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On
the corner of West Broadway and Prince. 9/21/03. 3:00 PM. Photo:
JH.
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Sometimes
after a lunch at Michael’s, if it’s
a nice day and I have the time, I like to walk towards home.
Michael’s is on 55th between Fifth and Sixth, and home
is the way over east 80s. I usually go over to Fifth and start
walking up. I did that last Wednesday when the air was warm
but breezy, and the sky was overcast with clouds rushing by,
with the approach of Hurricane Isabel.
As I passed Bergdorf’s I was taken by a window display of women’s
shoes. It was tableau style and it turned out to be about Manolo
Blahnik. All the Bergdorf windows on the Fifth Avenue side
of the store were devoted to Manolo.
I was standing there taking it all in, pondering the curious magic
of this shoemaker the mere mention of whose name sends shivers up
and down the spine of so so many women.
The shoes themselves, from what I could see, are mainly, mostly,
very very simple. Barely enough, to these eyes to even be called
a “shoe.” A piece of leather outlining a foot and then
the stringy looking straps, which may reach up and tie around the
ankle or move up the calf a bit more, and a high sharp heel. Stilettos.
Sex. |
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The
Manolo windows at Bergdorf's
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So
I’m standing there looking at these “shoes” and
contemplating their prominence. I’m wondering how women
walk around in them, something so skimpy, and even keep them
from walking right out of them. And, compared to my shoe (I
was wearing some loafers that I got from Warren Edwards six
years ago that are still so comfortable that I like to wear
them all the time), I couldn’t grasp the value (price)
of the Manolos. I don’t know the price(s), incidentally,
but I know it’s up there.
At about that moment of contemplation, Martha Kramer,
a friend of mine who is also a fashion woman and a woman of fashion,
came along and stopped to say hello. I asked her what it was about
the Manolos that caused everyone to covet them.
She turned very reverential. “Because they are so comfortable,” she
said, almost whispering.
I looked at her. Then back at the shoes. A single piece of leather
on that incline with those wraparound straps?
“ They’re just so comfortable,” Martha Kramer reiterated in
her slow and gentle but deliberate manner. “You see those shoes,” and
she pointed to the ones I was looking at. Black. Black straps. Black stiletto
heel. “I could walk around the city in those shoes all day and never notice
I had them on. And they look so great.”
I’m always amazed but they do look great both in the window
and on the feet. Sex. “But, how much?” I asked. “I
hear they’re expensive. “The fours, the fives, sometimes
the sixes,” she said. Meaning hundreds I presume.
There were photos of Mr. Blahnik in the window displays. Glossy closeups,
and the man at his worktable in his frock coat. He reminds me of Giorgio
Armani in looks. Or Givenchy. Impeccable,
European style. Cool, maybe slightly nose-in-the-air. They all look
like they’d have a cologne named after them.
I don’t know if Manolo Blahnik has a fragrance yet (or even
a foot fragrance) but he looks like he should have. You could imagine
he knows a lot of women in Rome, Milan, Paris who wear his shoes.
And they all have beautiful long and slender, well-shaped legs. Strolling
along the boulevards or Fifth or Rodeo, looking like life’s
great, life’s grand. |
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Louis
Vuitton and Zegna billboards jockeying for position on the corner
of 57th and Fifth Avenue
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Meanwhile
it was a beautiful afternoon on Fifth Avenue with
the white/gray clouds rolling above and the shoppers shopping
and the strollers strolling. And of course everybody and his
aunt Ethel on their cells.
The New York Philharmonic opened its 162nd
season giving performance number 13,776
last Wednesday at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center
with Loren Maazel conducting. It was
also the annual opening night fund raising black tie
gala and they raised $1.8 million for the company.
The orchestra opened the program with Verdi’s la
forza del destino Overture. Samuel Ramey sang
in his basso profundo, some Verdi songs: (translation) She doesn’t
love me anymore; she never loved me.
I sat there thinking of past loves, thinking of the millions who’ve
sat and listened to this music and thought the same thing. First
of all, the great hall itself is a refuge. And when the great symphony
orchestra, all in black, so many violins and stringed instruments,
starts to play: soothing, spiritually uplifting, away from the din,
the imagination wanders back into another consciousness. And Ramey’s
voice sets into your fancy, so rock bottom basso as to amaze with
just its miraculous human tones.
After intermission the orchestra performed Tchaikovsky’s Symphony
No. 5 in E minor, op. 64. Even if you don’t know what
I’m talking about, you’ve heard it. I only know its title
from the program. But I’ve heard it, own CDs of it, love it,
have loved it, all my adult life. Those sweeping, swelling, swirling
musical passages that provoke the epic sense of gray Russian winters
filled with pent up, relentless, unrequited passions. (Geez.)
I was thinking of the lamented composer, whose agonies he was able
to miraculously translate into and articulate through this great
music.
At the end of the concert Maestro Maazel and the orchestra got four
curtain(less) calls with “bravos” filling the air. How
lucky we all were just to be there in that huge glittering room,
clamoring with wide, full, but muted applause; how we were all dignified
by the experience.
I realize the prose is getting purplish but that’s what the
opening night of the Philharmonic can do to you.
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Honore
and Karl Wamsler with Norma Dana
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I was in a party
hosted by Honore and Karl Wamsler who are very
active in New York philanthropies but who also live most of the
time in Munich. I believe the couple have been married for about
forty years and have always lived there. And in New York part of
the time. Honore is a girl from Chicago. And Karl is a boy from
Munich. Since all of their five daughters have grown (and three
live here in the United States), the Wamslers visit more often
and even have their own pied a terre on Fifth Avenue overlooking
the Park.
They came over to New York this trip for the celebration of the Park’s
150th anniversary where they, with Norma Dana entertained
80 guests the night of the “fireworks” (which mainly
fizzled) last Monday night. (see NYSD 9/16.) They also brought about
fifteen friends from Germany with them, everyone putting up in The
Plaza (with views of the Park). Their guests, some of whom had never
been to America, or New York before, were given wonderful tours around
Manhattan, visiting the Met and the Botanical Garden (which the Wamslers
support generously), Westbury Gardens, The Frick, as well as the
theatre and dinner.
I sat next to one of the German guests at
dinner after the Philharmonic concert.
It was her first time, not in America, but in New York.
So it was very exciting for her to see so many wonderful
parts of New York. She was surprised, however, that there
weren’t more “smells.” She said in
traveling she was always interested in the “smells” of
a city. I was confounded as to where she could go to
pick up some “smells.” Maybe down by the
East River on certain days and certain times (eeee-yew)
or Chinatown?
What impressed her most, however, was our Park, and the fact that
so many people (including her hosts) had given so generously and
worked so tirelessly to maintain this public space through the Central
Park Conservancy.
“ That doesn’t happen in Europe where the government does everything.
No one would think to organize a group that would fix up a park for the people.” |
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