It only seemed the other Friday night that all of Chicago`s art crowd was at the Terra Museum gala featuring Chicago painters, and the Museum of Contemporary Art opening for Donald Sultan`s tar paintings.
The rest of the city`s art crowd, primarily the avant-garde, jammed into Lupus` Missouri Gallery in Pilsen for ”The House Show” featuring 36 artists. The art, nearly 70 works in all, spilled out into the hallways along with the crowd. It was so packed and hot that many guests beat a fast retreat onto Halsted Street to take short breaks for some fresh air and relief.
The alternative art scene continued the next night with a party organized by Paul Waggoner at the Prairie Avenue Gallery.
Waggoner, who closed his own gallery last year, now is trying to organize the International Arts Club, which he said ”has been created with the purpose of providing Chicagoans a social center with a focus on foreign cultures.”
The Prairie Avenue party featured Haitian and West African art, jazz by Hal Russell`s NRG Ensemble and an international buffet. A ”canopy of light” was strung from the house to the curb, placed just a couple of doors down and across the street from the house in which electric lighting was introduced to Chicago in 1882.
The party also featured a hat competition in recognition of millinery manufacturer Elbridge Keith, who in the late 1860s built the Prairie Avenue mansion where this party was held.
The winner in the most-creative-hat category was Larayne Black, who created her headpiece in five minutes out of a summer University of Chicago student calendar. She called it the ”anti-wrinkle nun hat” and said it was inspired by the Pope`s visit.
SOURCE: Marla Donato.
NO BUBBLY ON SUDS LINE It was on the Milwaukee Road`s Northern Line to Grayslake, Fox Lake and such: The sign at the door promised a ”Refreshment Car.”
”Great,” bubbled a foreign-born visitor making his maiden voyage on one of Chicago`s suburban routes. ”The trains in France always serve such nice champagne.”
Two minutes out of the station, he ambled back to the smoky club car and ordered his favorite vintage.
Amid hoots by the barflies, the baseball-hatted barkeep asked: ”How about a little Lake County champagne?” He poured bubbly Moosehead beer into two squat plastic glasses.
Need one sniff the pop-top?
SOURCE: Judy Hevrdejs.
A NEW LEAF ON THE OAK There was a hooker working Oak Street the other night, and Burton Natarus-he`s the alderman for the 42d Ward-didn`t do a thing to stop her as she flung away her gloves, then her cape and finally stripped down to a racy mini and bra. A very sexy black bra.
Natarus was too busy applauding. So were his wife and well over a thousand other fashion folks and friends of Oak Street who came out to eat, drink and ogle fashions on the 75-foot runway and on each other as well.
The, ah, hooker-actually model Cammy Kelly-Drew, who started out in a super-sophisticated Rykiel ensemble-was one of 53 models who paraded about 250 outfits and wares from 30 boutiques and salons that are members of the Oak Street Council.
The show was the council`s first major effort at fundraising and was obviously successful: The group`s president, Marilyn Miglin, announced a grand total of $350,000 had been raised for the beautification of the block-long shopping mecca. The news was greeted with whoops and hollers and whistles and applause-actually the same response that greeted several segments of the multi-faceted fashion show that followed.
The Rykiel presentation-from the stripper doing her thing while Joe Cocker sang ”Leave Your Hat On,” to 20 other models in black and white, plus a bride covered in silk flowers-was the hottest part of the show, even drawing in passersby in wide-eyed amazement.
European clothes, generally, rated major kudos, from the Gianni Versace opener, featuring smoldering models mainly in blacks and grays (with some of the females in vivid bandage-like fanny wrappers), to bouncing kids and dancing ingenues in Benetton knits, all looking better than Benetton ads.
Pompian made a very strong fashion statement with its severe selection of purposely somber Romeo Gigli body-huggers juxtaposed with a selection of vibrant hotshot fashions featuring sequins, jangling coins and red fur from American-in-Paris Patrick Kelly.
But there was something for every taste: young and swingy from Sugar Magnolia, pale and pretty pastels from Terri D., purple silk with bare feet for the boudoir for him from Innuendo and the prettiest shoes with Fortuny lookalikes from POSH and more and more.
Then, in one of the rarest endings to a fashion show, dessert was served. SOURCE: Genevieve Buck.
SUPERCHIRPS AT CRICKET`S Hazel outfoxed Zarada by being first up with a champagne anniversary toast.
Abra arrived more than fashionably late (”I couldn`t get off the damn telephone”) and Bonnie chatted about traveling (”There`s really nowhere else new to go, so it`s back to Peking-again”) while Nancy tried vainly to set up a conversational agenda (”Doesn`t anyone want to talk about Bork? How about Blass?”).
Sugar was missing in action (no, not Washington; California this time)
and Margie wore the shortest skirt (naturally).
Like Adolfo and Halston and Christo and Liberace and other such Solo Celebrities, the Ladies Who Lunch at Cricket`s in the Tremont Hotel are well known enough on the Chicago social/benefit/power scene to make it on a single- name basis. One day last week they were celebrating not their status but their continuing friendship after a year`s worth of monthly luncheons where dishing takes priority over culinary dishes.
Hazel, of course, is Barr (socialite, York Furriers); Zarada is Gowenlock (socialite, George Jewell catering); Abra is Prentice Anderson Wilkin
(socialite, philanthropist, columnist); Bonnie is Swearingen (socialite, wife); Sugar is Rautbord (socialite, raconteuse); Margie is Korshak (showbiz and retailing PR tycoon); and, though there are other Nancys (the one in Washington, for example), the Chicago Nancy is fashionable Klimley.
It was Avenue M, the monthly magazine distributed along the Gold Coast, that brought the ladies together last year for a calorie-counting luncheon in order to determine how superthin women stay that way when they`re on a constant round of food-laden benefits.
And so what did the ladies talk about last week as they gathered with a group of friends for some celebratory wine with green salad, chicken Oriental and kiwi/strawberry tart?
Neither calories nor down-and-dirty gossip, just such genteel things as Truman Capote and Jane Byrne; a new pill that tastes like German chocolate cake; where to find the best black opaque hose with support capabilities
(Field`s, State Street only), Elizabeth Taylor`s Passion (the perfume, that is), Fawn Hall, John Malkovich, Biden`s plagiarism and how to help the wife of a new exec in town be successful in Chicago (”root for the Cubs and the Bears”).
Maybe next time, when the world isn`t listening, they`ll get down to the real topics.
SOURCE: Genevieve Buck.
