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    Best Red Carpet Fashion At the Emmys: Suki Waterhouse, Jennifer Coolidge & More

    After being postponed because of labor strikes in Hollywood, the Emmy Awards returned on Monday night and with the ceremony came what might be the television industry’s biggest fashion show.Though the carpet was gray, there was no shortage of red, a color that also proved quite popular at the Golden Globes this month. Bows, an inescapable accessory of 2023, held on as a favorite embellishment: Riley Keough had a black bow in her hair, while her “Daisy Jones and the Six” castmate Suki Waterhouse and the “Abbott Elementary” actress and screenwriter Quinta Brunson each had them on their gowns. (Ms. Waterhouse’s sat beneath her baby bump.)The ceremony was honoring television programs broadcast last year, which gave viewers a chance to catch up with casts like that of “White Lotus” season two. Some of its members seemed to use the occasion to pay homage to the show’s setting by wearing Italian designers: Meghann Fahy chose a rosette-laden strapless gown by Armani (that was red); Simona Tabasco donned full-skirted, floral Marni; and Jennifer Coolidge wore a sheer dress by Etro.Amid a carpet full of feathers, beads, sequins, diamonds and plenty of well-tailored suits, the following 15 outfits stood out from the rest (for better or worse).Aubrey Plaza: Most Dangerous!Looking sharp.Neilson Barnard/Getty ImagesThe actress and a star of “The White Lotus” had a colossal pin stuck through her pale yellow-green Loewe look. If the accessory looked familiar, it might be because the “Past Lives” director Celine Song had a similarly large pin through her Loewe skirt at the Golden Globes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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    ‘Mean Girls’ Costume Designer Talks Cast Wardrobe and Addresses Critics

    Some people have roasted the outfits in the new film, but there were reasons the Plastics got a Gen Z spin. (Among them: social media, fast fashion and the pandemic.)When fans first glimpsed outfits in the new adaptation of “Mean Girls,” they were not shy with feedback on the film’s pink miniskirts and mesh bustiers.On social media, some said the costumes looked cheap, as if they had come from fast-fashion retailers. Others said they did not lean heavily enough on the Y2K style of the original “Mean Girls,” released in 2004. And one online commentator said the costumes seemed like an A.I. image generator’s clumsy response to the prompt: “What do trendy teenagers wear today?”The wardrobes for the film, which was released on Jan. 12, were not created by artificial intelligence but by Tom Broecker, the costume designer for “Saturday Night Live,” where he has worked for nearly 30 years. Mr. Broecker, 61, had no involvement in the original “Mean Girls.” He joined the crew of the adaptation after working with Tina Fey and Lorne Michaels — who were involved in both films — on costumes for “S.N.L.” and for “30 Rock.”Mr. Broecker said the criticism of his work had made him “super, super, super anxious” for the new film’s release. His goal was to reference — but not redo — the wardrobes from the original movie, which were created by the costume designer Mary Jane Fort, by imagining how its high-school-age characters might dress as members of Gen Z.He cited the “sexy Santa” costumes for a holiday talent show scene in both films as an example. In the adaptation, those outfits were influenced by Ariana Grande’s music video for the song “thank u, next,” he said, so he made them a little more sparkly than the plasticky red skirts in the original.More than 600 looks were created for the adaptation by Mr. Broecker and his six-person design team. In the edited interview below, he explains how they came up with the wardrobe — which, he said, should not be judged by trailers and teasers alone.