SFBayStyle

Change Starts With I: Local Jewelry Designer Stacey Lorinczi Designs The Irma Bracelet

When San Francisco jewelry designer Stacey Lorinczi was asked to create a bracelet as a fundraiser for the documentary film, Recovering Irma, she immediately thought of the yellow Lance Armstrong  bracelets. Although Stacey is not a fan of the ubiquitous rubber bands she recognizes the positive impact they have made. "I started wondering how can we design something that is an essential marketing tool and make it fantastic piece of jewelry."

Fantastic it is. A simple black band of leather with a sterling silver "I" stylishly says, I take a stand against domestic violence.

Save the Date - Meet Actress Tippi Hedren and Support The Roar Foundation

Join Hollywood memorabilia collector Barry Barsamian in welcoming actress Tippi Hedren to San Francisco's Metreon on Thursday, April 29, 6pm. Ms. Hedren will attend the exhibit Hollywood Legends: The Barry Barsamian Collection and unveil from her own personal wardrobe an original Edith Head gown.

View Barry's collection of some of the most famous fashions from motion pictures and the personal wardrobes of the worlds greatest stars, including:

Judy Garland
Audrey Hepburn
Elizabeth Taylor
Marilyn Monroe
Clark Gable
Cary Grant

Meet Ms. Hedren and view her fabulous Edith Head original gown up close.

Enjoy special performances by Linda Bulgo as Judy Garland
and Doug Wilson, the Singing Cop.

(A Portion of the Proceeds Will Benefit The Roar Foundation through Barry Barsamian)

Thursday, April 29th, 2010
6:00 - 8:30 pm
Champagne and Appetizers

Metreon
101 Fourth Street, Ground Level
San Francisco, CA 94103

$60.00 Movie Star
$100.00 Silent Film Star
$150.00 Academy Award Winner

Please make your check payable to: Barry Barsamian & mail to:
4326 Detroit Avenue,
Oakland, CA 94619
All checks must be mailed by April 25th, 2010

 

 

 

 

Hollywood Legends: The Barry Barsamian Collection at the Metreon

 

Click here to see images of the exhibit

Back in the day, Easter for most kids meant a visit from The Bunny, colored hard boiled eggs and perhaps a basket of jelly beans. But for Hollywood memorabilia collector Barry Barsamian, Easter was the one opportunity he had to watch his favorite movie on television – The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland. “There were no videos or DVDs in those days,” Barry explains. Every year he watched the 1938 classic film, every year becoming more and more intrigued with Hollywood, movies and movie stars. When in 1976 Barry had the chance to purchase one of the dresses Judy Garland wore in the film, he jumped right on it and he’s been collecting Hollywood memorabilia ever since. Now through May, Barry has opened up his collection of over 100 items for a public exhibit at the Metreon in San Francisco.

Among Barry’s Hollywood treasures are:

• Fur trimmed coat belonging to Marilyn Monroe circa 1950s.
• Youthful dress worn by Judy Garland in a dance scene with Fred Astaire in the 1947 film Easter Parade.
• Joan Crawford’s costume jewelry and Lucy Ball’s dyed wig from the movie Yours Mine and Ours.
• One-of-a-kind Donna Karan black dress specially made for Barbra Streisand.
• Blue chiffon dress worn by Elizabeth Taylor.
• Phyllis Diller’s 1960s chandelier dress.

Move Over Access Hollywood. Here's Red Carpet Bay Area!

Saturday night will be an exciting night for our friends at Red Carpet Bay Area. At 7:30, KRON4 is showing the first ever episode of their new show. Listed as a "brand new magazine-style program highlighting the region’s unique culture, personality and style," Marybeth La Motte, Mark Hamburg, Greg Marasso, Jan Mabry and Cory Miller bring us an inside look at some of the incredible events that take place around the Bay Area.

This week's episode will showcase Japantown, Charleston Pierce and a Silicon Valley benefit gala. For thirty minutes, viewers can explore new aspects of San Francisco Bay Area life. The show leads into Entertainment Tonight and each show includes six segments "exploring fun new places to dine and shop and explore as well as the local red carpet scene."

