The Name ‘Kanye West’ Means Nothing to Vivienne WestwoodShe thinks he may be famous in America or something. Plus, Ruth Madoff was spotted faxing documents at a deli and Sharon Stone and Andre Balasz were seen canoodling. In the gossip roundup.
Ally Hilfiger on the ‘New Generation of Creative People’When last we checked in with Ally Hilfiger, daughter of Tommy and appealing teenage star of 2003’s Simple Life precursor Rich Girls, she was living a bohemian life between her Manhattan apartment and Berlin and working on a series of paintings featuring the number 8. “It’s a lucky number for me,” she explained. Tomorrow night, the fruits of her creative period will be on display at the Chelsea Art Museum, as part of a multimedia installation she collaborated on with her friend and painting partner Izzie Gold, otherwise known as Francesco Chivetta, a 26-year-old D.J. and multimedia artist who describes his work as “Warhol-esque Lichtenstein with a slight case of Basquiat.”
The other day we spoke to them about the show over the phone. Ally was sick. “I sound like a dead cow,” she said. “My throat is going to fall out of my ass.”
neighborhood watch
You Aren’t the Only Person Who Comes Home to Find Random People Smoking in Your StairwellClinton Hill: Beware of undesirables who sneak into your apartment building to smoke butts, do drugs, copulate, urinate, and drink coffee. Because it’s happening. [Clinton Hill Blog]
East Village: The latest bank branch hopes that if it puts up a big photo of the hood in Ye Olden Days, no one will notice that it’s filled mostly with bank branches now. [Vanishing New York]
Flushing: Local Quaker farmers demand freedom of worship! Well, they did in 1657. But the tatty document in which they listed their demands, called “The religious Magna Carta of the New World,” is on display up in here. [NYT]
gossipmonger
City Free of ‘Sex and the City’ Movie! …For NowMets pitcher John Maine asked an attractive clubgoer at Touch if he could try on her black dress in the bathroom. Sex and the City wrapped up shooting in New York with a party at the Royalton Hotel. Bill Clinton swapped seats with Oscar de la Renta so he could sit next to Penélope Cruz instead of Anna Wintour at the Spanish Institute Gold Medal Gala. Lame duck Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz is annoyed that his name wasn’t included in a recent Post article about 2009 gubernatorial contenders. Tommy Hilfiger made $8.5 million when he sold the East Hampton home he bought a year and a half ago for $26.5 million. Bobby Cannavale dropped his 47-year-old girlfriend for 22-year-old Alison Pill. Fans of Law & Order: SVU are annoyed that Richard Belzer doesn’t have as much screen time as he once did.
party lines
Blake Lively Gives Good GossipHordes of rich famous people arrived at the Lexington Avenue Armory last night to shop Seventh on Sale, where money spent on donated designer goods goes to charity. Among the first to arrive to get the good stuff were Gayle King, who brought walking shoes in her purse to change into post–photo op, and Tommy Hilfiger, who was there to shop for his girlfriend. “I could shop, but I don’t know what I would buy,” Hilfiger said. “I’ll buy whatever she wants.” Gossip Girl Blake Lively planned to call her business manager to find out her spending limit. Looking adorable in a bright-yellow dress, she was jumping up and down with excitement when we asked her what she wanted to buy (a handbag! Oh, to be a pretend-teenager again). We detained her for a bit more dish about how she researched for her role on the greatest show of all time. She said Gossip Girl’s creator Josh Schwartz recorded interviews with real-life Upper East Side girls. And she got to listen to the tapes! Which story resonated most? “One of the girls, her father was a big investment banker or something. And he was in a meeting with another man, and this man was going on and on about this hot young girl that he’d been dating and hooking up with. And it ended up being this investment banker’s daughter,” Lively said. “She got in a lot of trouble. The guy was like 42.” Gasp! Ewww! What happened to the guy? “A slap on the hand basically.” Um, thank God we have the show, then, where something like that would be rewarded with a slap and a hand job. From a teenager. —Amy Odell
To find out what Marc Jacobs, Parkey Posey, Dita Von Teese and more said at Seventh on Sale, read Party Lines.
Related: ‘Project Runway’ Scores a Touchdown With New York Giant Michael Strahan [Vulture]
Earlier: The entirety of our giddy Gossip Girl coverage
company town
Tony Blair Sells Out Rupert MurdochMEDIA
• Tony Blair sold his memoir for $9 million to Knopf, something of a surprise since Blair has long been tight with Murdoch, known for offering advances so big they resemble campaign donations through HarperCollins. [Media Mob/NYO]
• A democratic member of the FCC requested an investigation of Murdoch’s Dow Jones deal, arguing the merger consolidates too many powerful outlets in one less than trustworthy hand. [B&C]
• Bloggingheads, everyone’s favorite lo-fi insider-y political fight club, reached a content-sharing agreement with the Times. [HuffPo]
bons mots
Ally Hilfiger Says She’s Not Rich, But She Is Brain-DeadTommy Hilfiger’s daughter Ally isn’t just a Rich Girl. Honest! “It’s a label I’ve been trying to run away from my entire life. It isn’t who I am!” the former star of MTV’s Rich Girls told Page Six Magazine this weekend, in an excruciating cover story that exists for reasons totally unclear, since 22-year-old Ally isn’t really up to much of anything these days, and in fact may never do anything again. “You know what’s cool? I don’t have to work, because I saved a lot of money from summer jobs and from the MTV show,” she tells the magazine. Mm-hmm. She did work once though, on a show for Plum TV. “I might have gotten paid for it,” she says. “I don’t remember. My memory’s very poor. I’m so brain-dead. This is why people shouldn’t smoke pot.” Ha! But if Ally’s not just a Rich Girl, then who is she?
intel
Fun With Fundrace: Park Slope for Obama, ‘Burg for Hillary, Batali for John Edwards, and More
We told you yesterday about Fundrace 2008, the fun new feature on the Huffington Post that lets you track people’s political contributions by name or by neighborhood. What we didn’t expect was that the thing would prove terribly addictive. Here’s a sampling of what we found after a full day of playing with it:
• Completely random celeb-name search reveals Mario Batali’s $1,000 contribution to John Edwards (as well as the chef’s home address), Tommy Hilfiger’s $2,300 donation to Barack Obama, and the supposedly apolitical Sandy Weill’s $4,600 gift to Hillary Clinton.