“You’re only getting the bread crumbs,” he said, “when you really want to have the whole 10-course meal.”What did you think of the costuming in the original film?When I saw it then, I thought, This is fun, this is high school in 2004. Watching it now, I go, Oh my God, those poor girls were so sexualized. But that’s 2024 eyes looking at 2004. I know they didn’t feel that way at all, but you look at it now and realize that the world has changed.Where did you look to find inspiration for how Gen Z is dressing?We were very influenced by Instagram and TikTok, and by celebrities like Billie Eilish, Jenna Ortega and Sydney Sweeney. I have a niece who graduated from high school in Indiana last year. I looked through her closet and her Instagram. And I live near N.Y.U., so packs of students walk by my apartment all the time in light-wash, straight-leg jeans, white Nike sneakers and crop tops.What did those references reveal about how people dress now?The early aughts are very influential in the visual landscape of clothing right now. Sometimes I would show Tina certain things and she’d say, Oh my God, I think I wore that before.Other things have changed. Gender fluidity is a big thing for kids. And everyone wants to be comfortable, especially after the pandemic. So I dressed the high schoolers in the movie in athleisure, like North Face, Patagonia and Champion hoodies.Fast fashion has changed how young people shop. How much of that did you include?Probably more than we should have. Two brands we used were Cider and Princess Polly. I stayed away from Shein, but I did find a piece or two secondhand.I kept saying that we have to get into the mind of a high-school student, and that’s how they shop. The directors got rid of a mall scene that was in the original because kids don’t go to the mall anymore.After visuals from the new film were released showing Regina, center, in Isabel Marant trousers and a Bardot mesh corset top, some fans moaned that the film’s costumes looked like A.I.’s idea of how trendy teens dress.JoJo Whilden/Paramount PicturesHow did you differentiate costumes for the Plastics — the three popular girls — from those for the students they reign over?Everyone in the high school has big bags and sneakers, except for the Plastics, who have little purses and heels. They are different than the people who are weighed down by their books and grounded to the floor with their shoes.Did you spend more of your budget on clothes for the Plastics?Basically the Plastics got all the money. For Regina George (Reneé Rapp), we did Isabel Marant, streetwear like Off-White and a lot of vintage stuff. Tom-Ford-era 1990s Gucci was the inspiration for her homecoming dress.Regina’s black homecoming dress with a front leg slit was inspired by clothes Tom Ford designed for Gucci in the 1990s, a decade that has influenced Gen Z style.Jojo Whilden/Paramount PicturesWhy do you think people have reacted so strongly to the costumes in the adaptation?I didn’t realize the nostalgia for the original. It’s hard to have something stand on its own when something exists that people love. But this is not that, and 2024 is not 2004. We have changed how we feel about a lot of things. As the tagline says, this isn’t your mom’s “Mean Girls.” More

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    The Stories Behind Emma Stone’s Costumes in ‘Poor Things’

    The designer Holly Waddington breaks down how Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter evolves onscreen, from her childish knickers to her cage-like wedding dress.The designer Holly Waddington had wide latitude in envisioning the costumes for “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos’s mad comedy starring Emma Stone.“The only brief really was that he didn’t want it to be overtly like a period drama” — the script is set in the 1880s — “and he didn’t want it to be overtly like a science fiction film,” Waddington said. In the movie (a Golden Lion winner at the Venice Film Festival and now an Oscar contender), Stone is a scientist’s creation who evolves from a childlike naïf to a sexually and politically liberated woman.The Greek-born director Lanthimos, known for his surrealist vision, gave Waddington only one reference image: a young designer’s take on “inflatable trousers,” Waddington recalled. When puffed up, they “created this really exaggerated shape, just incredibly curvaceous.” She worked with other departments, like production design and hair and makeup, to finish the look for Stone’s Bella Baxter, whose life changes on a Grand Tour of cities like Lisbon.A lot snapped into focus when Waddington learned that Bella would have long, jet-black hair; an Egon Schiele painting was Lanthimos’s inspiration for that, she said, and it informed her color palette. Another thing to consider, in a movie with a lot of sex scenes: How the clothes come off. “I had many slightly awkward conversations with Yorgos about it,” she said. “He was asking me, how does she have sex in these? I was probably a bit embarrassed. But he’s not, at all.”Waddington knew her Victoriana; she spent years working in a costume house, specializing in archival ladies fashion. But for this film, she cut loose the corsetry — a scary prospect at first, she said, because corsets give period clothes their shape — and mixed eras and materials. Early on, Mrs. Prim, the medical assistant turned nanny, chooses Bella’s wardrobe; then she finds her own style. “The clothes needed to really change with her,” Waddington said.Beyond that, Lanthimos offered conceptual freedom. “He just doesn’t need to have a whole back story,” she said. If it looked good, it flew. Bella’s statement sleeves are already having a moment.In a video interview from her London home, Waddington discussed how, and why, she dressed Stone in three key moments of the movie. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Bella at HomeThe costumes Stone wore in early scenes that took place at home captured her in a more childlike persona.Searchlight PicturesThat look in the house is all based around the idea of her being a very young child at this point. And she’s being dressed by Mrs. Prim, who finds her really annoying. The clothes are not baby clothes, they’re womanly, but applied in this slightly ad hoc fashion, because she has the physicality of a child. Very quickly, things have dissembled and come off. And this is just based on my own observations of children that, even if you’re going to a smart occasion, the clothes, especially from the waist down, often come off. It’s just a slightly discordant, uncomfortable way to dress a woman — like an anxiety dream about going to a job interview wearing a suit at the top and nothing on the bottom, just knickers.The knickers are almost like 1950s nappy covers and they’re highly textured — seersucker. And then there’s this big bodice, a very thick moiré taffeta. The thickness of the cloth is almost too thick for human scale, which is what you get when you look at dolls. Often their fabrics look like marzipan — like cake decoration. Also, the striations in the moiré look to me like the organic marks that you get in flesh.She wears this funny little bustle — one of my favorite things in the film. It’s based on an authentic late Victorian bustle cage which would have been worn underneath the dress to give it volume. What struck me is that it looked super sci-fi.2. Lisbon OutfitWhen Stone’s character arrives in Lisbon, she starts to undergo an awakening.Searchlight PicturesDuring the pandemic, the producers arranged for me to go and meet Emma. I took many different renditions of sleeves with me — big sleeves, medium sized. I took lots of different kinds of knickers. I had an idea about how I wanted it to progress, but it was really in that fitting, trying all these shapes on Emma, that I was able to say, OK, we definitely need a bustle, we need these special 1930s tap pants, which I had just thrown in the suitcase at the last minute. They were a departure from the babyish knickers. In Lisbon, they’re silky and fluid — they’ve grown up and they’re sexy.I knew that I wanted her to step out of the hotel in something really discordant. And I was thinking of that scene in “Taxi Driver” when Jodie Foster steps out into the streets of New York in these hot pants.The ruffly top is based on a modesty piece for Victorian dresses — they filled in the décolletage, but on their own they’re just like a little dickey or bib. And I like the idea that she would just wear that, in its own right, as a blouse. What she’s actually wearing is bits of underwear as her clothes.The boots are a little homage to André Courrèges. In early development, I looked at late ’60s-early ’70s sci-fi costumes, and space age modernism fashion. So those boots are based on this idea of her having her toes free, because she’s just uncontainable — she’s exposing every aspect of her, including her feet. The peep-toe boot would never have happened in Victorian society. They didn’t even show their ankles.The gold, yellow and sky-blue colors are definitely a combination that we associate with many fairy tale characters. She stepped into the world and it opened up to her, sort of a Disney version of how you imagine Lisbon, all pastel. I wanted the clothes to reflect that joy and optimism.3. Wedding DressStone’s character wears elaborate sleeves throughout the movie, including when she dons a wedding dress.Searchlight PicturesI liked the idea of it being a cage, with bands of tubing in delicate silk. So hopefully evoking this sense of entrapment, but you could still see through to her and see her body — that felt important. And also these sleeves.We had this book of patterns from the 1890s, my