“We’ll present some amazing moments from a variety of red carpet gala events along with special visits to some of the region’s most unique attractions in a lively format that captures the essence of the Bay
Area,” says La Motte.

Please join us in congratulating Red Carpet Bay Area and enjoy the show!

Ginnifer Goodwin Wears Art Students' Design to EMA Awards

Talk about luck - Ginnifer Goodwin wore students' design to the 20th Anniversary Environmental Media Association Awards, and now those students can add celebrity stylist to their resumes. A group of Academy of Art University students, Priscilla Guimarais, Kumiko Haruyama, Nui Tanapornwattana, Audrey Wang and Tramaine Tillman, designed a collection of sustainable dresses for a class project. To them it was just another project for school, and a fun one at best.

Little did they know one of their sustainable designs -- a strapless dress made from hospital scrubs with three front ruffled tiers that fell just above the knee and a black sash -- would be worn by an actress. And not just worn anywhere, but to a red carpet event. The students created an entire collection for their project, so maybe, after the press from Goodwin, they'll have requests for orders. All of the outfits in 1Oak (which stands for one of a kind) are made from start to finish with sustainable practices. The hospital scrubs used to make Goodwin's dress were treated, dyed and pleated using sustainable practices.

So for the students out there, this just goes to show that some homework assignments shouldn't be blown off...you never know who you might impress.

Spring into Action - Partners Ending Domestic Abuse 17th Annual Gala

San Francisco Police receive 20-50 domestic abuse calls EVERY DAY

Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women in the United States

Twenty percent of pregnant women are battered

These are some of the startling facts that 250 attendees learned at the Partners Ending Domestic Abuse Spring into Action Gala held at San Francisco's Four Seasons Hotel on May 1st.

Sex, Love and Shoes

If it wasn't obvious by the crowd approval throughout the film, the post show conversations said it all: fans are loving the Sex and the City movie. Ignore the negative reviews: those are written by people who either don't understand the show or critique just because they can. It's a good film, bordering on great. (I need to see it a few more times to make a complete assessment, a tough assignment to be sure, but I'm up to the challenge.)

One review I read asked the question: why did they feel they needed to make a movie? I thought that was obvious. Because they can! Why not, when they can make a mint and please fans all over the world? I understand that question actually because I asked it myself, feeling they did such a good job tying up the show at the end, why mess with a good thing? But they found a way to satisfy giving us just what we wanted - lots of sex, love, and shoes.

Sex & the City Movie Begins Friday

Everyone already knows this, but we thought it was a nice public service announcement to remind fans of Sex & the City that now is the time to hop onto Fandango or Moviefone and grab tickets before they're all gone... it starts Friday at 12:01am.

Link Love - Great SF Bay Area Style Blogs

At SFBayStyle, we love everything and everyone who covers what our five senses enjoy in the whole of the Bay Area - from our daily haunts to our weekend spots, we applaud everything about our fashion, arts, sights, sounds, occasions, nibbles and giggles. What makes our eclectic style so fun is the people and the culture created by those people. So we like to highlight other publications - online and off - that share our feelings about how lucky we are to live, work and play here.

Today, I just wanted to point out some of the other blogs that cover these things locally. (They are always available by link in our blogroll in the right column under 'Local Style'.)

• Fashionist - Mai takes pictures of people around town who look great and why she likes their style
• 7x7's Glamwatch Blog - Nerissa Pacio, Hayley E. Kaufman, and Sydney Pfaff write every other day or so about great local fashion and events (make sure to check out their post from the Academy of Art show this past weekend)
• SFLUXE - Damion Matthews just relaunched his site with a new, fabulous look, and he covers much of the society scene and local fashion-related news and events
• poetic & chic - Annie Wilson's blog just hit her 300th post about local arts & fashion (we're almost there too!); hers is a unique site for expanding your horizons about photography, film and other visuals related to our locale
• yumsugar sf - part of the sugar blog empire, yumsugar covers the food, and they have a page just for Bay Area food (I recently met Katie Sweeney from PartySugar covering an event and food) - super yum

Great Events Today in the Bay Area

We're lucky to have so many worthy organizations, fantastic arts and original entertainment here and since we can't list all of the great events every day, we have links to all of the other sites in the Bay Area that each have a few events listed for most days.

