socially was both an inspiration and an assault on my puritanical American background. I had mixed feelings about what I was witnessing: the confrontation with what was taboo, the absurdity of the taboo, and the absurdity of the scene itself. Seeing naked people behaving as though they were clothed had an undeniable element of comedy to it. There was also a racial element to it. You had these African men combing the beach, hawking baubles and approaching wealthy, fancy white women lying naked in the sun. As the men crouched down close to them to show their wares, their proximity created an uncomfortable tension with the husbands or boyfriends and even me. It’s one thing to be naked on the beach with your wife. But the dynamic becomes different, more complicated, because of how Americans have mythologized the potency of black men. Later, when I painted these kinds of scenes, I thought I was capturing something that was particularly French or European, the way the foreign eye of David Hockney had captured Los Angeles.
But what it made me realize was that I’m an American wherever I go. I’m not particularly worldly or sophisticated. Though I’d painted many of my subjects naked and grown up in a house with parents who often went around without their clothes, I was shocked by my first visit to a topless beach. My mother’s nakedness had made me uneasy. And I’d used nakedness in my paintings to highlight psycho- logical stress. It was very different from the open feeling the French were expressing. They undressed to unwind, to free themselves from the constraints and conventions of everyday life. The only person who was self-conscious was me. I was the one responding to their naked- ness with a mixture of irony, titillation, and disapproval.
I tried to capture this in St. Tropez, a large square canvas I painted when I returned to New York in the fall. The picture looks like a typical beach scene. Set against a rectangle of sky, a sliver of sea, and a broad expanse of white sand dotted with orange parasols, a chic blond woman in her thirties lounges in the foreground, her naked body propped up on one elbow and torqued at an unnatural angle. Standing behind the woman, a naked pubescent girl—likely the woman’s daughter—and a tall, whippet-thin black man form a shadowy triangle with her.
The picture is trying to locate the blurry line between the private and public spheres, the natural and the artificial, the prurient and the appropriate. Though nothing much seems to be happening, the scene radiates a kind of inner tension for me. Both the child and the black man are looking at the back of the woman and she is oblivious to them both. Holding a bottle of suntan oil, her face hidden behind sunglasses, she gazes at something outside the picture frame. The girl smiles boldly but it’s a forced, precocious gaiety. Her posture betrays the anxiety of her age—she’s on the brink of becoming a woman— and she fusses with her ears, adjusting, it seems, a pair of earrings. The man—possibly an attendant or the woman’s lover or merely a stranger—is the most disconnected of the three. Clad in a sarong— he’s the only one in the picture wearing clothes—he’s turned his body away from the others and placed his hands on his hips.
Despite the festive setting, this is not a jolly or even a relaxed group. (Several characters in the background—a solitary jogger, a reader, a woman unpacking her bag—mirror the principals’ isolation.) No one is rollicking through paradise here. No one is luxuriating in—or even noticing—the natural beauty of the seaside. The people in St. Tropez may be naked, but they’re not free. They’re acting according to social codes as well-ordered as the rows of evenly spaced beach umbrellas.

Eric Fischl, St. Tropez, 1982

After the success of the Bad Boy show at Ed Thorp’s gallery in 1982, I could no longer ignore the upswing to my career. Increasingly I saw my name included in articles about where the art scene was headed. What’s more, my paintings were in demand by name dealers and collectors alike. From 1982 to 1983, I had one-man shows slated for Sable-Castelli in Toronto, Saidye Bronfman in Montreal, Larry Gagosian in Los Angeles, Mario Diacono in Rome, Marian Goodman in New York, and Nigel Greenwood in London; and I was invited to exhibit in group shows at P.S. 1, the Whitney, and Sidney Janis’s tony gallery on Manhattan’s Fifty-Seventh Street.
Around the time of the Bad Boy show, I ran into Jean-Christophe Ammann walking through SoHo. I hadn’t seen him since that fateful studio visit two years before. We stopped to talk and after the usual exchange of pleasantries, the conversation turned to my work. He told me he’d seen my new paintings and that he’d had time to think about what I’d been trying to do. “I misjudged [your old paintings],” he said. “I just hadn’t been able to see it at the time.”
It was one of the most gratifying moments of my career. The Sleepwalker show in 1980 had been a hit, and Bad Boy was a home run in terms of the reception it got. There was certainly a lot of positive energy coming out of those first two shows. But success felt uncomfortable to me. Perhaps that discomfort was a form of self-preservation, a way of countering my manic sense of hubris and guilt, the dark side of my competitiveness. All I know is that rather than creating a sense of elation, my success stirred up old fears and insecurities in me. I didn’t really believe I deserved the rewards I was suddenly getting.
But those feelings did nothing to curb my ambition. After the Bad Boy show, I went in search of a new gallery, one that had the prestige and resources to carry me to the next level. I wanted to be seen as one of the artists creating the conversation of the eighties. I felt there were two galleries associated with the best of my generation. One was Metro Pictures, started by Helene Winer and Janelle Reiring, and the other was Mary Boone’s. Metro was mostly showing conceptualist artists, many of them women. Mary had the male painters.
I asked David Salle to intercede on my behalf. In early 1983, David brought Mary to my small Reade Street studio to meet with me and to view my current work. But she didn’t love the paintings I had up, and the tensions that are a part of almost any studio visit— the mutual expectations of artist and dealer, the desire of the artist to please, the dealer to respond, especially when the artist is friends with other artists already at the gallery—made Mary wary. She left on an inconclusive note.

