Lily Pad

February 23, 2006 The People's Republic of Underwear

   

"Ms. Lily, there's someone here to see you." The voice of my servant, Ito, cuts through the serene darkness of my inner lair, namely my bedroom. I glance at the clock and notice it's already 10am and the vague notion of a missed meeting enters my groggy head.

"Who is it Ito? I'm hardly decent." Indeed, I was wearing nothing more than my Puma Naughty Mesh Cami and a pair of boylegs.

"It's Ms. Lulu and she said you were supposed to meet her an hour ago." The moment Ito finishes making this grave announcement, Lulu comes bounding into the room, plops down angrily on my bed and hurls an unidentifiable furry mass into my face. "Lily, are you on a bender again? You were supposed to meet me at Bette at 9am!"

"Cut me some slack Lulu, I was at my office till 4am talking to the head of the Chinese Ministry of Fashion -- they're 12 hours ahead in China -- and filling out custom forms. The last thing I need right now is you throwing--" I inspect the furry object she's launched in my direction, "--fashion roadkill in my face at this early hour! What is this sorry excuse for an accessory?"

"It's my damn prototype for my woolly mammoth handbag! You weren't the only one up all night working! I just can't seem to get this thing right!" At that moment, Ito re-enters the room with a bucket of ice, a stand and a bottle of Champagne. "Oh Ito, just in time. You're a doll," Lulu gushes.

"You have my servant bringing you Champagne in my bedroom at 10 in the morning!?" I shriek. "I'm billing you for this Lulu!"

"Oh, pipe down Lil," Lulu admonishes me as she pours a glass and passes it in my direction. "So, what's all this about China? Are we finally going to open my boutique on Nanjing Lu? I want to cash in on the new red-hot Chinese economy."

"You'll have to wait your turn on that, dear," I tell her after taking a long gulp of Champagne. "I'm organizing an underwear event for another client."

"Oh, Lily don't tell me you're staging a National Underwear Day in the People's Republic of China! They may be ready for my handbags but if you send models out into the streets of Beijing in their underwear, you will have another Tiananmen Square massacre on your hands!"

"Oh Lu, stop being such an alarmist," I say attempting to get out of bed before changing my mind and flopping back against the mound of feather down pillows. "This isn't 1989 --although from the looks of your outfit I'm starting to wonder -- and anyway, the event is in Shanghai, not Beijing. Don't you read fashion magazines? Shanghai is like the new Paris!"

"You say that now, but you'll change your tune when you're cooling your Jimmy Choo heels in a Maoist gulag with a dozen underwear models."

"Newsflash Lulu: Mao died in 1976 along with your hairdo. Now, enough of your neo-con blather. I need your help with this event. Your hairy elephant bags can wait. My assistants are all out in Las Vegas with several of our clients for MAGIC and I'm going to need an extra pair of hands."

"Good grief, I'm Lulu Guinness, not some green kid fresh of FIT!" Before Lulu can say another word, I scribble down some notes on the back of a cocktail napkin from Swifty's and thrust it in her direction. "I need you to go over to the Donna Karan Intimates showroom and pick out three dozen bras and panties so I can have them sent to Jack's hotel room in Shanghai."

"If it's anything like that 'hotel' he stayed at in the Tenderloin in San Francisco last year, I suspect the package will never make it up to his room," Lulu snorts. "I'm picturing a lot happy Chinese prostitutes staging their own 'underwear event' somewhere in the red-light district."

"Oh Lu, Jack doesn't work for Albanian Marie Claire anymore, he works for a magazine with a bigger travel budget," I correct her. "He's staying at the Grand Hyatt on top of the fabulous Jinmao Tower."

"Which is where I should be right now, lounging in their spa getting a pedicure, instead of this bedroom," Lulu wrinkles her nose. "It smells like pickled eggs and Knob Creek bourbon in here."

"Off you go, Handbag Enchantress of Manhattan Isle," I say rising from my bed, removing the Champagne glass from her hand and shoving her through the door. I reach for her pitiful prototype and toss it at her as an afterthought. "And don't forget your pet!"

February 15, 2006

   

"Darling, you look like you're reprising Madonna's look from her 'Music' phase," Kelly Cutrone, head of the PR firm People's Revolution, says to me as I enter the backstage area of The Tent. "But you need to lose the Manolos and get into a pair of Manuel's cowboy boots!" I've arrived to take a before-show sneak peak at the premiere ready-to-wear collection from Manuel Cuevas, the legendary, Nashville-based costume designer who has dressed Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, and the Rolling Stones, to name just a few. I'm wearing a white cowboy hat, a matching marabou stole, gold lame jeans and a Texas Lone Star T-shirt. Underneath I have on my Warner's style #1046 bra--which I'm happy to report, is back by popular demand--and my Ginch Gonch Jolly Cocks Long Johns (it's cold outside). As I start to feel that maybe I've overdone the cowgirl look, a criminally handsome male model waltzes by wearing a rhinestone-encrusted jacket decorated with symbols of horseshoes and giant map of Texas. Still in a state of undress, he's wearing only a pair of Calvin Klein 365 hip briefs on the bottom.  A gaggle of girls rush toward their dressing stations, champagne glasses held aloft, clad in nothing but the latest bra and panty styles from DKNY.