Today is just one example of what a Saturday in the Bay Area can offer and here are some of the great activities and events going on (note: we couldn't possibly include them all, especially all of the exhibits that are ending today) including chocolate tasting, a film festival, school auctions, a plethora of black tie bashes, a miniature dollhouse designer showcase, and fusion theatre.

Read on for the details...

An Afternoon with Disney in Silicon Valley

I am lucky to be part of an amazing group of women who are well educated, interesting, talented writers who are also parents - all who contribute to the Silicon Valley Moms Blog. Disney found us and decided to throw a party for us and our children at the University Club in Palo Alto yesterday. Bringing Mickey, Minnie, Cinderella and Buzz Lightyear to entertain along with a sketch artist and face painters, it was hard to believe we weren't in Disneyland.

My daughter, who just turned two, opted to wear her princess dress (from Halloween) and she fit right in with the other little girls at the party. She first learned of Mickey Mouse a few months ago and began watching The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, so when she saw Mickey and Minnie, she was so excited she went over and gave them big hugs and spent most of the day posing and snuggling with them. I was never too absorbed by the Mickey Mouse character or his pals, but I can see the appeal to my little one.

Ricki Lake takes on the Business of Being Born

I met Ricki Lake last week. At a movie premiere, even. One in which she appears naked! Jezebel.com quoted her vagina as “awesome,” by the way. Oh, and she’s giving birth.

What I knew about Ricki Lake a month ago could be summarized like this: talk show host, Cry-Baby (her character Pepper enhanced my sexual education with “The first thing a Cry-Baby girl learns is our bazooms are our weapons.”), and Hairspray. So I was a little dubious when I heard she had recruited filmmaker Abby Epstein to create a documentary exploring the way in which babies are born in this country. Apparently, her first birth experience was not so good, and she went looking for answers. Personally, I think that is a hell of a lot better use of time than looking for people to makeover on her show. Turns out Ricki found out more than she thought, that the birth business is BIG business, and she documented it all in The Business of Being Born.

Like many involved in the Bay Area birth community, I fancied myself up and went to the premiere at the Roxie Theatre in San Francisco on January 17. Among midwives and doulas, nursing babies and extended families, we all watched Ricki Lake’s vision unfurl to reveal two facts: she was preaching to the choir with THIS crowd, and she honestly and passionately cares for this subject. With our “Birth Celeb” buttons, we cheered, cried (happened every time a baby was born), and hissed our way through the film like it was The Sound of Music night at the Castro Theater.

Tom Stoppard, A.C.T. and The Coast of America

Last week, San Franciscans were given a rare treat - the opportunity to see award-winning playwright and screenwriter, Tom Stoppard, in person in conversation with our own A.C.T. Artistic Director, Carey Perloff. As A.C.T. has been Stoppard's first American home for plays since 1969, and if my math is right, A.C.T. has produced 16 versions of his work (including various runs of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers, Travesties, Night and Day, The Real Thing, Hapgood, Arcadia, Indian Ink, and The Invention of Love). I've been lucky enough to see three of these. Now it seems Perloff has her eye on directing Stoppard's latest, Rock N' Roll, and I know I'm not the only one who hopes this comes to pass.

Sir Tom Stoppard, four-time Tony Award winner for "best play" and Academy Award winner for co-writing Shakespeare in Love, is a Czech-born, British transplant who also lived in Singapore and India as a child after his family escaped the Nazis. International themes and a variety of cultures and time periods can be seen throughout his work - that's just one of the things that makes it so special. Wikipedia states that "'Stoppardian' has become a term used to refer to works in which an author makes use of witty statements to create comedy while addressing philosophical concepts". This is also true.