That spring the eminent Spanish curator Carmen Jimenez put up Tendencias en Nueva York, an exhibition in Madrid featuring what she believed to be a new wave of American art. David, Julian, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Susan Rothenberg, Bryan Hunt, and I were among the nine painters and sculptors invited to show. April did not join me on this trip. She felt hurt that she hadn’t been asked to be a part of the show, and has never been comfortable as a tag- along. As soon as I touched down at Madrid-Barajas Airport, though, I regretted that April hadn’t come. This was no ordinary event. The show’s organizers had not only flown us first-class and installed us at the Palace, the city’s poshest hotel, but they’d also arranged a series of receptions, dinners, and entertainments worthy of a state visit. Our little downtown art scene had suddenly become an international phenomenon.
One of the highlights of the trip was meeting Bryan Hunt. Roughly my age, Bryan exploded on the New York art scene in the late seventies. Linked to a group of artists who were exploring sculpture and illusion, he manipulated materials to create images like bronze waterfalls and lakes. I’d seen and admired his work in gallery shows and at a recent Whitney Biennial.
Bryan had a reputation as a wild man—hard-drinking, outspoken, combative, larger than life. I remember hearing about him at the Odeon, where he’d had dustups with Richard Serra and Larry Gagosian. What I didn’t know was how much fun he could be.
At the opening dinner in Madrid, our hosts treated us to an exhibition of flamenco—an incredible show, in the middle of which Bryan, stoned and inspired, got up onstage and started dancing, delighting the Americans present but horrifying our Spanish hosts. Not knowing Bryan, they felt he was parodying the other performers. In fact, he was only trying to show his appreciation. But it ended the evening’s entertainment abruptly.
A group of us left together and decided to hit the clubs. Bryan was really feeling it now and wanted to continue dancing. It took some time to hail a cab, and by the time we did, Bryan had already become a legend among Madrid’s demimonde. Our cabbie asked if Bryan wasn’t the famous American flamenco dancer.
Spain was in the midst of a renaissance. Franco was dead. People were waking from a nightmare of repression and backwardness, reaching out from their forced isolation. Their economy was growing and the energy of their youth was driving the country into the future. They were eager to connect to the outside world through the arts, as well as to showcase their artists’ fresh voices of liberation.
All the artists were feted for four days straight. The Spanish live their lives according to a schedule unlike anywhere else I’ve been. Stores open at eight a.m. and close at noon for lunch and siesta, then reopen at four p.m. and close at eight p.m. Dinner doesn’t begin before ten, and more often midnight. The day ends around four in the morning. When you add to this the generous amounts of cocaine that were handed out to us during our stay, we slept very little and ran around Madrid with a manic high.
On our last night in Madrid, a grand party was held in our honor at a private home on the outskirts of the city. Our host was a prominent commodities trader rumored to be a partner of the American tax evader Mark Rich. A fleet of limos picked us up at our hotel and ferried us to a gated enclave. The property was completely enclosed within high brick walls punctuated by lookout towers. Armed guards patrolled the perimeter, carrying machine guns.
When we arrived, our names were checked against a list and our car scanned for bombs. Finally the gates parted and we drove up a long road to a contemporary house filled with steel and glass. A glass igloo sculpture by the Italian artist Mario Merz stood in the middle of the driveway.
Our host had a penchant for exhibiting his art collection in un- usual places. He’d stuck a huge steel Richard Serra sculpture in the middle of a tennis court and placed a large photo collage by the British duo Gilbert and George on a wall obscured by a steel beam. With seeming disregard for its structural integrity, he’d cut holes in the beam so that viewers could see more of the piece. Encouraged to explore the house, I stumbled into the spa; just outside a steam-room door hung an El Greco. Later I found a sublime Giorgio Morandi still life mounted to the inside of a closet.
The party itself was surreal. A glamorous crowd milled around— some dancing, others naked. The waiters carried trays of champagne and offered guests a choice of cocaine or heroin. I was never formally introduced to our host, but from time to time a short, thin man in a silk smoking jacket would sidle up to me and ask if I needed any- thing more. The way he said “more” made me curious what he could possibly have in mind.
I am sure there was some lesson to be taken from the scene. Commerce corrupts art, or corrupt commerce corrupts art absolutely. But whenever I ran into Bryan and the other American artists we would start laughing, enjoying the thrill of our new success. We were on a joy ride, and the world was putting on a show for us.
And there was another sensation, one I didn’t identify at the time: the queasy exhilaration and shared intimacy of a group losing its innocence. Maybe it was the guns or the audacity of the money and trinkets and drugs showered on us, but you can’t rub shoulders with that kind of lifestyle, I realized later, without some of it rubbing off on you.

