WOWers, World of Wonder Co-Founder Fenton Bailey, Executive VP of Development Tom Campbell, and WOW Report Editor James St. James have collaborated with reality TV guru and friend of WOW, Andy Cohen, on a weekly Top Ten Countdown of the things from the past week that make us go…WOW!

It’s a pop-culture obsessed hour complete with colorful diatribes, opposing opinions, and a dissection-like discussion that will make your drive home from work more fabulous!

You can now WATCH us recording the WOW Report in our gallery storefront on Hollywood Boulevard, just across the street from Hollywood’s oldest restaurant Musso & Frank!

This week, we’re counting down the top ten stories of 2017 that made us go WOW!  We air TODAY at 3PM EST on SiriusXM, and again at 3PM PST (that’s 6PM EST). You can also catch the show on the SiriusXM app!

Let’s get started…

10) John Lennon’s Assassination (1980) 

Skip forward to John Lennon’s Assassination (1980) @01:41

9) Synth Britannia (1981) 

Skip forward to Synth Britannia (1981) @07:35

8) Were You a Pat Benatar or a Belinda Carlisle? (1982) 

Skip forward to Were You a Pat Benatar or a Belinda Carlisle? (1982) @12:15

7) Michael Jackson Moonwalks (1983) 

Skip forward to Michael Jackson Moonwalks (1983) @18:31

6) The Rise of Madonna & Tina Turner Returns! (1984) 

Skip forward to The Rise of Madonna & Tina Turner Returns! (1984) @24:57

5) The New Coke Fiasco (1985) 

Skip forward to The New Coke Fiasco (1985) @30:28

4) The Oprah Winfrey Show Premieres (1986) 

Skip forward to The Oprah Winfrey Show Premieres (1986) @38:15

3) JSJ & Vin Diesel: 1987’s Most Unlikely Couple (1987) 

Skip forward to JSJ & Vin Diesel: 1987’s Most Unlikely Couple (1987) @44:33

2) The Andy Warhol Estate Sale  (1988) 

Skip forward to The Andy Warhol Estate Sale  (1988) @50:25

1) Sex, Lies & Videotape! Madonna! & More! (1989) 

Skip forward to Sex, Lies & Videotape! Madonna! & More! (1989) @56:23

Listen in at 3:00PM EST and again at 3:00 PST (6 PM EST) on SiriusXM! Or listen whenever you want on the SiriusXM App!

And be sure to give your ears the gift of THE WOW REPORT on Radio Andy SiriusXM EVERY Friday.

Do something this weekend that makes YOU go WOW!!!

Oh, if you are easily upset by a hateful roasting, then you’d best keep moving….

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 3 winner Trixie Mattel laid into some of your favorite queens at the Haters Roast, The Shady Tour at the Boston House Of Blues on March 28.

“Bendelacreme isn’t here, so I guess I get to be the Superstar…

Or maybe Bendelacreme WAS here… but he left in the middle.“

If you like these jokes half as much as Jinkx Monsoon and Thorgy Thor, then you will die laughing.

Say it with me,

READING IS FUNDAMENTAL.

Watch.

1967, WNYC via YouTube

April 7, 1951 – Janis Eddy Fink:

“I learned the truth at seventeen, that love was meant for beauty queens, and high school girls with clear skinned smiles, who married young and then retired.”

I purchased my first Janis Ian single, Society’s Child, at 14-years-old, brought to my attention by a high school friend.  It is a song about an interracial romance forbidden by a girl’s mother and frowned upon by her peers and teachers. It was released three times from 1965 to 1967, Society’s Child finally became a big hit on its third release after Leonard Bernstein featured on a television special  Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution.

After the Bernstein’s show, Verve Records started heavily promoting Society’s Child and some radio stations started playing it. But just as many radio stations refused to play the song. Ian started to receive hate mail and death threats and a radio station in Atlanta that played it was a victim of arson. In the summer of 1967, Society’s Child reached Number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100, and the single sold a million copies. The single was in the Top 10 in many cities, but owing to resistance in many radio markets, it suffered the fate of several other controversial pop hits of the 1960s.

Ian grew up in East Orange, NJ, in a neighborhood predominantly populated by African-Americans and she was one of very few mixed-race kids in her school. Ian:

“I saw it from both ends. I was seeing it from the end of all the civil rights stuff on the television and radio, of white parents being incensed when their daughters would date black men, and I saw it around me when black parents were worried about their sons or daughters dating white girls or boys. I don’t think I knew where I was going when I started it, but when I hit the second line, ‘face is clean and shining black as night’, it was obvious where the song was going. I don’t think I made a conscious decision to have the girl cop out in the end, it just seemed like that would be the logical thing at my age, because how can you buck school and society and your parents, and make yourself an outcast forever?”

Her 1975 Grammy Award winning At Seventeen is a bittersweet commentary on teenage bullying. It sounds like it could have been written in our current era with its commentary on society’s beauty standards, adolescent cruelty, and the illusion of popularity. Listen to it again. It sounds fresh.

Ian wrote At Seventeen in 1973, she has said that the song was inspired by a newspaper article about a former teenage debutante who learned the hard way that being popular did not solve all her problems.

Promoting At Seventeen presented a challenge because at five minutes, it is longer than most radio hits and it is packed with lyrics. Columbia Records and Ian decided that their best chance at marketing the song was to promote it to women, which wasn’t easy with radio stations controlled by men. Ian did the daytime talk shows for a year before booking a gig on The Tonight Show. Her appearance with Johnny Carson and the performance of the song really helped it to take off.

At Seventeen was Ian’s first hit single since Society’s Child eight years earlier. The radio version omitted the instrumental verse and chorus because it was considered too long for radio stations to play it. It went to Number One on the Adult Contemporary chart and Number Three on the Pop Singles chart. It was the Number Two Adult Contemporary hit of 1975 behind only Midnight Blue by Melissa Manchester. It won a Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1976, beating out Linda Ronstadt, Olivia Newton-John, and Helen Reddy and was nominated for Record Of The Year and Song Of The Year.

Ian performed At Seventeen as a musical guest on the very first episode of Saturday Night Live in October 1975.

The song’s album, Between The Lines, also went to Number One and it sold over one million copies. On Valentine’s Day 1976, Ian received hundreds of cards; sweet because in the lyrics to At Seventeen, she sings that she never received any as a teenager.

In the 30 Rock episode The Break-Up, Tina Fey‘s character sings At Seventeen at a karaoke club. It is also featured in Fey’s movie Mean Girls (2004). In Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016), Julia Sawalha‘s character Saffy sings the song in a bar full of empathetic drag queens who join in singing.

Her 2008 album, Billie’s Bone’s is a tribute to Billie Holiday with whom she shares a birthday today. The album is sparse and hauntingly sad. In an eerily melancholy slow jazz tune, Matthew, Ian pays tribute Matthew Shephard:

What makes a man a man?

It’s not who you love, but whether you can

What makes a man a man?