Great Maternity and Baby Style at Golden Globes Boom Boom Room

I'm writing this from LA where I'm attending the Boom Boom Room celebrity gifting event for actors and other celebrities as a preliminary event before what would have been the Golden Globe Awards. I've been live-blogging the event for the Silicon Valley Moms Blog from the Graco suite. (For non-moms, Graco makes fabulous baby products.) We saw and met several wonderful actors yesterday and more photos are all over the SVMoms Blog.

The event showcases some great products from companies geared toward moms, babies and young children. In addition to Graco, Mattel, Crayola, Gymboree, Robeez, Thermos, Mustella, and many many more. And talking with the actors about the products they love has been a lot of fun. I just met Elisabeth Rohm, actor from "Big Shots" and formerly of "Law and Order". She was in this soft, flattering black dress she said her mom sent her, but she also noted that she loves A Pea in A Pod for maternity clothing. Graco is sharing a booth with Chic Papoose, these beautiful slings to carry newborns and Elisabeth found a great floral black and white print papoose.

Please visit the Silicon Valley Moms Blog for more about the event and attendees.

TV Style - Where the Cashmere Mafia takes on the Lipstick Jungle

Two new shows are coming out in the next couple of months that have gotten a lot of great hype in fashion magazines and related media. Both have excellent, similar premises, both take place in New York, and both are vying to be the next "Sex in the City".

"Cashmere Mafia", starring Lucy Liu (Charlie's Angels, Kill Bill), Miranda Otto (Lord of the Rings, The Starter Wife and War of the Worlds), Bonnie Somerville (Kitchen Confidential, NYPD Blue), and Frances O'Connor (The Importance of Being Earnest) is reportedly producer Darren Starr's latest adventure. Directed by Peyton Reed & written by Kevin Wade, it premieres November 27th or December 4 (ABC had two dates listed on their site) and will run Tuesdays from 9-10pm on ABC. It's about four women executives in New York and their lives at the top.

"Lipstick Jungle", starring Brooke Shields (Blue Lagoon, Suddenly Susan), Lindsay Price (Beverly Hills, 90210, Coupling), and Kim Raver (Third Watch, 24, The Nine) is based on the novel by Candace Bushnell (and the shows may actually be written by her - what I found was unclear on that). It's about three women who are reaching the top of their fields, who are each in the "top 50" women in New York who are struggling to stay there. It will show on Sundays at 10pm on NBC whenever the NFL season is over - which, for those of us who do not follow football, means nothing. I think the Superbowl is in early February, if memory serves right in terms of parties, so I guess that means this show will begin mid February.

Both deserve a Tivo look-see, so I'm waiting to queue them up. And for those without Tivo, at least the networks were good enough to not put the shows in the same time slot. We'll review them here when they begin. I'm guessing the plots and characters will be solid, given the people involved, but worst case scenario, the city setting, fashion, and interior locations selected for the episodes should provide much-missed eye candy since the SATC conclusion.

2007 Emmys - Satin, Sparkles and Flowing Dresses

The 2007 Emmy Awards were shown last Monday night. I found pictures of the dresses worn by the stars on InStyle, E! Online, People and FabSugar. All the fashions sites were calling the overall style "Old Hollywood Glamour" . The trends were long satin dresses, high slits, flared "mermaid" dresses, earings as key accents, knee length dresses with sparkle and colors like black, white, grey and vibrant colors.

Katherine Heigl was wearing a glamorous white long dress with a flared skirt, Ali Larter and Kate Walsh had red satin gowns and Sandra Oh had a graceful black gown with a white accent. Eva Longoria and Michelle Pfeiffer looked beautiful in their knee length sexy dresses with extra sparkle. I am especially proud of local Bay Area mom Michelle Pfeiffer who always looks amazing.

Other moms on the red carpet were (twins mom) Marcia Cross, with a soft shimmering white dress, Debra Messing with a white and black gown, Jamie Pressley in a black beaded gown, Teri Hatcher with a pale pink gown with a beaded bodice and Mary-Louise Parker in a form fitting red satin dress.

Four beautiful gowns that utilized figure flattering secrets were the ruching on America Ferrera's electric blue and Queen Latifah's crimson gown, the tiers on Kyra Sedgwick's black gown  and the empire waist on Rashida Jone's gown with a feathered hem.

