7 minute read
VERNISSAGE
TORY BURCH
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Designing
Women History has been stingy with Claire McCardell. A creative powerhouse of the ’40s and ’50s, whose casual separates became the wardrobe staple of independent women and the template for American sportswear, McCardell and her contributions remain criminally undersold. “Like many women in history, Claire McCardell’s contributions haven’t been properly celebrated or documented,” says designer Tory Burch, who first discovered McCardell as an art history major at the University of Pennsylvania. “So many of her ideas”—pockets on dresses, zippers on skirts, ballet flats, spaghetti straps, mix-andmatch separates—“are taken for granted today, and she inspired every designer to the point where her innovations became a given.” McCardell, who died of cancer in 1958 at age 52, may be relegated to being an occasional, often unwitting referent in a designer’s collection, but her original contributions are writ large in her 1956 fashion and style book What Shall I Wear? (Abrams Books), which is back in print for the first time in years.
In this breezy, heavily illustrated compendium of fashion advice and aperçus, she emerges as a practical but no less cheeky counterpoint to Vogue’s Diana Vreeland (who came around to the designer, but once damned a McCardell dress as “pathetic”) and her grand diktats.
The reissue also includes a new color insert of photos from her collections and a foreword by Burch, whose soft belts, knit bandeaus, and waist-defining hook-and-eye closures in her spring/summer 2022 collection were nods to McCardell’s versatility and functionality.
“Claire’s contributions to fashion in the ’40s and ’50s paved the way for generations of designers to think critically about what women want to wear,” Burch tells Avenue, “and how clothing can—and should—instill a sense of freedom and ease.”
Despite the modernity of her designs and reputation as an icebreaker, McCardell has remained preserved in an aspic of ’50s nostalgia, an unfair image of her as a Douglas Sirk–era housewife created largely by the iconic Time cover she got at the height of her fame.
Some modern readers might recoil at McCardell’s retrograde tips for dieting and dressing to please your man, but Burch says the book’s sage advice will strike a chord with young moderns.
“McCardell discarded the rules of what women should wear, instead problem-solving for the reality of their lives,” Burch explains. “That concept absolutely resonates with young women today— they expect fashion to suit their lifestyle, not the other way around.”
Or, as McCardell herself writes in her book, “Fashion survives when it deserves to.” —horacio silva
DR. JESSIE CHEUNG
Peak Performance
It’s not easy being a master of the universe. Gone are the days when an aspiring rainmaker could get away with nodding concessions to health and a trainer who all but exercises for you. Today’s type A guys are lifting their game, trying all manner of bespoke health services to gain a competitive edge over their increasingly younger rivals.
“It takes an army these days,” says Dr. Paul Jarrod Frank, a cosmetic dermatologist and author of The Pro-Aging Playbook (Post Hill Press), “and making a lot of small changes is going to give you big results. Life is a chronic disease, it’s all going downhill, so what can we do long term from the inside out that is going to make us stronger and live more vital lives?”
Frank’s two New York practices, one uptown near the Guggenheim and the other on Perry Street in the West Village, are cheerier than his world-weary summation might suggest, and are among the slick new holistic one-stop shops for guys looking for an extra pep in their step.
Across the city, guys are turning to high-touchpoint clinics like Frank’s for advice on everything from naturopathic diet supplements and drips designed to aid cognitive function to preventative medicines to improve performance in the bedroom and boardroom. They are going beyond testosterone, and taking growth hormones in low doses to look younger and have more energy, as well as engaging in stem cell therapy and its less controversial cousin—exosome therapy—to fix a list of complaints.
“Testosterone alone is awesome,” says dermatologist Dr. Jessie Cheung, who sees captains of industry and high achievers in her clinics in New York and Chicago, “but the next step beyond testosterone for antiaging is peptide hormone therapy, which includes human growth hormone and growth hormone secretagogues. Think of Hollywood celebrities—they are probably on some type of growth hormone or exosome therapy to look younger and have the energy to sustain their grueling lifestyles.”
Some experts, like Dr. Jake Deutsch, are charging monthly retainers running to $10,000 a month to be on call for their demanding charges.
LUCA GUADAGNINO
Deutsch, who compares his high-end suite of offerings and white-glove service at his New York practice (complete with Damien Hirsts in the handsome lobby) to a “Net-a-Porter of health,” inspires a cultlike veneration among his patients.
“It’s not about the puzzle, it’s about who sees the puzzle, and Jake is brilliant,” says Noah Neiman, 38. “I literally trust him with my life.” Neiman, an investor who started Rumble Boxing strength-training gyms, turned to the good doctor after feeling sluggish and noticing a downturn in his training for a charity run. A comprehensive blood test revealed spiked levels of estrogen and cortisol and worryingly low testosterone. Deutsch put him on a regimen of his own nutraceuticals and a pharmaceutical to help his body to naturally produce testosterone. “Within three weeks,” Neiman says, his training improved, he began to put on muscle again, and generally felt “less angry with my friends and better.”
M.J. Bas, an entrepreneur and investor who initially went to see Deutsch to help with alertness and energy throughout the day and now returns for monthly nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) drips, says having medical and mental health practitioners and advisors in your corner is invaluable. “I’m no elite athlete,” says Bas, 38, “but there is a reason LeBron James spends more than a million a year on various experts for himself to make sure his body and mind are at their peak performance. It’s a small price to pay for the massive impact that it can have on your life.”—hs
Heel to Eternity
The Salvatore Ferragamo story is well-worn. Shoe-obsessed kid from provincial Italy makes his first pair for sister’s holy communion at age 9, moves to Naples at 12 to learn his craft, and eventually to the budding capital of dreams that was California in the early 20th century, becoming as famous as his clients.
Salvatore Ferragamo: Shoemaker of Dreams, a new documentary about the designer directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, I Am Love) and based on the 1955 autobiography of the same, certainly covers familiar ground—the passage to America, the birth of Hollywood, his latenight spaghetti feasts with Hollywood stars Greta Garbo and Rudolph Valentino, and his eventual return to Italy to establish headquarters in Florence. In interviews with talking heads, including Manolo Blahnik, Christian Louboutin, and Martin Scorsese, and drawing on rare archival footage, Guadagnino manages to shine new light on a familiar if uncompromising fashion trailblazer. “Salvatore was a visionaire, someone ahead of his time who somehow exuded a sense of individuality and uniqueness,” says Guadagnino. “Ferragamo’s work might not necessarily fall into what is perceived as fashion nowadays, but he was an artisan who understood how to make something essential while at the same time create an object that stood out as beautiful and provocative. “Salvatore contributed so strongly to the birth of Hollywood—he was integral to it,” he continues. “He was part of that process of creating that dream, of creating the image of the stars. And beyond the actual creation of the shoes for them, he was alongside them for the birth of that dream.”
Not that Guadagnino misses an opportunity to linger on the scene-stealing creations. The many loving close-ups of Ferragamos, particularly in the Busby Berkeley–esque short film by stop-motion animator PES at the documentary’s end, sometimes bring to mind the 12,000 sandals he created for Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 production of The Ten Commandments, or an elevated brand video (no surprise, since Guadagnino created arty short films for luxury house Fendi before becoming an international art house darling.)
And while Shoemaker of Dreams is no The Last Emperor, the Matt Tyrnauer–directed documentary that revealed an endearingly human side to designer Valentino, the focus here is not on the brittle façade of success but on the unrivaled craftsmanship of the master who created dreams for himself and others from the ground up.
As Cecil B. DeMille said of the cowboy boots that Ferragamo made for studio westerns, “The West would have been conquered earlier if we’d had boots like these.”—hs