Ian had some tough going along the road of life, she grew-up African-American and Jewish and gay in the 1960s, it could not have been easy.

When she was just 16-years-old, Ian met the charming Bill Cosby backstage after performing on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Since Ian was underage, she needed to be accompanied while touring by a chaperon. When Cosby met Ian, she had been sleeping with her head on the female chaperon’s lap. Cosby subsequently warned other television show producers that Ian was “a lesbo, not suitable family entertainment” and that she “shouldn’t be on television” because of her sexuality, attempting to blacklist her. Weird, because I had always heard that Cosby really liked girl-on-girl stuff.

I never chose a Janis Ian record in order to get the party started, but I listened intently to her thoughtful, yet forceful music when I felt like being alone in my room, worried about fitting in.

Ian is a musical icon who happens to be gay. For more than 50 years she’s been making very special music. I am friends with her on The Facebook, and she seems comfortable with herself after coming out of the closet in 1993. She has been with her wife since 1989 (married in Canada in Summer 2003). I can report that there is nothing sad in her life these days; Ian and her wife live in Nashville with a bunch of kids, grandkids and dogs.

Photo from PBS via YouTube

For more than 50 years she’s been making very special music. She continues to tour.

My favorite Janis Ian tune is Stars (1974), an especially sad song about seeking fame that has been covered by covered, including versions by Joan Baez, Shirley Bassey, Cher, Nina Simone and Barbara Cook

STARS

I was never one for singing

What I really feel

Except tonight, I’m bringing

Everything I know that’s real

Stars, they come and go

They come fast or slow

They go like the last light

Of the sun, all in a blaze

And all you see is glory

But it gets lonely there

When there’s no one here to share

We can shake it away

If you’ll hear a story

People lust for fame

Like athletes in a game

We break our collarbones

And come up swinging

Some of us are downed

Some of us are crowned

And some are lost

And never found

But most have seen it all

They live their lives in

Sad cafes and music halls

They always have a story

Some make it when they’re young

Before the world has

Done its dirty job

And later on, someone will say

“You’ve had your day

You must make way”

But they’ll never know the pain

Of living with a name you never owned

Or the many years forgetting

What you know too well

The ones who gave the crown

Have been let down

You try to make amends

Without defending

Perhaps pretending

You never saw the eyes

Of grown men of twenty five

That followed as you walked

And asked for autographs

Or kissed you on the cheek

And you never could believe

They really loved you

Some make it when they’re old

(Perhaps they have a soul

They’re not afraid to bare

Or perhaps there’s nothing there)

Some women have a body

Men will want to see

So they put it on display

Some people play a fine guitar

I could listen to them

Play all day

Some ladies really

Move across a stage

And gee, they sure can dance

I guess I could learn how

If I have it half a chance

But I always feel so funny

When my body tries to soar

And I seem to always worry

About missing the next chord

I guess there isn’t anything

To put up on display

Except the tunes

And whatever else I say

Anyway, that isn’t really

What I meant to say

I meant to tell a story

I live from day to day

Stars, they come and go

They come fast or slow

They go like the last light

Of the sun, all in a blaze

And all you see is glory

But those who’ve seen it all

They live their lives

In sad cafes and music halls

We always have a story

So if you don’t lose patience

With my fumbling around

I’ll come up singing for you

Even when I’m down

Cooper Green
Bill Bellamy
Carol Douglas
David “Punk” Otunga
Francis Ford Coppola
Jackie Chan
James Garner
Janis Ian
John Oates
Kevin Alejandro
Russell Crowe
Tiki Barber

Holiday (1947) photograph by William P. Gottlieb, Library of Congress, public domain

By the late 1930s, Billie Holiday (1915-1959) had married a small-time drug dealer who introduced her to the joys of opium and heroin. Around this time, Holiday attended one of Tallulah Bankhead‘s Harlem rent parties where there was plenty of booze and cocaine. The two talented women had combustible sexual chemistry and by the mid-1940s, when they were both famous, Holiday and Bankhead were together whenever their schedules allowed.

In 1947, Holiday entered the Alderson Federal Reformatory For Women in West Virginia to serve a ”one day and a year” sentence after being found guilty of drug possession.

Four months after her release in 1948, Holiday was appearing in NYC with Count Basie and his band at the start of a national tour.  At the same time, Bankhead was appearing on Broadway in Noël Coward’s play, Private Lives.  After the curtain came down, Bankhead would show up for the closing set of Holiday’s show every night of the run.

Bankhead (1941), public domain

A few months later, Holiday played a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. She led, not just other vocalists, but all other Jazz artists as the Most Popular in reader polls, including Downbeat Magazine. Her popularity was unusual because she didn’t have a current hit record.

Because Holiday’s probation did not allow her to perform in nightclubs where liquor was being served, she was forced to earn her living doing grueling tours on the road. Bankhead traveled with her whenever she could.

Bankhead was with Holiday at a Hollywood nightclub when a fight broke out and Holiday was arrested and charged with possession of opium.  Bankhead paid for Holiday’s bail and hired a psychiatrist after she threatened suicide.  Bankhead wrote a letter to FBI head J. Edgar Hoover in support of Holiday:

”As my negro Mammy used to say: ‘When you pray, you pray to God don’t you?’ I had only met Billie Holiday twice in my life and feel the most profound compassion for her. She is essentially a child at heart whose troubles have made her psychologically unable to cope with the world in which she finds herself, poor thing, you know I did everything within the law to lighten her burden.”

Bankhead published a memoir, Tallulah: My Autobiography in 1951 with not a single mention of Holiday. In 1956, Holiday’s own memoir Lady Sings The Blues was set for release and before publication, Bankhead received a copy of the manuscript.  Holiday’s book was not so discreet. Bankhead’s lawyer sent a warning letter of warning to Holiday’s editor. When the book finally published, Bankhead was only mentioned as ”just a friend who sometimes came around to the house to eat spaghetti”.

All of her life, Holiday had difficulty finding work and she had a string of relationships with maniacal men, a decline into dependence on drugs, a roughening of her voice and physical decline.

In July 1959, Holiday took her final bow while in a NYC hospital, taken by cirrhosis of the liver. In a characteristically cruel turn, she had been arrested on her deathbed for possession of narcotics and spent her final days under police guard. There has long been a rumor that she had all of her money in the world, just $750, hidden in her vagina as she lay dying and handcuffed to a hospital bed. Her last words were ”codeine” and ”bourbon”.

Holiday was unlucky in life, unlucky in love, and dead from drink and drugs at just 44-years-old.

Billie Holiday and her dog Mister in 1947, photograph by
William Gottlieb, Library of Congress

The life and legend of Billie Holiday seems to point to her as a victim, a problematic, profane, pushy woman. She was after all, a junkie and an alcoholic; she had sex with a lot of men and many women. But, I like to think that Holiday was a determined woman with a great appetite for life, who lived it on her terms in a man’s world.