My favorite overall dress was the yellow satin Donna Karan worn by Minnie Driver. The color is beautiful and the waistline material wrap is figure flattering.

Photo Credits: InStyle - Jeff Vespa/WireImage

What were your favorites?

Rosebud Revisited - Peter Finch & Thunderbird Theatre Production in SF

What do H. G. Wells, Orson Welles, Huey Lewis and Tom Stoppard have in common? "Aaah! Rosebud," a new play by KFOG News Director, Peter Finch, directed by Dylan Russell and produced by the Thunderbird Theatre Company. A comedy of Evil Dead proportions, featuring an "evil sled" (often referred to as a "she-devil" by multiple characters in the play), the play takes us "Back in Time" to retell the story of Citizen Kane, where a collection of crafty champion curlers fight a killer cabal.

The theme of the play twists the tale on why Kane's final word was "Rosebud", taking it in a comedic direction vs. a serious one. Finch, a veteran actor for the Thunderbird Theatre Company, wrote the play with the theatre company and several of their regular actors in mind according to the Chronicle article. He acts splendidly in the two roles he plays. My husband, brought up in Michigan, was cracking up at his Canadian curler accent as Mack.

Live Earth T-Shop

Live Earth is going strong with concerts still happening in the U.S.. If you want to get an eco-friendly t-shirt or belt to support the cause, check out the Live Earth Store. They have shirts made from bamboo and organic cotton as well as belts from recycled fireman's hoses. They look great too! Also take a peek at the shop if you want to see the auction of "high profile concert memorabilia" (via eBay) and a way to purchase carbon offsets, check out this Live Earth Shop link.

Also check out this cool widget for watching the Live Earth Charity Auctions...

Closet Obsession

Rather than having an obsession I hide in the closet, my obsession IS the closet. Not mine necessarily, but anyone's closet that holds beautiful things. I love looking at peoples' closets on TV shows or in magazines. June's Bazaar, for example, has a great article about Aerin Lauder's closet. It's really about her style and her wardrobe as a concept, of course, but the photographs are dreamy. After all, if you love clothes, shoes, handbags, etc., why not love where they live?

The reality, of course, is that most peoples' closets are shoved full of clothes hung on a random assortment of hangers, unventilated so the shoes and any dirty clothes within a half mile radius create a certain stench - you know what I mean - and then there's that added element of items that end up on the floor for whatever mysterious reason it may be. I'm pretty diligent about the latter, but with cats and a toddler, my shoes end up in odd places. So my fantasy closet exists in photographs, fueling my fixation like the one that got away...

My closet obsession began when I actually had a decent sized walk-in closet. My current home doesn't have that luxury (although you won't hear me complaining), so I miss that closet, but for a while my favorite place for quiet time was my closet. I enjoyed categorizing and organizing, finding new ways to pair garments so that my wardrobe always felt new. My closet became a mini-gallery of wearable art, displayed in a way I felt was appealing and inspiring. Somehow having a nice closet made me feel like my life "investment pieces" as a fashion collector had more worth, and it was much easier to admire my favorite things.

I never realized how much I liked peering into other peoples' closets until viewing Tamara Mellon's closets on the Style Channel. As the founder of Jimmy Choo, Mellon's London home holds two walk-in closets where she stores her wardrobe and then she has even more clothes in her bedroom. (I'm so not remotely worthy). Aerin Lauder's closet is reportedly a dressing room full of closets and armoires that also serves as a home office and occasional playroom for her kids, but it's filled with great shoes, handbags and loads of black pants. I'm always fascinated by people who can have so many varietals of one basic garment, because I can't fathom owning more than a few pairs of the same thing - even jeans.

These days as a writer, consultant and new mom take me away from my closet, and my brief visits there tend toward rapid tossing of items onto the bed for perusal as options for whatever event I may be running late for at the time. My cats sneak into my hamper for naps and my daughter lavishes the moments she gets to try on my shoes. Walking around the house with her tiny tot5 size feet in my size 8 wedges makes her day, thus begins the passing along of the closet obsession to the next generation.