Lily Pad

March 7, 2006 X-Raying Oscar Fashions at the Academy Awards

  "A five hour delay!?" Lulu moans loudly, drowning out the sound of Melissa Rivers' guttersniping that is spilling from the overhead TV monitor in JFK airport's First Class lounge for Cathay Pacific. "I knew the Mercury Retrograde was going to throw a monkey wrench into our travel plans!"

"Lulu, what on earth are you complaining about?" I tell her as I reach for my bloody mary and prop my feet up on a nearby ottoman. "You should be thrilled by the delay - now we can watch the Oscars!" I for one am especially happy to be languishing in the airport lounge, enjoying the free cocktails and fancy grub. "Go make yourself another caviar and lobster taco from the buffet darling...and bring over a pitcher of bloody marys while you're at it. We might as well make the best of this. And besides - now we will be able to see which actresses are wearing the Fashion Forms, Sassybax, Spanx and Cosabella products that I FedExed to the Academy's swag central."

"Isn't the whole point of those things that you're not supposed to be able to detect that the wearer has them on?" Lulu says as she rises and makes a beeline for the buffet and bar. "If you want red carpet visibility, why don't you snag Van Cleef or Freddie Leighton as clients?" She picks up a plate and begins piling it up with chilled cracked crab and white truffle blintzes.

"This is why you need me to do your PR, dearie," I tell her. "The point is to establish visibility for the brands at the swag tent, and to get stylists, stars and press agents talking about them. And it's a lot cheaper than lending a pair of 5 million dollar earrings that you may never see again....Oh look, there's Nicole Kidman. I'll bet you anything that she's wearing one of my Fashion Forms Nu-Bras under that strapless dress!"

"I hope you sent some industrial-strength Sassybax Bralette Bras for Dolly Parton to wear," Lulu cracks. "And anyway, you should have sent one of my handbags to Reese Witherspoon! She's probably going to win and then the whole world would want to buy my damn bags!"

"Actually I sent your lookbook to Philip Bloch the stylist and he said your bags were 'cute' but not 'hardcore' enough for the Oscars red carpet," I say, trying to break the news gently. "But don't worry, we'll get those woolly mammoth bags on the red carpet at the Tribeca Fim Festival, I promise!" A few more actresses whisk by on the red carpet and I recite my mental list - aided by my fashion x-ray vision - aloud. "J-Lo is wearing a Cosabella thong, Jennifer Garner is clearly drunk and wearing a Donna Karan Solutions Bra....Felicity Huffman is wearing a Fashion Forms Ultimate Convertible Bra..."

"And a Baskit Mesh Jock," Lulu quips before shoving a baby potato smothered in caviar into her mouth.

"Very funny, Lulu...Jon Stewart should have hired you to write his jokes."

"Well, from the sound of it, he needs all the help he can get!" Lulu hollers. Dolly Parton begins performing her song from Transamerica and I shush Lulu. "She has such a great voice....but it's difficult to get her to wear any of the underwear I send to her office. Her designer, Robert Behar, builds all of her foundations directly into her garments."

 

About 4 hours, 24 bloody marys and 300 gown critiques later, Lulu and I somehow stagger onto the plane and hunker down for the 18-hour flight to Shanghai that lies ahead.....

March 1, 2006 Just Another champagne lunch in Manhattan: Jerry Torre of Grey Gardens, the incorrigible Lulu Guinness, and Amy Sacco's cleavage

The view from my table at Bette was a quintessential Manhattan vista: To my left, Graydon Carter having lunch with Fran Lebowitz; to my right, Judith Regan screaming obscenities at her waiter, into her cellphone and at her dining companion; and right in front of me - Amy Sacco's scenic cleavage.

"Lily, your OnGossamer event was da bomb!" Amy enthuses, as I notice an OnGossamer mesh bra -- which were given away in the gift bags -- peeking out above the neckline of her slinky Rick Owens dress. "And I simply must have a pair of the mesh boyshorts!"

"Actually, Lulu is up at the DKNY showroom now and OnGossamer is near there," I tell Amy as I pull my cellphone out of my Lulu Guinness handbag. "I'll call her and tell her to stop by there." Amy smiles and returns to her table-hopping duties.

"Lu, it's me, I need you to make another stop while you're up there," I say as soon as Lu picks up her cellphone. "Can you also stop at the OnGossamer showroom and...." I'm interrupted by a stream of obscenities that would put Ms. Regan to shame. "Lu, I just need you to do these favors for me, ok? My entire staff is still in Las Vegas! Now, be a good little girl and I'll make sure there's an ice cold bottle of Dom Perignon waiting here for you." As I click off, Amy has returned to my table with a bohemian-looking gentlemen in his fifties.

"Lily, I'd like you to meet Jerry Torre - the Marble Faun."

"Oh my god, you were the young man who was in Grey Gardens!" I trill. "I was just reading about you this morning in The New Yorker! I loved the story about you dancing in a jockstrap on the bar at the Anvil!"

"Yes, and he took Jackie Kennedy there, couldn't you just die?" Amy says as she sheppards the Marble Faun into a seat at my table. "Why don't you two chat while I go check on Judith's steak tartare order...she sent it back three times because it wasn't raw enough."

"You were so marvelous in that film," I tell Jerry, before a brilliant PR idea dawns on me. "Do they need any underwear samples to give out at the cast party for the new Broadway musical version of Grey Gardens? I do PR for a top internet underwear retailer. What kind of underwear did Mrs. Beale wear? That could be our tie-in."

"She wore Olga as far as I know - at least that's what she said," Jerry says politely. "But Little Edie was the fashion plate - she wore tights with a large scarf wrapped around her waist as a skirt."

Before I can gush about how much I loved the loopy fashion statements in the film, Lulu comes bounding into Bette, loaded down with several shopping bags stuffed with Donna Karan and DKNY underwear. "Oh Lu, finally. I was beginning to worry about you."

"Sure you were. I had to make a pitstop at my favorite fabric store, Triumph of the Twill, and pick out some swatches for my fall line."

"Lu dear, shouldn't your fall line already be done? What are we going to show Suzy Menkes when she stops by my office next week?"

"My fall line would be done if you weren't sending me on Seventh Avenue panty raids like some kind of blackmarket bra mule, you self-absorbed harridan!"

"Lulu, how lovely to see you!" This was Amy Sacco. "Lily was telling me all about your woolly mammoth bags and I simply must have one! I'm going to the unveiling of the new Rem Koolhaus hotel in Siberia next month and it will be the perfect accessory!" Lulu regains her composure in the club queen's presence.

"Oh, you look so divoon in that Rick Owens dress!" Lulu purrs. Before she can continue her brown-nosing, the waiter brings over a bucket of ice and bottle of Dom Perignon. "Yay, lunch is here!" Lulu says, lighting up the room.

"Ok Lu, sit down and get a load off," I tell her. "Then it's back to the office so we can sort out these samples and get them ready for the show in China."

"Does the word 'intern' have any meaning for you?" Lulu tells me. "Craig's List is not only for finding tickets to Rolling Stone concerts and 'dates' for Friday nights, you know."

"Never you mind, we have a lot of work to do," I reprimand her. "Oh, and I forgot to tell you.....we're going to Shanghai for the underwear event!" Lulu reaches for the bottle of champagne and begins chug-a-lugging.

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