Holiday was never able to capitalize on her amazing talent and to live a life as a musical superstar. She couldn’t break the pattern of abuse from others or herself, but that also fed her genius. Her brand of self-destruction was a plea for the love that, ironically, her bad behavior pushed away. But that voice, that perfectly imperfect gift, will always be loved and will always break my heart. She was born this day, 103 years ago.

A collection of ephemera relating to the film, “LA Confidential” (1997)
Estimate $1,500 – $2,500

Yes, Russell Crowe was selling off his stuff at a divorce-themed auction today in Sydney, which also happens to be his birthday and wedding anniversary.

At Sotheby’s Australia, Crowe has many things collected during his nine-year marriage to Danielle Spencer. The couple split in 2012.

The cover of the auction catalogue, titled Russell Crowe: The Art of Divorce, features Crowe raising a toast, looking vey Bond. Crowe posted on Twitter,

“Apart from watching as an online bidder, you can just tune in as an observer as it will be live-stream on Facebook.“

The auction is over now, you can see it below. Hundreds of items were up for grabs, and come with descriptions of their role in the Academy-winning actor’s personal or movie life. The electric mix includes, movie costumes from like his breast plate, a working chariot from his star-making role in Gladiator and boxing gloves a leather jock from his role Cinderella Man.

A note on a Mercedes 2001 up for auction says,

“One of Russell Crowe’s personal cars, this vehicle also served as one of the wedding cars on the day of his marriage to Danielle Spencer on 7 April 2003.“

But the items on sale are not limited to movie or wedding mementos. There are also many watches including a gold Rolex, pricey art, ice lots of sporting stuff, guitars, motorcycles and a whole lot more. Have a look.

Um, the dinosaur skull? It was found in the Niobara Formation in Kansas and comes mounted in a glass case. Where did he get it? Crowe purchased the artifact from fellow actor, Leonardo DiCaprio. Estimated price: $35,000-$45,000

FYI, Crowe is worth around $95 million, so, this stuff is a drop in the bucket.

A mounted Mosasaur (Platecarpus ictericus) skull, late Cretaceous Period, Niobrara Formation, Kansas
Estimate $35,000 – $40,000

The important stunt cuirass worn by Russell Crowe in the scene depicting the death of the character, ‘Maximus’, in the film, Gladiator (2000)
Estimate $20,000 – $30,000

Russell Crowe’s set crew pass from the production of the film, Gladiator (2000), in Ouarzazate, Morocco in 1999
Estimate $200 – $500

A fully functioning replica Roman chariot from the film, Gladiator (2000)
Estimate $5,000 – $10,000

A brown leather boxer’s protector used in the film, Cinderella Man (2005)
Estimate $500 – $600

An Ultimate Classic boxing glove, signed by Russell Crowe, Ron Howard and Renée Zellweger during the filming of Cinderella Man (2005)
Estimate $800 – $1,200

‘Captain Jack Aubrey’s’ number 2 ‘dress blues’, as worn by Russell Crowe in the film, Master and Commander (2003)
Estimate $25,000 – $35,000

Russell Crowe’s seat back from the film, American Gangster (2007)
Estimate $400 – $600

Russell Crowe’s seat back from the film, American Gangster (2007)
Estimate $400 – $600

A limited edition poster made for the release of the film, Noah, (2013), signed by Russell Crowe
Estimate $500 – $800

A monumental Italian six panel painted leather screen, 18th century
Estimate $25,000 – $35,000

The 1986 Grammy Award Presented to Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Sam Phillips, Rick Nelson and Chips Moman, For Best Spoken Word Album
Estimate $200,000 – $300,000

A 2008 custom ‘Rabbitohs’ chopper motorcycle, designed and made for Russell Crowe by Orange County Choppers
Estimate $35,000 – $45,000

A Muhammad Ali plaster relief life cast face plaque, presented to Russell Crowe by Angelo Dundee
Estimate $800 – $1,200

PENLEIGH BOYD, Portsea 1921, Estimate $60,000 – $80,000

A Platinum, 18ct white gold, fancy yellow diamond and diamond ring
Estimate $70,000 – $100,000

Rolex A fine gold automatic chronograph wristwatch with registers and bracelet ref 16528 no 149099 Cosmograph Daytona late 1990s Etimate $40,000 – $50,000

A 2001 Mercedes-Benz S500 saloon, Estimate $15,000 – $25,000

Catalogue online next Tuesday .  Auction via  Sotheby’s Australia . April 7th, 6pm. Carriage Works, Sydney. Register to bid in the room , on the phone, or online.  Auction will be streamed. Private viewing & dinner raising money for ACMF April 4th by Sotheby’s invitation.

A post shared by Russell Crowe (@russellcrowe) on Feb 22, 2018 at 10:28pm PST

(via CNN)

Each year in April, photography dealers from around the world land in New York for the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, AIPAD. Now in its 38th edition, it’s being held at Pier 94 for the second year. It was at the Park Avenue Armory up until 2016. With the dealers comes an array of work from vintage to today, and the focus is always Photography with a capital P.

Photographer Ruben Natal-San Miguel in exclusive pics for The Wow Report, decided to spotlight some of the 96 dealers themselves in their booths. For people who are literally behind the person behind the camera, Ruben somehow got these folks cooperate and even collaborate. As one of the greats said,

“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.” —Edward Steichen

Brian Clamp- Clampart, NYC

Spencer Thorockmorton – Throckmorton Fine Art NY

John Cowey- Gitterman Gallery, NY

Camila Knowles- Rolf Art Gallery Buenos Aires, Argentina

Catherine et André Hug- Paris , France

Stephen Bulger- Stephen Bulger Gallery

Charles Hartman – Hartman Fine Art

Kat Kiernan & Jefferson Hayman (photographer)

Robert Mann & Caroline -Robert Mann Gallery

Nailya Alexander Gallery

Photographer Joe Baio’s Installation

Anne Griffin @ Joe Baio Installation

Staley-Wise Gallery

Catherine Edelman – President of AIPAD, Catherine Edelman Gallery

Julie Saul- Julie Saul Gallery

Anna Silkman- Jackson Fine Art Gallery , Atlanta , Ga.

Sous Les Etoiles Gallery, NYC

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery

Tess Sol Schwab – Jenkins Johnson Gallery – San Francisco

Kris Graves @ KG Projects

Grayson Dantzic & Julie Graham @ APAG

Yancey Richardson, Yancey Richardson Gallery

Karen Marks – Howard Greenberg Gallery , NYC

Anika Dawkins – Anika Dawkins Photographic Fine Art Atlanta, Ga.

Steven Kasher & Crew -Steven Kasher Gallery NYC

Kellie McLaughlin -Aperture Foundation NYC

Steven Bulger Gallery .Toronto, Canada

Vered- Private Art Dealer

Margery Newman- AIPAD PR

Bruce Silverstein – Bruce Silverstein Gallery NYC

(Photographs, Ruben Natal-san Miguel)

Black Panther is a force to be reckoned with culturally and at the box office. The films dominance has shattered records as the Marvel blockbuster just passed Titanic as the third highest-grossing film of all time.

