Christie’s auction of Gert Elfering’s private collection came to a close yesterday, allowing us to attach a dollar value to nudity.
Most notably, our favorite first lady ended up just shy of six figures, pulling down $91,000 for a full-frontal Michel Comte snap from 1993. The more striking Lauren Hutton pic (at left) went for $127,000, but we’re sure having Richard Avedon’s name attached didn’t hurt.
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Tomorrow, Christie’s is auctioning off the private collection of Gert Elferling, a collector who has apparently spent the last few decades compiling erotic shots of some of the most beautiful women in the world. The auction contains lots of familiar faces and it’s already making waves for more than a few of our favorite people.
Notably, our boy Sarkozy is facing some embarrassment from the British press as the auction features a nude shot from Ms. Bruni’s wilder years and coincides with his first Bruni-assisted visit to the UK.
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The gala opening of Takashi Murakami’s exhibition was predictably packed last night, with Marc Jacobs among the attendees. Kanye took a break from managing his new travel site to put on a show and keep the crowd on their feet. And, aside from the eminent-domain protests outside, things couldn’t have gone better.
Louis Vuitton was well-represented with an outdoor table of pointedly non-counterfeit goods, but they had more than a few representatives in the crowd as well»
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Takashi Murakami has been gaining profile for a while now—he designed the slightly hideous album cover for Kanye’s latest, and is collaborating with Marc Jacobs on a pattern for Louis Vuitton—but his nouveau-Warhol shtick has always left most of America shaking their heads.
Witness, for instance, the kerfuffle surrounding his upcoming exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. The fashion press went wild over Vuitton-based rumors—would the museum be hawking LV bags? Would they get a peek at the new Marc Jacobs pattern?—without giving thought to the exhibition itself. Naturally, the art world is skeptical.
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Genoese artist Nicola Villa specializes in watercolors of street scenes, making him a kind of gallery-bound Sartorialist. He’s building buzz with a couple exhibitions stateside—most notably for painting scenes in Harlem—and more than a few exhibitions in his native Italy.
This piece, called Walking, caught our eye»
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