The New Nice?
Being a bitch has long been the fastest track to becoming the center of attention. Now suddenly there’s a spate of road maps for sale: Cameron Tuttle’s The Bad Girl’s Guide to Getting What You Want, for example, helps you find your inner bitch (that is, score more free drinks, gracefully escape humdrum office tasks, etc.), while in Kiss My Tiara, author Susan Jane Gilman addresses the fashion and lifestyle issues facing smart-mouths. (Sample chapter heading: “Niceness: Barf.”) And where would a bad girl be without her mean-spirited fixings? From Dirty Girl, there’s a whole line of nasty beauty products, including Total Bitch Lip Balm and Total Bitch Body Cream (at Henri Bendel and Ricky’s). So it figures that Bitch author Elizabeth Wurtzel is all set to ride this wave: She’s got a new book due out in December.
AMY SWIFT
Va-Va-Vroom
Shoppers, rev your engines: Motorcycle boots are coming back for fall, but your old Fryes aren’t going to cut it – the new boots bear little resemblance to the clunky clodhoppers of your headbanging days. Some of the flat-heeled styles – like the streamlined, horsey Tod’s, and the more over-the-top fur-and-suede Chanel boot – are swank and hog-friendly. But most of the new tough stuff travels better by Town Car. By day, try Calvin Klein’s stacked-heel calf-high numbers (pictured); at night, cool your heels in Bottega Veneta’s spiky ankle boots or Sergio Rossi’s fetish-worthy satin-and-leather stiletto style. Or bag the boots and just buy the straps: Prada’s will buckle onto anything – and, more important, buckle off for that last-minute lunch with the boss.
SHYAMA PATEL
Magnetic Attraction
Magnetism is certainly not a subject new to beauty, but now the force is being harnessed for use in – what else? – facials. At Yasmine Djerradine (30 East 60th Street; 212-588-1771), a thin layer of iron mixed with essential oils is massaged into the pores. Then a magnet is passed over the area, lifting off the metal along with impurities lodged in the skin. At Dorit Baxter (45 West 57th Street; 212-371-4542), magnetic balls are rolled over your face and then your spine while you lie on a magnetic pad under an infrared blanket. Baxter explains that this draws on the body’s own energy field, stimulating new cell growth. “The treatment is very gentle; people always fall asleep. But by the time they leave, they are full of energy,” reports Baxter. Let’s hope they aren’t drawn straight to the refrigerator?
BETH LANDMAN KEIL
Smart Set
Lutz & Patmos
There’s a lot of cashmere in this town. But Tina Lutz and Marcia Patmos, who met five years ago designing Barneys private label, felt something was missing. “There was nothing modern,” Lutz says. So, after exhaustive research that took the designers to just about every mill in Italy, Lutz & Patmos was born: a collection of meticulously designed cashmere sweaters and scarves ranging in weight from Tokyo (two-ply in featherweight yarn) to Kilimanjaro (a dense sixteen-ply), with subtle touches – flared sleeves, small shoulders, tapered seams – that keep the sweaters from looking too House of Scots. “We also wanted to do great colors,” Patmos says, and so they stock everything from warm oatmeal to fluorescent green. The summer-weight cashmere is for sale at Barneys and Turpan in East Hampton, and by special order at 212-463-9110. But whatever you do, don’t go looking for that dread cashmere perennial: “We are,” says Patmos, “the no-classic-twin-set girls.”