Titanic had a 12-year run as the highest-grossing film until it was usurped by the director’s other smash Avatar in 2009. According to The Hollywood Reporter it just fell to #4 on the list after Black Panther leapt past its $659.5 million domestic total.

Without adjusting for inflation, Black Panther now only sits behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($936 million) and Avatar ($760 million) on the all-time domestic box office list, according to Box Office Mojo.

BP is also the highest-grossing superhero film ever, after surpassing The Avengers‘ $624 million take. Will the Number Three spot, be in jeopardy when Avengers: Infinity War – featuring Chadwick Boseman and his fellow Wakandans, opens in theaters later this month?

Watch below.

Boseman is scheduled to host SNL tonight. Fellow Black Panther actor, Sterling K. Brown hosted just last month.

(via Rolling Stone)

Photo from “Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist” (2018) via YouTube

April 8, 1941– Vivienne Westwood:

”I was very aggressive about punk in those days. It Was like a You’re-With-Me-Or-Against-Me kind of Thing.”

Dame Vivienne Isabel Westwood was a major force in bringing modern Punk and New Wave fashions into the mainstream, and she is an iconic modern female impresario.

Instead of holding a runway show for her Spring 2018 line, Westwood shot a three-minute film released across every digital platform the company can muster. It is posted below. The video shows studiedly shambled street-cast models lounging around Westwood’s studio and her London neighborhood, discussing the empowering nature of clothes, chattering about being recruits to the Westwood ”army” and flirting. Westwood explains: ”The collection has got a theme of war running through it”. She mentions a set of prayer flag playing cards she has designed and printed ”to save the whole world”, along with a hashtag #Don’tGetKilled, which these days seems like reasonable advice. The collection is very military inspired.

”I think clothes enhance your experience of life.”

Born Vivienne Isabel Swire in the tiny town of Tintwistle, Derbyshire, she came from humble beginnings. Her father was a cobbler, and her mother worked at a local cotton mill. When she was 17-years-old, Westwood worked at a local factory and enrolled at a teacher training school.

Westwood:

”I lived in a part of the country that had grown up in the Industrial Revolution. I didn’t know about art galleries…I’d never seen an art book, never been to the theatre.”

By the early 1960s, Westwood’s life seemed established. She had married Derek Westwood, with whom she had son, and was working as a teacher. Then everything changed. She met an art student named Malcolm McLaren and divorced her husband. With McLaren, Westwood had a second son. McLaren and Westwood started making jewelry on the side, and she discovered a new world of creative freedom and the power art had on the political landscape. Westwood:

”I latched onto Malcolm as somebody who opened doors for me. I mean, he seemed to know everything I needed at the time.”

In 1971, McLaren declared that he was seeking to:

”Rescue fashion from commodification by the establishment.”

With McLaren, 1976 via YouTube

At her shop with McLaren, “Let It Rock” in 1971

With Westwood, he opened a boutique on Kings Road in Chelsea called Let It Rock. While the name of the shop seemed to be in constant flux, it was changed five times, it was an important fashion center for the punk movement.

They sold ”Teddy Boy” clothing. Teddy Boy was a British subculture with young men wearing clothes that were inspired by the styles worn by dandies in the Edwardian period.

After a trip to NYC in 1972, McLaren’s music career took off when he became the manager for the Glam-rock band the New York Dolls. He designed their outfits and devised a hammer and sickle logo to help promote them. He developed the shock tactics that he used to far greater success later with the Sex Pistols.

By 1975, their shop had morphed into a subversive S&M boutique called Sex. McLaren:

 ”We set out to make an environment where we could truthfully run wild. On most days, the shop did not open until the evening and closed within a few hours. The goal was to sell nothing at all.”

The shop began to feature Westwood’s designs. When McLaren became manager of the Sex Pistols, it was Westwood’s designs that dressed the band and help it carve out its identity.

Westwood was one of the architects of Punk fashion. Westwood;

“I was messianic about Punk, seeing if one could put a spoke in the system in some way”.

Punk style included BDSM fashion, bondage gear, safety pins, bicycle or toilet chains on clothing and spiked dog collars/chokers as jewelry, as well as outrageous make-up and wildly colored hair. Essential design elements include the adoption of traditional elements of Scottish design such as tartan fabrics.

McLaren and Westwood’s first fashion collection was called Pirate. The partnership of McLaren and Westwood, underlined by the fact that both their names appeared on all labeling, showed collections in Paris and London with the thematic titles such as Savages (1981), Buffalo/Nostalgia Of Mud (1982), Punkature (late 1982), Witches (1983) and Worlds End (1984). After the partnership with McLaren was over, Westwood showed one more collection featuring their Worlds End label: Clint Eastwood (1985).

Westwood (R) 1976, via YouTube

But as the punk movement faded, Westwood was constantly ahead of the curve, not just influencing fashion, but often times dictating it. After her run with the Sex Pistols, Westwood went an entirely new direction with the Pirate collection, with frilly shirts and leather breaches. Her styles also included the mini-crini, an abbreviated version of the Victorian crinoline, and her frayed tulle and tweed suits that were big in the 1990s. She even proved it is perfectly possible to make a perfectly subversive statement with underwear.

Westwood’s unconventional style sense possesses an outspokenness and daring that demonstrates a certain level of fearlessness about herself and her work. In one famous incident, she impersonated Margaret Thatcher on the cover Tatler, a British magazine. She wore a suit Thatcher had ordered but not yet received, an act that made the Thatcher lose her shit.

Westwood’s influence is hard to deny. Twice she has been named British Designer of the Year and was awarded the O.B.E. (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 1992.

For more than 30 years, even after she had long made her fortune and fame, Westwood lived in the same small South London apartment, paying just $400 a month and riding her bicycle to her studio.

In 2010, McLaren was taken by Mesothelioma, a particularly gruesome cancer. He was just 64-years-old when he left this world. McLaren spent the last 30 years of his life trying to explain Punk:

”I never thought the Sex Pistols would be any good. But it didn’t matter if they were bad. That was the point.”

His son with Westwood, Joe Corré, owns and designs for his own store, Agent Provocateur, which also continues to produce and sell McLaren’s own thoroughly English clothing. In an ultimate act of the Punk aesthetic, Corré, set fire to his huge collection of punk rock memorabilia in November 2016. The collection, which he burned on the Thames on a rented barge, was valued at $7 million. It was a protest of Punk London, a yearlong retrospective, including concerts, exhibitions and films of Punk in the U.K., celebrating 40th anniversary of The Ramones first London performance. The event was sponsored by British Film Industry, the British Library, and the Museum of London with the blessings of Queen Elizabeth II. God Save The Queen!

Corré:

”The Queen giving 2016, the Year of Punk, her official blessing is the most frightening thing I’ve ever heard. Rather than a movement for change, punk has become like a fucking museum piece or a tribute act.” 

