Sixties Cinema Style: Lisa Perry

One of my favorite fashion designers is Lisa Perry. Her look is contemporary yet Jackie O with a twist and reminds me of one of my all time favorite design periods in film history, the sixties.

It's as if Perry channelled Doris Day, Audrey Hepburn,  a touch of Julie Christie in Darling (1965), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)  and a dash of Faye Dunaway in Thomas Crown Affair (1968). Her interiors and color palette personify sixties mod in every sense of the word and notes people often remarked  "This is where Barbarella meets Austin Powers" of her 2002 NYC apartment.

Perry's Dining Room interior, 2002

Perry's beachfront house, present day

Simple yet bold colors are the hallmarks of a Perry interior

Her sixties inspired room complete with shag circular carpet

 Saarinen inspired sets from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey

The Chicago native is said to be an aficionado and collector of sixties vintage couture (particularly Courreges, the iconic designer whose look was a mix of couture and sci fi) and grew up in a house filled with Saarinen and Marimekko. Schooled in textile technology -- and no doubt osmosis as her family owned a textile company --  the fashion designer has completely modernized the crisp primary colors and three dimensional shapes of the sixties into a timeless collection for our closets as well as our homes. 

Perry's  Block dress

and Op Art A line from the 2009 collection

Style icon and legendary actress Audrey Hepburn

Givenchy's sketches for Hepburn in Charade (1963)

Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen in The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Doris Day and Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk (1959)

Julie Christie on set with director

John Schlesinger in Darling (1965)

Perry's flagship store in New York's Soho

For more on Lisa Perry, check out her website here.

Photo Credits: Lisa Perry, Vogue Living Houses Gardens People, Margaret Herrick Library, 

MGM, United Artists. 

re-de-sign makes its debut

While it's not exactly Cinema Style, it is cinema style related...

My book re-de-sign: New Directions for Your Interior Design Career (Fairchild Books/Conde Nast) debuts today. The book surveys the field of interior design, providing a look at the newly expanded role of the interior designer, featuring a variety of areas from residential and contract design to product, furniture and lifestyle design. Designers of all walks of life are profiled from Martha Stewart and Michael Graves to Alexa Hampton, Hickory Chair, Sally Sirkin Lewis and many more. Sherri Donghia very graciously penned the book's foreword. 

I also feature the Designer in Hollywood, covering the world of Production Designers, Set Decorators and the interior designer on television. Profiles include Will and Grace's  Emmy Award winning production designer Glenda Rovello and 24's Set Decorator Cloudia Rebar (also an interior designer and on her ninth season of the heart pounding show). Design television hosts include  Constance Ramos of HGTV (and a veteran of ABC's Extreme Makoever) and Sarah Richardson of Fine Living Channel's Room Service and Design Inc. (an addictive reality show about the day in the life of a design firm).  The work of Set Decorators Andrew Baseman (also a designer in New York City) of The Nanny Diaries, Kinsey and the much anticipated Eat, Pray, Love and Bryan Scott Venegas of ABC's Brothers and Sisters are also showcased.

Baseman's Park Avenue interiors for The Nanny Diaries (Weinstein Company, 2007)

Actress Laura Linney above

Venegas decorates the sets for ABC's popular series Brothers and Sisters. Shown above are actresses Sally Fields and Rachel Griffiths in the Walker family kitchen

 and shot below,  living room.

Rebar's Oval Office for 24

...and the FBI offices from the past season

Sarah Richardson of Room Service and Design Inc.

Ramos and cast of ABC's Extreme Makeover

And while I wish I could take credit for the cover, the fabulous interior belongs to none other than Frank de Biasi of Frank de Biasi Interiors who informed me the Scavullo silkscreen of Gloria Vanderbilt is one of three. The former Manhattan apartment of de Biasi and Gene Mayer was featured in a ten page spread in the World of Interiors (October 2001) as well as New York Magazine (October 2000) and has generated alot of buzz. de Biasi was formerly head of Interior Design for Peter Marino and Mayer heads a product design company Doug and Gene Mayer. For more information, contact Frank de Biasi Interiors, 79 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012. Phone 212-431-1222.

The book is targeted to both students and designers and is at textbook prices on Amazon. I plan to offer a reduced price to the trade and please contact me if you are interested.