Adapted from BAD BOY: MY LIFE ON AND OFF THE CANVAS
Copyright © 2013 by Eric Fischl. Written with Michael Stone. Published by Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc.

In what seems like a love affair with nostalgia, the social scene having been bitten by Jazz Age fever, the annual Whitney Art Party, held at Skylight at Moynihan Station, brought us right back to 2013. This rite of spring, always the nexus of art, fashion and entertainment, did not disappoint.

Sponsored by Max Mara and Belvedere Vodka, and hosted by honorary co-chairs Maria Giulia Maramotti, Hannah Bronfman, and Nichole Galicia, event co-chairs Mark Amadei, Jessica Gersh, and Maureen Nash, the Whitney’s Alice Pratt Brown Director Adam D. Weinberg and the Whitney Contemporaries, The Whitney Art Party drew NYCs career scenesters for a fun night of bidding, drinking and dancing.  With the area around the Skylight deadlocked after the Knicks upset – Jon Neidich sporting a jersey under his blazer to show his support – the brightly projected lights of the Whitney Party was the North Star to the cool kids in what is usually the after 9pm no-man’s land of midtown. The real question is, “Who wasn’t there?”

Well, Olivia Wilde, Adam Driver, Lake Bell, Hanneli Mustaparta, Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, Ambra Medda, Damian Kulash, Giovanna Battaglia, Rebecca Minkoff, Ashley Platt, Anastasia Rogers, Jon Neidich, Laura de Gunzburg, Lauren Remington Platt, Pippa Cohen, Lauren Bosworth, Urs Fischer, Nur Kahn, Jourdan Dunn, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Kyle DeWoody, Joann Pailey, Henry Joost, Leandra Medine, Olivia Sandelman, Francesca DiMattio, Michael Avedon, Nathalie Joos, Arden Wohl, Eric Cahan, Samira Nasr, Athena Calderone, Erin Wasson, LouLou Roberts, Nicole Trunfio, Karla Martinez, Scott Campbell, Lola Montes Schnabel, Melanie Berliet, Jeisa Chiminazzo, Amy Globus, Nina Freudenberger, Andrea Mary Marshall, Jane Keltner de Valle, Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo, to name a few.

While I debated over a starting bid to a beautiful black enamel covered vintage jewelry piece by Dzine, a mini crunk contest between a Harper’s editor and a PR boy erupted on the dance floor – DJ Brendan Fallis is just that good. Known to hold her own at a party, Erin Wasson broke it down in the VIP Lounge during Harley Viera-Newton’s set. It was that kind of night.

The Whitney consistently supports and highlights up and coming artists in the most innovative ways, and last night was no exception. In what is easily the spring of Gatsby, the Whitney definitely stood out, and raised $450,000 doing it! Not bad.

Kate Moss and Johnny Depp, back in the day [Getty Images]

Café Tabac, which opened in 1992, first caught on with mannequins like Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell, who discovered the East Village brownstone. Where top models go, men follow: soon rock stars and moguls were on the trail and the bi-level space with an upstairs pool table was serving a French influenced American menu to everyone from Madonna and Bono to Ed Koch. Mario Batali, who was the restaurant’s second chef, didn’t stay too long because diners barely noticed the food as they sat close by Dolly Parton eating with Calvin Klein, Barbra Streisand and Farrah Fawcett flirting with their dates, Mick Jagger deep in conversation with daughter Karas as Michael Jordan walked over and high-fived him. Models would strut through the room and musicians would bring their tapes fresh from the studio to test out on the crowd: sometimes the tunes, a mix of rock and hip hop, got a little loud. If a customer complained, owner Roy Liebenthal would smirk and ask “What did you say?’’