In 1992, Westwood married for a second time, to her assistant, Andreas Kronthaler, who is 25 years younger.

Westwood’s designs are featured in the film adaptation of the television series Sex And The City (2008). In the film, Carrie Bradshaw becomes engaged to Mr. Big. She is invited by her editor at Vogue to model wedding dresses, including a design made from Westwood. The dress is then sent to Bradshaw as a gift, with a handwritten note from Westwood herself, and Carrie decides to use the Westwood gown for her own wedding.

Westwood is a supporter of the Civil Rights organization, Liberty, for whom she designed a limited line of tee-shirts with the slogan ”I Am Not A Terrorist, Please Don’t Arrest Me”. In 2013, Westwood dedicated her fall collection to trans activist Chelsea Manning and at her fashion show she and her models wore large images of Manning with the word “TRUTH” under her picture.

For a woman who changed fashion, Westwood is surprisingly disinterested in the industry. Her line is now run by her husband. The one thing that seems to reoccupy her nowadays is Climate Change, and she is passionate. Westwood:

”We need to get rid of the rotten financial system. I do it shorthand: R-O-T-$. Rot $. The rotten financial system we’ve got is designed to create poverty. The only thing to replace the rotten financial system with is a green economy. The green economy is designed to create wealth opportunities; it’s designed to create liberty, equality, fraternity. What nature gives you is free, and no one should privately own. That’s the end of it.”

Photo via YouTube

Westwood on capitalism and clothing:

”Buy less, choose well, make it last”

Raven
Adele Bertei
Greg Scarnici
Rick Ferrari
Chris Wrobleski
Anouk
Biz Markie
Brenda Russell
Donita Sparks
Emma Caulfield
Ezra Koenig
Izzy Stradlin
John Schneider
Julian Lennon
Kane Hodder
Katee Sackhoff
Kirsten Storms
Patricia Arquette
Richard Hatch
Robin Wright
Taran Noah Smith
Taylor Kitsch
Vivienne Westwood

Public Domain

The First Female Movie Mogul. Fashion Icon. The biggest star in showbiz. In 1919, Pickford, with D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, and Douglas Fairbanks, formed the independent film production company, United Artists. Through UA, Pickford was able to produce and perform in her own films; she could also distribute them as she chose. In 1910-1920, she was making a million dollars a year, that’s $18 million in 2018 dollars. But, she still wasn’t allowed to vote!

Her first film was in 1909 and her final movie was in 1949. In 1916 alone, she made 50 films!

She was the second female to win an Oscar. Pickford appeared in over 250 film credits spanning from the inception of the art form through the introduction of talking pictures. Pickford controlled and shaped her own image by negotiating a producer’s contract in 1916 that gave her story and hiring rights over all of her pictures. She worked out of her co-owned Pickford-Fairbanks Studio, now known as The Lot in Hollywood, and employed a bevy of female support including the highest paid screenwriter of the time, Frances Marion.

Pickford was one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

With Fairbanks, photograph public domain

She invented the podcast, when in 1928, a broadcast from Pickford’s bungalow, featuring her husband Douglas Fairbanks, Chaplin, Norma Talmadge, Gloria Swanson, John Barrymore, and Dolores del Rio, speaking on her radio show to prove that they could meet the challenge of making talking pictures.

Self Portrait Christmas Card, National Portrait Gallery

Welsh born Agnus McBean (1904 – 1990) was stage-struck as a kid. He took up photography as a hobby in his teens. After being fired from his job as a salesman in a department store he worked doing set design and mask-making. He was asked to take production shots for Ivor Novello‘s musical The Happy Hypocrite with a very young Vivien Leigh. They were widely published, and he embarked on a career as a professional photographer.

After McBean died, his former boyfriend and muse Quentin Crisp wrote:

”McBean had dedicated his life to acting out a fragile illusion: He played that life was happy; that all women were lovely… even Edith Evans; he played that love was everywhere. This philosophy made him delightful to be with, impossible to talk to and infinitely sad… He worked hard for his success, and when it came he enjoyed it chiefly because it brought him into contact with so many illustrious people… he was genuinely star-struck. I never heard him speak badly of anyone well known. In his eyes, celebrity made anyone adorable. In spite of his success he remained mysteriously modest.”

Crisp, 1938, National Portrait Gallery

McBean’s photographs were different than the standard celebrity pictures. He was inspired by Surrealism, the cultural movement that began in the early 1920s in France. Artists used unnerving, illogical scenes, creating strange creatures from everyday objects, and developed techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself. But, McBean used it to be entertaining, even whimsical.

McBean was imprisoned for homosexual offences at the start of WW2, so unlike Cecil Beaton, he never served as a war photographer. It would have been interesting to see how he would have applied his Surrealist sensitivity to war photographs.

Beaton by McBean, National Portrait Gallery

His imprisonment for being gay did not bring an end to his career. He was able to pick-up his career where it left off, working in the theatre. But, when theatre work was drying-up, he turned to the new world of pop music. Shooting photos and art directing album covers provided for his income.

McBean’s works included the cover of The Beatles’ first album Please Please Me, and commissions by many important musical artists of the era. In 1969, he was back with The Beatles shooting the cover for Let It Be. In his later years he became more selective of the work he took and continued to explore Surrealism in his portrait photographs of celebs such as Audrey Hepburn, Laurence Olivier and Noël Coward.

By the 1970s, McBean had retired, but he was coaxed into a fresh round of activity by a resurgence of interest in his work in the style-conscious early 1980s. He shot the queen of punk and new romanticism Vivienne Westwood in 1988, wearing a furry crown, wearing an expression of hostility. He did photographs of hip-hop artists Run DMC for Details Magazine, which took McBean to NYC for the first time.

His work (pre and post-war) are now eagerly sought by collectors and his photographs are part of major collections in museums around the world.

Best of all are McBean’s innovative Christmas cards he created. For these images he constructed elaborate sets along with detailed props and miniatures, often taking weeks to produce the desired effect.

Christmas 1951, National Portrait Gallery

National Portrait Gallery

Christmas Card 1952, National Portrait Gallery

McBean showed how a startling art-form, Surrealism, could not only be harnessed in the service of beauty, but could also help to make people really think. Modernist austerity and postmodernist eclecticism both needed antidotes; McBean’s work took on the task. His portraits tell you next to nothing about his famous sitters, except that they are beautiful and highly accomplished. He was not interested in capturing his subject’s flaws and wrinkles, and any truth that comes through his artifice appears there entirely by accident. Quentin Crisp crisply summed up McBean’s way with his subjects:

“Everything was retouched but their titles.”

Coral Browne, National Portrait Gallery

National Portrait Gallery

Hepburn, 1950 National Portrait Gallery

Self Portrait, National Portrait Gallery

Self Portrait, National Portrait Gallery

Beatrice Lillie, 1940, National Portrait Gallery

1938, National Portrait Gallery

National Portrait Gallery

National Portrait Gallery

1941, National Portrait Gallery

Self Portrait as Neptune, National Portrait Gallery

No, Adam Rippon’s new boyfriend isn’t Sally Field’s son, Sam Greisman… or TV host Justin Sylvester who asked him out in a live TV interview.

