Oh, Miss K., we know it hurts, but any high-flying woman will find shopping in Los Angeles — specifically, at the hipper-than-thou Fred Segal boutiques — to be quite the reality check. Driving up in a rented Jaguar simply isn't going to do it:
We never quite bought Keith Kelly's claim that rich guy, investment banker, Carl Icahn ally, and New York owner Bruce Wasserstein was seriously considering buying the New York Observer. (If you already owned one publication that covers media and politics and business and Manhattan society, we wondered, why would you buy a second one?) But now it's moot: Today Kelly is reporting that Wasserstein is no longer interested — if he ever was.
This week, Alex Kuczynski discovers the Apple Store in Soho, and uses it as an opportunity to fill us in on the technology fabulousness of her life. There's the iBook G4 wedding present from the financier husband, the G5, the 23-inch monitor, Harmon/Kardon sound system, and the 100 operas and 5,000 songs saved in her iTunes. And there's also this:
Times shopping columnist Alex Kuczynski walks into a bra shop (the Town Shop, to be exact, which is famous for refitting women into properly-sized torture devices) a lifelong 36B.
We love the Thursday Times for many reasons: Thursgay Styles, Home & Garden for the insanely rich, and cute David Pogue. None of these, however, compare to Alex Kuczynski's Critical Shopper column, in which she throws her considerable wealth around New York and tells us all about her expensive experiences. This week, she heads west (en route to Sundance, we're sure):
The Observer's Choire Sicha holds his breath and climbs to the top of NYT's Critical Shopper columnist Alex Kuczynski's $25,000 Pyramid. I bet it smells real nice up there. [Daily Transom]
Most outrageous statements in media of 2005, excluding Alex Kuczynski's American Express bill [Media Matters]
The Corsair Pirate Awards, Part Deux [The Corsair]
Write a limerick, win a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah ticket. Tell your grandkids about it one day. [Joe MF Brown]
Oh, THAT "Jew Rapist" [Google News]
Someone requested a Jake Gyllenhaal gay rumor. I can't oblige but how about some naughty butt-talk? [MSNBC]
Dudes, I'm sorry! Please love me and welcome me back! The barrage of email is harder to keep track of than you'd think. [TheSpunker]
UCB-attending ninjas save lives on the streets of NYC [cab drivers tell me i'm pretty]
William Falk, editor-in-chief of The Week magazine, talks about the stories you may have missed this year while you were standing in a check-out line reading Star magazine [NYT]
A reader asks: "Is it really that hard for the New York Times to find something to write about that they have to profile the SAME museum with the SAME exhibits twice in less than 3 months?" We reply: "It's Philly, who cares?" October 2005 and Today [NYT]
In this week's installment of Alex K.'s Amazing Adventures of the Ladies Who Lunch, our fearless reporter goes fur shopping. At first, she's put off by the idea — apparently she's got a dog she rather likes — but, naturally, the ridiculously expensive decadence grows on her.
In this week's Thursday Styles, Alex Kuczynski takes her multimillions and goes shopping at the new Abercrombie & Fitch flagship store on Fifth Avenue. She doesn't much care for it — of course, being 37 years old, she's not supposed to care for it — and she fixates mostly on the fact she found the store too damned loud. But she also took a moment to turn her nose up at the store's famously oversexed shtick:
For no good reason except that someone sent it in, and that we've been picking on her a bit lately, we thought we'd pass along this photo of a very, very happy Times shopper Alex Kuczynski at a recent Madeira School alumnae event held in New York.
On August 24, we ran the following bout of nostalgia from a reader:
Today's installment in Alex Kuczynski's Thursday Styles series, The Inane Shopping Adventures of the Filthy Rich, takes her to the new Burton Snowboards store Soho. There, she was astonished — astonished — to discover that snowboarders often like to toke up.
From zeitgeist queen Tina Brown's column in today's Washington Post:
You already knew she has a better job than you. (OK, than most of you.) Last week you learned that she's also richer than you'll ever be and goes on more extravagant vacations than you do, on which she has much more fun than you ever do. As if you needed another reason to hate New York Times style scribe Alex Kuczynski, here's today's news:
The September issue of W has an especially lurid piece on Times reporter Alex Kuczynski and her luxurious weekend getaway in Idaho, which we imagine to have involved togas and vomitoriums. It's the sort of piece that makes you marvel and admire Kuczynski's survival as the Gray Lady's patron anomaly — but, at the same time, you uncontrollably seethe with all sorts of jealous rage. It all begins with a disturbingly sudden lede:
The NYT's Alex Kuczynski writes about the Vanity Fair Oscar party, "[It was] less about overt, gaudy, look-at-me celebrationpopping open the bubbly, drinking out of satin Jimmy Choosthan it was about measured manners, cautious behavior, peace and love." Then she goes on to describe the somber occasion, chronicling agent Ed Limato's drink-tossing fight with Page Six columnist Richard Johnson, stylists Philip Bloch's comments about Queen Latifah's dress ("It was eh. Just eh."), and Adrian Brody's fake tan.
At the afterparty, less cleavage, unreal tans, and a tossed drink [NYT]
The spring auctions, which raise extraordinary amounts for private schools, are in swing. It is, as parents display their generosity and status, "an exquisitely calculated social occasion," writes Alex Kuczynski. But she botches the key question. The two tickets to Vanity Fair's Oscars party, donated by Graydon Carter for the Tuttle Hall auction: how much did they go for?
At School Auctions, Prestige Is the Prize [New York Times]
The New York Times finally discovers Soho House, but Alex Kuczynski makes up for the delay with a nice piece on the private member's club. Nick Jones, the founder, is British, as is the club. Soho House may be invitation-only, but it isn't nearly as snotty as New York's co-op boards. Except Jones, a recent import, gets condos and co-ops confused, rather charmingly.
Are You Swell Enough for Soho House? [NYT]