Photo Credits: Cloudia Rebar, Sarah Richardson, ABC, Weinstein Company, Fairchild Books

Book Cover Photo: Corbis/Fernando Bengoehea

Cinema Style at the Office

I was watching Morley Safer's fascinating  Sixty Minutes piece on Anna Wintour recently and marveled at how closely her "power office" resembled the one (as it was intended) in The Devil Wears Prada (2006). (For the uninitated, the film was the loosely based adaptation of the novel of the same about a young assistant's travails working for a powerful NYC fashion editor).

Realizing a visit to the infamous Vogue editor's domain would be highly unlikely, production designer Jess Gonchor worked off a photo found online. The result was the ultimate power office -- imposing and authoritative  with sleek clean lines and a mixture of beiges and whites with touches of black. The octagonal mirror, photographs, artwork and anal retentively organized glass top desk are very similar. Apparently the goal was to make the "Runway" magazine offices look like a "makeup compact".  (It was reported Wintour had her office redecorated shortly after the film's release).

Wintour at her Vogue offices above, Streep as Miranda Priestly below

Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep

Other films with notable office sets effectively used to support the characters were...

 Gordon Gekko's office in Wall Street (1986)

A remake is in the works with Douglas and Shia LeBeouf in 

Money Never Sleeps with Oliver Stone at the directing helm

Sets for Five and Ten (1931)

The offices of an Walter Huston's automobile tycoon in Dodsworth (1936)

Spencer Tracy in Desk Set (1957)

Photo credits: Fox 2000, Margaret Herrick Library, Twentieth Century Fox

Hitchcock Style

While it's often hard to equate the legendary rotund British director-auteur-master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock with the word style, his films certainly gave us some great moments in fashion, glamour and interiors.

His penchant for sophisticated blondes is the stuff of legends -- from the tortured Tippi Hedren in The Birds (1958) and Marnie (1961) , Kim Novak in Vertigo (1958) and The Wrong Man (1956) and Doris Day in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) to Grace Kelly in Rear Window (1954) , Dial M for Murder (1954)  and To Catch a Thief (1955), Janet Leigh in Psycho (1960) and Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest (1959) -- icy, cold, unattainable, chic and often heroines turned victims, he never met a blonde he didn't like. (One can look at  Suzanne Pleshette's fate in The Birds to see how brunettes fared).

Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren on the set of Marnie

Kim Novak in Vertigo who Hitch wanted to turn into "the new Grace Kelly"

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in Edith Head's designs  for the film To Catch a Thief

Que Sera Sera: Jimmy Stewart and Doris Day in The Man Who Knew too Much

Grace Kelly on set

Whether hero or cad or a combination thereof, Hitch liked his male characters handsome, dapper, and above all, well dressed.

Sean Connery takes a break in between Bond films to star in Marnie

Nothing says south of France like an Ascot in the fifties

Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief

The woman responsible for it all was Academy Award winning costume designer Edith Head who designed everything from Tippi's shredded suit in The Birds to Grace Kelly's memorable black and white cocktail dress in Rear Window. More on Ms. Head's contributions in a future post.

From Jimmy Stewart's studio apartment  in Rear Window, Norman Bates house to Rebecca's Manderlay, a Hitch set is designed for suspense, anxiety, action and danger.

The Psycho House on the Universal backlot

His set for the film Rope (1948) was ultra modern and would fit in with today's standards. With its panoramic windows, the Manhattan penthouse apartment was completely designed for city viewing  and the leather sofa  is custom made to fit the entire length of the windows. In a classic Hitch move, look for his profile on one of the illuminated signs.

Hitch with the cast of Rope

James Mason as Phillip Vandamm  in a Long Island for North by Northwest

Even Hitch's symbolism is stylish. The film Vertigo is of course, based on images of a swirl design. We see it in the various motifs... Jimmy Stewart/Scott McKittreck's office,         

the famous bell tower...

Movie Poster for Vertigo

and even Kim Novak's classic french twist has a swirl...

Hitch on set with a sense of humor

For the DEFINITIVE book on the subject, read French film critic Jean-Pierre Dufreigne's book Hitchcock Style by Assouline, 2004. A must have for any Hitchcock fanatic.

Photo Credits: Hitchcock Style, Assouline, 2004.