It’s Finnish-born Jussi-Pekka Kajaala. See. Told you, you couldn’t guess. Rippon posted the above pic on Instagram with the caption,

“Good boys Finnish first.“

Rippon told People that he met him on Tinder. (It was People so he said Tinder, if he had told The Wow Report would he have said Grindr..? I’m kidding.)

Anyway, apparently the pair has been,

“been talking for the past seven months” but now they’ve “started to hang out a little bit more. Now that I’m even busier, I thought it was a better time [for us] to hang out.”

When Rippon was on Ellen earlier this month he said:

“I’m working with GLAAD’s youth engagement program and you know this is so important because we’re reaching these kids and they’re becoming activists in their community. When I was young, to have somebody out there that I could’ve looked up to, it would’ve made a world of difference, and it would’ve changed my life…

to have these young kids going out there and changing the world. This is something that I need to be a part of. It is really important for the youth out there to have somebody, and have a face on television and sports and every area, and say that there are gay people everywhere, and know you’re not alone.”

Now, Adam’s not alone either. Kajaala’s Instagram is engaging, let’s say. I’m going to stalk, uh, follow him and see where this relationship goes.

People with great passion can make the impossible happen

A post shared by Jussi-Pekka Kajaala (@jussipekkakajaala) on Feb 8, 2018 at 3:59am PST

Viikonloppuaamut

A post shared by Jussi-Pekka Kajaala (@jussipekkakajaala) on Oct 1, 2016 at 12:25am PDT

Croatia treated me well

A post shared by Jussi-Pekka Kajaala (@jussipekkakajaala) on Oct 19, 2017 at 8:45am PDT

Patience is power

A post shared by Jussi-Pekka Kajaala (@jussipekkakajaala) on Jul 4, 2017 at 4:13am PDT

From Los Angeles with love

A post shared by Jussi-Pekka Kajaala (@jussipekkakajaala) on Apr 5, 2018 at 3:09am PDT

(Photos, Instagram; via Pink News)

Chadwick Boseman hosed SNL this week and it was expected that he’d play his Black Panther character somehow.

And Black Jeopardy was the vehicle.

The recurring sketch has had white guest hosts confused by questions alongside black contestants who get it.

Reprising T’Challa, the Wakandan head of state, Boseman got it all wrong.

The question to,

“This is the reason your cable bill is in your grandmama’s name.”

T’Challa says,

“What is, to honor her as the foundation of the family?”

Black Jeopardy host Keenan Thompson says,

“Hmm, that’s really nice. It’s wrong, but it’s really nice.”

After some more wrong answers finally, T’Challa starts to get it. To the prompt,

“Your friend Karen wants to bring her potato salad to your cookout.“

T’Challa says,

“This woman, Karen, she is Caucasian, eh? She has her own recipe for potato salad?….I sense that this white woman does not season her food. And if she does, it is only with a tiny bit of salt, and no paprika. And she will probably add something unnecessary, like raisins.”

T’Challa yells for Karen to keep that bland potato salad to herself.

Watch.

(Photos, screengrab; via Wapo)

Diane Keaton‘s first apartment (that she bought) is at a pretty fancy address; The San Remo. It’s at 146 Central Park West and has been home to some pretty big stars too, like Glenn Close, Bono, Steve Martin, Dustin Hoffman, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore.

It’s on the market now, encompassing the entire floor with jaw-dropping park views from nearly every window. Keaton bought the apartment in the late 70s, after her star-making role in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. (Which is my favorite film of all time, btw.)

Keaton says it was,

“one of those remarkable apartments… There was a window on every side. Everything was wide open. That was the beginning of my true interest in architecture.”

Keaton now spends her time, when not on a movie set, designing and flipping houses, mostly on the West Coast. Her most recent home book (she’s written 3) The House that Pinterest Built, which was released last year.

The three-bedroom, three-bathroom residence has changed a bit since Keaton owned it and she wasn’t too happy about selling it either.

“I had to sell it because they wouldn’t let me rent it out. I still really resent that!”

Demi Moore famously tried to sell her triplex in the building for $75 million in 2015, before she finally accepting $45 million. (You can see it here.)

(Photos, Cororan, Diane Keaton; via The Observer)

The Hampel’s Gestapo mugshots, via Wikimedia Commons

Otto and Elise Hampel were an ordinary working-class couple in Berlin who resisted Nazism.

When Elise’s brother was killed in 1940, the couple were shocked out of their quiet, apolitical existence into an extraordinary act of defiance. They would leave anonymous postcards attacking Hitler around Berlin, a city paralyzed by terror, facing certain death if they were caught.

The postcards urged people to refuse to cooperate with the Nazis, to refrain from donating money, to refuse military service, and to overthrow Hitler. They were left in mailboxes, in stairwells and on walls.

The time that the Hampels were protesting was not the ideal time for resistance. They started their postcard campaign just after the Nazi victory in France, when Germans were really high on Hitler and the Nazi regime. The Hampels called for the downfall of Hitler, an unpardonable challenge at the time, when Hitler was much more popular than anything else about Nazi Germany. If there were any doubts about what the Nazis were doing, the German people often gave Hitler the benefit of the doubt. Once Germany was in a war, Hitler realized how favorable that would be to him.

Almost all the postcards were delivered to the authorities immediately. Nobody wanted to be caught in possession of such dangerous words. Their campaign lasted for two years before the Hampels were eventually betrayed by their neighbors and arrested.

Because of the sheer number of postcards and the long duration of their distribution, the Gestapo at first thought they were dealing with a larger group of resisters. Doubtless the Nazis were frustrated they were able to evade them for so long.

Otto declared to the Gestapo that he was happy to be able to protest against Hitler and the Third Reich. At trial at the Volksgerichtshof, the Nazi “People’s Court”, the Hampels were convicted of high treason. They were both decapitated on April 8, 1943 in Berlin.

Alone In Berlin (2016), starring Emma Thompson and Brendan Gleeson is a slightly fictionalized telling of the Hempel’s story.

Via YouTube

April 9, 1933 – Jean-Paul Belmondo:

”Charm is the ability to make others forget that you look as you do.”

I know… why would a guy who writes about LGBTQ figures, Gay Icons, divas and gay influence in culture want to consider Jean-Paul Belmondo. Well, he is a Style Icon, an accomplished actor and producer, and, well, I like looking at photographs of him. I feel certain I am not the only one that finds the French star to be de si très séduisant .

Belmondo is France’s Humphrey Bogart, or even closer, Steve McQueen. When Americans think of him, if they think of him at all, it is for his performance in Jean-Luc Godard‘s Nouvelle Vague classic À Bout de Souffle (1960). The sexy and stylish Belmondo has worked with the best French directors, including Louis Malle and François Truffaut. He is especially good when using his light comedic touch or working in action films where he routinely performed his own stunts. Yet, for some reason, he never really connected with the mainstream American audience.