"I see you received the underwear samples I messengered over to you," I tell Kelly. "Looking at all these models is making me want to skip lunch--for the next five years." Kelly grabs my arm and whips me across the crowded room, navigating past a battallion of hair and makeup artists and some important looking people in suits and cowboy hats. She introduces me to a short woman in a neck brace who is helping herself to some of the catered doughnuts. "Hilary, have you met Lily? Lily is an amazing publicist and has a lot of great underwear and fashion clients."

"I think we met at the Agent Provocateur event Kelly did in LA last year," Hilary--who is a fashion reporter from London--tells me. "You know, the party where I tripped over Nicky Hilton's toy poodle and sprained my wrist."

"Oh, I seem to remember you wearing a fur sling at Azzedine's party in Paris that season," I reply. "That was when Dan Matthews from PETA was ousted for threatening you."

"Oh, that was a different sprain," the accident-prone scribe informs me. "And in case you're wondering why I'm wearing this neck brace, it's because I'm still recovering from my mishap at the Diane Von Furstenberg show last season, when the lights fell on top of me."

"The hazzards of sitting in the front row," I say, trying to cheer her up. "Let's hope you don't get crushed by a falling rhinestone ten-gallon hat at this show!" Kelly returns and tells us to go out and take our seats as the show will be starting shortly. As I head for my front row set, I run into one of the producers of the show, famed club doorman Thomas Onorato. "Lily! Lulu is waiting for you in row D1," he tells me as he gives me a double fashion air kiss. "LOVE the M look!"

"It's about time you got here," Lulu groans, as I plop down into the seat next to her. "Lauren Ezersky kept trying to sit next to me so she could shake me down for some free handbags."

"Oh god, don't get me started," I reply. "I did an event for Olga last month, and she emptied out all the gift bags before half the guests arrived. There were dozens of pairs of panties spilling out of the pockets of her Oscar de La Renta coat!"

Our bitching is suddenly interrupted by Mick Jagger's loud yelps--as "Sympathy for the Devil" begins booming through the tent's soundsystem, Manuel's mannequins begin strutting their stuff down the runway. "Oh, this is very 'Michael Kors and Carolina Herrera vacationing on Brokeback Mountain'," Lulu trills. "I love it! And I must have that python dress!"

After the show, Lulu and I retire to our usual table at Bette. "Could you please take that hat off?" Lulu implores me. "You're embarrassing me."

"No champagne for you today, missy," I admonish her. "You have more important things to worry about beside my look du jour--are those 'woolly mammoth' handbags ready yet? The event is only 10 days away and I've already  rented the circus elephant to entertain the guests. I'll expect you at the space the night before, helping me glue the 'mammoth fur' on him."

"PETA will love that," she replies. "Just make sure Hilary Alexander is nowhere near that elephant or you'll have to ask Diane Von Furstenberg for her lawyer's phone number the next morning."

February 9, 2006

Welcome to my blog, Lily Pad! I will be reporting from the wild world of New York public relations, from product launches to red carpet events, from fashion shows to long power lunches--such as the one I had today. After I attended the Michael Kors fashion show (partly inspired by Ali MacGraw, star of Love Story, and once the stylist to floating bubble photog, Melvin Sokolsky) at Bryant Park, I met one of my clients--the handbag designer, Lulu Guinness--at Amy Sacco's trendy new WeChe boite, Bette. As I hollered, "More champagne for Lulu!" for the fourth time, the savvy Ms. Guinness reached into one of her handbags nonpareil, pulled out a copy of today's New York Times, and thrust this article under my well-exfoliated nose.

"Lily, did you see this article about underwear? Don't you have a few underwear clients? I don't see any of them mentioned." I nearly spit out a bite of my endive salad (no dressing, no gargonzola, no walnuts) across the A-list-filled room. I quickly scanned the article--which outlines the current state of underwear shopping (with a rather palsied attempt to re-ignite the sex wars, I might add)-- and was mildly annoyed to see that one of my treasured underwear clients, Freshpair.com, had been overlooked. "Don't get your knickers in a twist," Lulu told me as I reached for my cell phone, my Blackberry and an unusually sharp butter knife. "There are some rather dubious claims in that article--such as the alleged 'disappearance of thongs in fashion', according to fashion professor Valerie Steele."

"First of all, I'm not wearing knickers. Because I haven't had time to burn off all those holiday cocktails yet, I have my Spanx shapewear on underneath this Balenciaga suit--which by the way, won't be in stores until July," I said, perhaps a bit too defensively. "And second of all, I'm an underwear publicist -- I don't need some academic up in her ivory tower telling me whether women are still wearing thongs or not!"

"Hey Lily, how is everything. I see you ordered the fashion week diet special." This was Amy Sacco, the towering, 6'1" queen of New York nightlife. "I got the invite to your underwear launch next week--I will definitely try my best to be there." Amy's glamorous, amazonian presence made me momentarily forget my spasm of media rage.

"Oh yes, I hope you can make it," I coo. "The cast of Entourage will be modeling the latest styles of underwear. Bring your camera."

I'd love to tell you more about lunch, but I really must go approve the color of the gift bags for my next event. Tune in next time at Lily Pad, where I'll deliver my report from the front row of a fashion show by Manuel--the man who designed all of Johnny Cash's terribly chic, all-black ensembles. Ta-ta for now!

Love, Lily