assistant got it from an antiques dealer on Portobello Market. Patterns from the actual period are much more extreme than how we imagined them. This is a very brief period in fashion when there were huge mutton sleeves. I thought they should be even larger — really massive. And Yorgos was really up for the big sleeves. The wedding dress sleeve is probably about a meter all the way around. They look like balloons.I struggled with the veil because I didn’t feel like it was quite the right thing for this character. But then I took it to Emma on the morning of the shoot, and she grabbed it and got it wrapped around her face in a knot.I quite like the fact that it’s see-through and light and big, and it’s also her favorite costume, because her body felt so free in it. More

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    Angelina Jolie and the Ghosts of New York Past

    Her new store, Atelier Jolie, occupies an unassuming building on Great Jones Street with an illustrious history.When Angelina Jolie opened her first fashion boutique in a squat, two-story building at 57 Great Jones Street in Lower Manhattan this month, she joined a long line of notable New Yorkers, including gangsters and artists, who lived or worked at that unassuming address.Atelier Jolie, which has an appointment-only fitting room on the second floor, sells clothes made from vintage and deadstock materials and offers Turkish coffee and Syrian mini pies in its chic cafe. “I hope to see you there, and to be one of the many creating with you within our new creative collective,” Ms. Jolie wrote in a founding statement. “Bear with me. I hope to grow this with you.”Atelier Jolie’s branding is tied to the artistic heritage of 57 Great Jones Street. Andy Warhol bought the building in the 1970s. Everyone from Keith Haring to Madonna dropped by. Jean-Michel Basquiat lived and painted in the upstairs studio loft, producing some of his most significant works, before he died there of a heroin overdose at 27 in 1988.Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, artists with ties to 57 Great Jones Street, at a 1984 benefit in Manhattan.Ron Galella Collection via Getty ImagesIf you dust off more of the structure’s past, you find the bones of New York. The brick building once housed mobsters and bare-knuckle boxers.It was built in the 1860s, architect unknown, and its first known use was as a stable, according to Village Preservation, an advocacy group. Great Jones Street, a two-block lane in NoHo named after the lawyer and politician Samuel Jones, was a home for the city’s affluent merchant class that counted the mayor and diarist Philip Hone among its early residents. During the Civil War, the 69th Regiment gathered on the street to march toward a steamer on the Hudson. Crowds looked on as the young men headed off to battle.As Manhattan grew and wealthy residents moved uptown, the neighborhood began its slump into a skid row. At the east end of Great Jones Street lay the Bowery, a once-reputable boulevard that had become a notorious thoroughfare lined with brothels, beer gardens, flophouses and pawn shops.An 1897 map of Great Jones Street, which was named after Samuel Jones, a New York lawyer and politician.Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, New York Public LibraryThe Bowery of old.The building became a saloon and dance hall, the Brighton, which The New York Times called a “notorious dive.” The place was nearly blown to smithereens in 1901 after some men making a beer delivery disturbed a gas jet in the cellar. When the establishment’s owner, Charles Deveniude, went to investigate, he lit a candle. The explosion was heard “several blocks away,” The Times reported, and Mr. Deveniude suffered burns to his face, hands and shoulders.The Brighton was sold a few years later to Paul Kelly, whom The Times described in a 1912 article as “perhaps the most successful and the most influential gangster in New York history.” In a nod to his Italian heritage, Mr. Kelly, a onetime pugilist born Paolo Antonio Vaccarelli, renamed the saloon Little Naples.Mr. Kelly ran the Five Points Gang, one of the most feared street gangs of its day, and Little Naples served as his association’s headquarters and as a gathering place for the city’s political elite. He was an enforcer for the corrupt Democratic political machine, Tammany Hall, and his henchmen helped provide paid voters, known as “floaters,” to cast ballots for Tammany candidates. The gang’s members included future underworld leaders like Lucky Luciano and