Belmondo’s seemingly carefree chic and sensational style are no accident. Like McQueen, he has always had an innate sartorial talent that was way ahead of other actors, and he set the benchmark for classic French street style. In fact, he’s easily one of the most legendary Style Icons of our time.

Belmondo was a figure of style inspiration for young men in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s who refused to carry on dressing like their dads. His style legacy continues today with photographs of Belmondo from his Nouvelle Vague era apex still symbolic of a certain European casual attitude in dress and life.

Belmondo in “A Bout de Souffle”, via YouTube

His performances and his look in the Goddard classics À Bout de Souffle , Pierrot Le Fou (1965) and Une Femme Est Une Femme (1961), represent much of what made the Nouvelle Vague so appealing: a ruffled nonchalance, great suits and a rebellious spirit. Belmondo clearly never gave a fuck what you might think of him and when this attitude is mixed with a flawless wardrobe you get an all-time great Style Icon.

Belmondo’s style: trim trousers, leather loafers, blazers and sport coats, sunglasses, a fedora, a boxer’s broken nose and an ever-present cigarette. The main thing however is the attitude and this is something that you either have or you don’t have. It is a look that is completely carefree while still being fashion conscious, a feeling of adventure that comes from looking like you didn’t try too hard. Belmondo represents a style that is perfectly imperfect.

1962, via YouTube

With Seberg via YouTube

Via YouTube

“Breathless” via YouTube

Belmondo has an unwavering confidence that’s just shy of cocky. He is dashing in the simplest of clothes. He often wore a half-undone, ironed collared shirt, perfect for kick-starting a Vespa and driving off into a Parisian sunset.

He was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, near Paris. His father was a Sicilian sculptor and his mother a French painter, but in his youth, Belmondo seemed to be headed toward sports and not the arts. However, even with some success as a boxer, Belmondo ended up at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Paris.

After his graduation in 1956, Belmondo’s acting career properly began with performances at Theatre de’Atelier in Paris, including Jean Anouilh’s Medee.

He appeared in small roles in films such as À Pied, à Cheval et en Voiture (1957), Sois Belle et Tais-Toi! (1958) and Les Tricheurs (1958). Those early roles showed the unconventionally handsome Belmondo had undeniable charisma and he caught the eye of Godard.

À Pied, à Cheval et en Voiture (1957), via YouTube

“Breathless” with Jean Seberg, screen-shot via YouTube

Belmondo was cast in the lead role in Godard’s first feature film, À Bout de Souffle, released as Breathless in the USA. Belmondo’s character kills a policeman and then hides out with his American girlfriend (Jean Seberg ) while plotting his escape. It is a landmark film that shot Belmondo and Godard to stardom, with Belmondo being compared to James Dean.

Belmondo avoided being typecast by taking uncharacteristic roles in Vittorio De Sica’s La Ciociara (1960) opposite Sophia Loren, playing a gentle character. I was first exposed to Belmondo’s smoldering screen persona in this film. It was titled Two Women in the USA. The film won the Academy Award for Loren, the first time an acting Oscar had been given for a non-English-speaking performance, although Loren made the English dubbing for her role herself.

Belmondo plays a young intellect hiding out with his family in the hills of Italy as the last days of WW II and the Nazi occupation. Loren can barely contain her attraction to him and they enjoy a passionate romp on a grassy hill only to be interrupted by Nazis, who assassinate him for his non-fascista agenda.

“La Ciociara” with Loren, via youTube

His role was small, but very memorable, especially for a young gay boy who dreamed of a man who is a sensitive, but masculine, an artist who looks like a hot middle-weight boxer in professor glasses. It was a powerful punch, I know it.

I was just 17-years-old when I saw it on a double bill with Never On Sunday (1960) with Melina Mercouri at a revival house in San Francisco. I was really high at the time, and when I got back to my friends place on Nob Hill, I had to take a long shower. In bed that night, I tossed around the idea that perhaps by the time I was an ancient 45-years-old and a famous actor, I would have moved to Italy and would be living in a haunted, 500-year old castle that is covered in bougainvillea.

At this castle there works a young man who taught himself to read and write and is very, very moody. He is always shirtless as he tends to the olive trees as I watch from the bedroom of the castle. He would look exactly like Belmondo, with glasses and has a gorgeous head of hair that is all mussy. On his breaks, he sits in a shady corner of the barn, breaking a loaf of bread and dipping it into olive oil as he drinks cheap red wine and reads Sartre. At day’s end, he cleans up in the outdoor shower, which happens to be within viewing distance from my kitchen, if I stand on a box and lean over to the left. He always has a cigarette resting on his bottom lip and smokes it without using his hands. Maybe he would need a light, or some soap; and I could venture on out there with a towel.

Back to reality: Films like the popular Cartouche (1962) and L’Homme de Rio (1964) gave Belmondo the chance to prove himself in more physical roles.

Besides Godard, Belmondo also worked with the other leader of the French New Wave, François Truffaut, appearing opposite Catherine Deneuve in La Sirène du Mississipi (1969). However, Belmondo began to focus more on the action films and comedies, even if he was a dramatic actor whose maturity was his strong suit.

There were Hollywood offers in the 1960s, but Belmondo turned them down. His possible scripts stacked up and he did not want to jeopardize his success in Europe by attempting to speak English.

He returned to performing on the stage in 1987, after a 26-year absence, in a production of Kean, adapted by Jean Paul Sartre from the novel by Alexander Dumas. Belmondo:

“I did theater for ten years before going into movies and every year I planned to go back. I returned before I became an old man.”

Kean was a hit, running for a year. In 1990, he played the title role in Cyrano de Bergerac in Paris, another highly successful production.

He worked in the theatre while continuing to appear occasionally in films. For his performance in Itinéraire d’un Enfant Gâté (1988), Belmondo received a César Award (France’s equivalent to the Academy Award).

2016,BBC via YouTube

In 2008, after recovering from a stroke he suffered in 2001, he returned to films in De Sica’s Un Homme et son Chien (2008). Instead of trying to work around his physical limitations, he played the character as having the same disabilities. The bittersweet story is about an old retiree who lives in a maid’s room in the house of his lover, a rich widow. He is forced out onto the street with his dog after the widow breaks off the relationship, as she decides to marry again. With no home or way to make money, the man and dog wander the streets of Paris.

Belmondo and Anny Duperey in “Stavisky” (1974) via YouTube

Belmondo remains a cultural icon and the epitome of Gallic cool. His photographs still make my heart ache. Check out his performance in Stavisky (1974) directed by Alain Resnais, it is tres, tres bon.