He rarely played by the rules, but the mix was magic almost every night, and he didn’t mind a little bit of mayhem. When Madonna craved sushi, he let her order it in. When his manager, Tim Moore, and two waiters tried on Streisand’s fur coat, posed and took pictures of each other doing their best impersonations, while she dined unsuspecting, he laughed along with them. Moore charmed people as they waited patiently for a seat in the packed dining room, and quickly got to know everyone in New York.

“It was more about music and fashion than food: I did everything wrong, but it worked,’’ recalls Liebenthal. It certainly did. Where else could you walk in and see Keith Richards shooting pool or Bono singing acapella with Paul Simon when the speakers blew?

There were nights when Tabac set the stage for private events. Bridget Hall celebrated her deal with Ralph Lauren (the designer’s crew was not thrilled that she showed up wearing head to toe Calvin Klein); Jon Bonjovi helped throw a birthday party there for photographer Herb Ritts, and Madonna teamed with PR guru Kelly Cutrone to toss a birthday bash for Truth or Dare director Alec Kesheshian.

“Café Tabac had the feeling of a community; you could go by yourself and know you would run into friends,’’ says Jason Weinberg, who was Cutrone’s partner at the time, and is now president of Untitled, the agency that manages Naomi Watts and Penelope Cruz, among others. “If you showed up at 10, it was still going strong. People who normally had their guards up, let them down. It felt like a safe haven and everyone table-hopped. You could be sitting with someone like David Lee Roth and the table would just grow as people joined the conversation and pulled up chairs.’’

While regulars ran into old friends, new relationships were also formed at Tabac. Peter Brant, who dined there regularly with Robert De Niro and Tony Shafrazi, met wife Stephanie Seymour, and the romance between Johnny Depp and Kate Moss was first sparked at the bar one evening. Of course, there were those moments you would run into people you didn’t necessarily want to see. “Everyone stopped into Tabac, including my ex husband,’’ says Cutrone. “It was the first time I got to exercise my restraining order against him by calling the police and having him escorted out.”

Café Tabac lasted seven years, finally shuttering in 1998, but Liebenthal says people still approach him to say it was their favorite restaurant of all time, and two women just contacted him because they are making a film about it.

“Tabac was about the crowd,’’ says Liebenthal. “It was a moment in time with so many memories: unfortunately I smoked a lot of pot then, so many of them are lost.’’

Andrew Flesher (photography by Susan Gilmore)

What made you decide to pursue a career as an interior designer? I always thought I’d be an architect. When I was in grade school and other kids were outside playing, I was drawing houses on graph paper. I spent four years in college at the University of Minnesota studying it, but eventually found my way to interior design. Interiors felt more creative to me and less about physics. However, my architectural background strengthens my skills as an interior designer. I believe an excellent interior starts with an excellent shell. That’s how I approach every project: from the walls, in.

How would you describe your interior design style? It’s hard to put a label on my style because I like so many different things, and often times the direction of the project is driven by the client and their needs. If I had to use four words to describe my aesthetic, they would be: tailored, classic, timeless and quality. I love nothing more than something beautifully crafted and luxurious materials.

Where do you turn for inspiration, design and otherwise? Travel is very important to me but it’s not necessary to take a trip every month. Walking around New York city, I can get inspired by anything from the colors of the foliage and nature in Central Park to the colors of a weathered stucco building on the Lower East Side. Keeping my eyes open to my environment everyday adds to my experience and can’t help but influence my designs.

Do you have any rules you follow when designing? The only rule I believe in is that there are no rules. Nothing bores me more than expected, formulaic, cookie cutter design. I still learn something on every project and put it in my memory bank. When I stop learning it means I’m not trying anything new.

Is there one essential product that you believe every home should have? Fortuny fabric! Even if you can only afford a pillow, I believe every house—modern or traditional—should have some. There’s a subtle mystique to the way it’s made that no one else has been able to duplicate, and it gets better with age.

How does your design improve a client’s experience in their home? One of the highest compliments I’ve received from a client is when she told me that living in one of my interiors is a privilege—that the beauty that surrounds her gives her energy to go out and face the world.

Space designed by Andrew Flesher Interiors

Andrew Flesher Interiors, 445 Park Avenue, 9th Floor, 212.393.9380