Dinner Date

Can I tell you about...Anne Watanabe,supermodel, fellow blogger and artist. Last Labor day weekend, I called up Anne to have dinner with me. She had just arrived from Tokyo in time for go-sees and fittings for New York fashion week. She was craving for Filipino food of all things and I wasn't one to refuse her. I have the same craving...weekly. I was happy to indulge her and ... me.
I took her to Cendrillon in Soho, my favorite Filipino restaurant. Romy Dorotan is an accomplished and published chef, well respected by critics and other chefs. Along with his wife Amy Besa, they recently published a book called "Memories of Philippine Kitchens" and it's selling like bibingkas(Filipino hotcakes) and he is about to go on tour in London to promote the book. It was quite a treat to have him there and Anne was thrilled to meet him. She took her share of photos of the food and took notes of their names because she has her own blog and wanted to post this dinner on it. Who doesn't blog these days?!
Anne has developed a taste for Filipno food after several trips to the Philippines for photo shoots. She's been to more places than I have been. You can bet I'm jealous, and she has beautiful pictures to prove it.
We gorged on inasal, lechon kawali, Amy's Spring roll and Ukoy. Yeah, we pigged out! Despite what people might think, some models actually really eat.
Let me tell you, this girl can eat but she can also draw! She showed me a sketch she just made in her little notebook of a model from a magazine. She did it with an ink pen and without erasing or any preliminary pencil rendering. I was so impressed. We're kindred spirits. She said she does this when she's waiting at airports or waiting for the shows to start. I also have a sketchbook that keeps me from going insane. I doodle all over it and write down ideas for the next season. I have a ton of these notebooks and they're interesting to look into every now and then. Reminds me of where I was at and what I was inspired by. A visual diary of sorts. When you log on to www.rafe.com you see an opened page to my sketchbook as the landing page.
We walked a bit after dinner and she took the subway back to her hotel. No limousine service required for this supermodel. She's down to earth, real and talented. My kind of girl!

Our Oscars

Can I tell you...about the CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America)Awards night. It's our version of the Oscars. This year is the 25th Anniversary of the awards show and it was Diane Von Furstenburg's 1st major event as President. The designer attendance was impressive. Donna, Vera, Ralph, Oscar, Marc, Michael ( you don't need last names do you?) and the rest of the membership. She even got Calvin Klein to come out and he almost never shows up for anything. We also got our share of Hollywood A-listers: Eva Mendes, Claire Daines with BF Hugh Dancy, Chloe Sevigny, Oprah Winfrey, Kate Bosworth, Uma Thurman, Heidi Klum, Iman with husband David Bowie, The Olsen Twins and Ellen Barkin who was the hostess of the evening.
My date for the evening was Japanese runway superstar Anne Watanabe (yes, she is Ken's daughter) who flew in from Tokyo a couple of days before. Coincidentally she was scheduled to be in town for a photo shoot so it all worked out. I got her a white mini bustier dress from Peter (Som) to showcase my silver snake clutch and bejeweled platform slingbacks. She looked divine of course with smokey eyes, a little bit of glitter and a neutral glossy lip.
This was her first CFDA awards so she brought her camera to take her own pictures. At some point we were starting to compete with each other it was kinda funny. She knew a lot of the designers she already modeled for so that was great. We worked the room during cocktails til Diane was literally shooing everybody to dinner. Cocktails is the best part of this event as far as I'm concerned. You get to see everybody up close and it's the best people watching...I swear. The champagne is flowing so the mood is festive and you can chat up almost anyone you want to. There's a lot of networking going on and secret deals being hatched, or so I've heard.

The dinner was brief, thank God but the whole ceremony still took several hours. We didn't get out of there til 11:30 and we got there at 6:30. Imagine that! Poor Anne, her jet lag hit her at about 10ish and she could barely keep her eyes open but she was a trooper. Ralph won 2 awards, Oscar and Proenza Schouler were a tie ( a first), Derek took the accessories award and Piere Cardin took the International Award.

Annoyingly Monsieur Cardin gave his acceptance speech entirely in French and we know he speaks fluent English. Was this his way of giving us the finger? We all looked at each other in disbelief. Diane even made her way to the stage to bring him down but thankfully he finished just before she could yank him.
I dragged Anne to another party after for Zappos but they had already finished so we headed home. Besides, she was already falling alseep in the car. I promised to take her for some Filipino food this weekend. She was craving for some since she was in the Philippines a few weeks ago for a photo shoot. So we're off to Cendrillon!