Kristina Hill
Chris Skura
Albert Hammond, Jr.
Austin Peck
Cynthia Nixon
Dennis Quaid
Elle Fanning
Gerard Way
Hugh Hefner
Jay Baruchel
Jazmine Sullivan
Jenna Jameson
Jesse McCartney
Joe Scarborough
Keisha Knight Pulliam
Kristen Stewart
Leighton Meester
Marc Jacobs
Martin Margiela
Michael Learned
Paulina Porizkova
Rachel Stevens
Yoanna House

Todd Brassner & his Warhol portrait, date unknown.

That someone was Todd Brassner, who was an art dealer with health problems and a 2015 bankruptcy. His now burned apartment contained more than $3 million worth of artwork and other collectibles, including a ’75 portrait of Brassner by Andy Warhol.

According to The New York Times,

Brassner, 67, lived alone amid a collection of about 100 vintage electric guitars, 40 guitar amplifiers dating to the 1930s, 150 ukuleles and artwork by Robert Indiana, Mati Klarwein, Jack Kerouac and others.

Friends of Mr. Brassner said he had been trying to move since the election of President Trump in 2016, which brought increased security and activity to the building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, but he could not sell his 50th-floor apartment, which he estimated to be worth $2.5 million in 2015.

“It haunts me,” said Stephen Dwire, 67, a musician and music producer who had been friends with Mr. Brassner since they were 14-year-olds in Harrison, N.Y., in Westchester County. “He said, ‘This is getting untenable,’” Mr. Dwire said. “It was like living in an armed camp. But when people heard it was a Trump building, he couldn’t give it away.”

Officials from the Fire Department declined to comment on the damage to Mr. Brassner’s extensive holdings. On Sunday, they had not determined the cause of the blaze, which also injured four firefighters.

“We send our prayers and deepest condolences to Mr. Brassner’s family and loved ones,” a spokeswoman for the Trump Organization said on Sunday.

Mr. Brassner’s apartment in Trump Tower, built in 1983, did not have sprinklers, which were not required. In 1999, after two deadly fires in high-rise apartments, New York City enacted legislation requiring sprinkler systems in most new residential buildings and existing properties that were extensively renovated.

In the 80s, developers like Trump, fought against installing sprinklers saying they would add $4 per square foot to the cost and were unnessary. The NYC Fire Department, said on Sunday in a statement that residents in a fireproof building, like Trump Tower, were safest inside their apartments rather than evacuating.

The building was a prestigious address for dealing art for Brassner and Jodi Stuart, who was Brassner’s first girlfriend, said he used to live large.

“You never saw him without his Jaguar. We used to go to the Fillmore East and Max’s Kansas City. Todd got right in with the Factory and Andy Warhol. He picked em: Jimi Hendrix, Andy Warhol, Jaguars, beautiful homes, beautiful women.”

Brassner was one of two sons born to an art dealer and lighting manufacturer named Jules Brassner, who introduced him to Warhol.

Stuart Pivar, a collector who was very close to Warhol said,

“They were like two 14-year-olds, seeing the world. And he was very knowledgeable about pop art.“

But in recent years, Brassner started leaving the apartment less and less, and he declined offers from friends to visit or bring him food.

Art critic Blake Gopnik wanted to interview Brassner for a biography of Warhol and said that he set up a number of meetings,

“But he always made some complicated excuse.”

And Pivar said that Brassner’s struggle with drugs brought him into contact with,

“shady characters, who snookered him out of masterpieces.”

Ms. Stuart said she thought Brassner did not want his friends to see him in declining health.

“We tried very hard to meet with him or have lunch or dinner with him. He wanted us to know the Todd that was before. Not the Todd who was impaired. He suffered a lot.”

You could argue (and I’ll bet that lawyers will) that Brassner died because of Trump himself. Trump lobbied against installing sprinklers in his own building which would have extinguished the blaze and because of the Trump brand and insanity he brought to Trump Tower, Brassner was unable to sell his apartment. Trump joked during the campaign that he could kill someone on Fifth Avenue and his supporters wouldn’t care. The universe has a sick sense of humor sometimes.

Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2018

Friends of Todd Brassner remember the man who died in a fire at Trump Tower on Saturday https://t.co/69sA8IQbf8

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 9, 2018

Trump fiercely opposed a bill that would have mandated fire sprinklers throughout Trump Tower, where a fire left one man dead on Saturday. https://t.co/gvhgRkcoAW

— HuffPost (@HuffPost) April 9, 2018

(Photos, Facebook, Twitter; via NY Times)

Photo via YouTube

Marc Jacobs has never had more control over himself, his body, the way he lives his life or presents his brand. When he was 47-years-old, the designer revealed his dramatic transformation by going from schlump to hottie. I could look like Jacobs if I followed his example of consuming only vegan food and working out with a personal trainer for three hours a day, seven days a week. Again, proving my theory that it is easy to be beautiful when you are very, very rich. Jacobs still smokes Marlboro Lights. An addict since being a teenager, Jacobs now says that he is done with drugs, including heroin and cocaine, after a stint in rehab in 2007.

Somewhat indiscreet on social media, Jacobs ”accidentally” leaked a picture of his naked butt on Instagram last year, after which he responded with a Tweet saying:

”Yeah… I’m a gay man. I flirt and chat with guys online.”

This past fall, Jacobs somehow spilled the beans on Instagram about hosting an orgy (if 10 guys is considered an orgy), that was organized on his Grindr account. I appreciated that he didn’t deny or apologize. Instead he wrote:

“Why not? I don’t have any hang-ups about those things. I don’t really care. Who’s kidding who? I’ve talked about having hair transplants, I’ve talked about my drug problems, I’ve talked about my drinking problems, I’ve talked about sex. I just think it’s so much better to be honest about those things. I always find it very dubious and I don’t really trust people who deny human instincts.”

Marc Jacobs International’s Twitter information includes the caption: ”It’s yours to try”. What a perfect slogan!

Marc Jacobs Spring 2018 advertising campaign was described as a fashion story by Jacobs:

”I see it as series of connected events; a visual narrative. It is a personal diary of people who have and continue to inspire me and open my mind to different ways of seeing and thinking. The spectrum of individuals photographed represent a celebration of my America. The people featured in our campaign personify this collection of fashion through their individuality. They embody and celebrate the spirit and beauty of equality.”

Last week, World of Wonder writer James St. James wrote about how Jacobs proposed to his boyfriend Charly Defrancesco at a Chipotle in NYC with the help of a flashmob dancing to the Prince’s Kiss.

Jacobs wanted to throw a surprise birthday dinner for Defrancesco, on Saturday night at The Mercer Hotel. Jacobs didn’t know it, but Defrancesco was hard at work planning a surprise party for the designer all the while (Defrancesco’s birthday was on April 4, while Jacobs’ is today).

Among the many guests were: Naomi Campbell, Lil’ Kim, Sofia Coppola, Debbie Harry, Bette Midler, Cindy Sherman, all gathered at Submercer. When Defrancesco led Jacobs into the club, the guests yelled ”Surprise!”. Jacobs was confused by finding his own friends and not Defrancesco’s, and he was convinced that he was at the wrong spot.