Al Capone.A 1905 article in The Times recounted a “desperate fight” at Little Naples in which a man was killed and several others were wounded. “Scores of shots were fired, but as far as is known to the police, only one man went to his death,” the paper reported, adding: “His body was found in the saloon nearly half an hour after the smoke of the battle had cleared away. There was a bullet wound in his left breast.” The man was discovered with his legs protruding from a swinging bathroom door. His dog, a spaniel, was whimpering beside him.The Times further reported that one of Mr. Kelly’s lieutenants, John Ratta, was wounded in another shootout at the saloon that same week. He refused to cooperate with the police, saying only that he “slipped and fell so hard on a bullet on the floor that it entered his flesh.” The Times noted: “Ratta will live to carry a revolver, and he says he will settle the difficulty in his own way.”The June 9, 1912, edition of The New York Times included a detailed report on the murderous goings-on at Little Naples, a night spot that once occupied the Atelier Jolie building.The New York TimesIn later decades, the building housed metalwork and kitchen equipment supply businesses. Don DeLillo wrote Great Jones Street into the annals of American literature in 1973, when he named his third novel after the street. The book’s narrator-protagonist, a disillusioned rock star, Bucky Wunderlick, slums it in an apartment there: “I went to the room in Great Jones Street, a small crooked room, cold as a penny, looking out on warehouses, trucks and rubble.”Mr. Warhol purchased 57 Great Jones Street in 1970 under the corporation name Factory Films Inc., according to a report by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. In 1983, as he became a mentor to Mr. Basquiat, who was then a fast-rising art world star, Mr. Warhol rented the upstairs loft to him. In the next few years Mr. Basquiat produced works including “King Zulu” and “Riding With Death.”“Jean-Michel called,” Mr. Warhol wrote in his diary on Sept. 5, 1983. “He’s afraid he’s just going to be a flash in the pan. And I told him not to worry, that he wouldn’t be. But then I got scared because he’s rented our building on Great Jones and what if he is a flash in the pan and doesn’t have the money to pay his rent?”After Mr. Basquiat’s death, the building’s exterior became a mecca for street artists to leave tributes to him, and the site has been marked with renditions of his crown motif and “SAMO” graffiti tag ever since.The Warhol estate sold the building in the early 1990s. After that, as the gentrification of the neighborhood accelerated, and nightlife hot spots like B Bar and the Bowery Hotel thrived, a referral-only Japanese restaurant with no listed phone number, Bohemian, occupied the address. It was concealed, speakeasy-style, behind a butcher shop.In 2022, the building was put on the rental market by Meridian Capital Group for $60,000 a month. Its landlord, according to property records, is the noted real estate appraiser Robert Von Ancken, whose services have been used by New York real estate families including the Trumps, the Helmsleys and the Zeckendorfs. Reached by phone, Mr. Von Ancken clarified that he had bought the building with his business partner, Leslie Garfield, who died last year, and that he now owns the property with Mr. Garfield’s family.“When we first occupied the space, we didn’t really know much about the artist who’d been living there, because he wasn’t as well known then,” Mr. Von Ancken recalled. “There were all these drawings on the walls. We rented it as it was. A tenant painted all over it. That was all lost.”He added: “The building has been getting graffitied over for years. I’ve tried repainting the front, but I eventually gave up. It’s clearly still very important for young artists, even today, to put their mark on that facade.”About a year ago, Ms. Jolie and her teenage daughter Zahara started scouting for a downtown retail space, and their wanderings brought them to 57 Great Jones. They felt an immediate communion with the building, Ms. Jolie said in an interview with Vogue, so she quickly rented it. As the store approached its opening date, one of her sons, Pax, helped spray-paint the Atelier Jolie logo onto a canvas draping the doorway.Angelina Jolie, the latest tenant of 57 Great Jones Street, outside the building in August.Mega/GC Images, via Getty ImagesOne recent night, a security guard manned Atelier Jolie’s entranceway while two young employees explained the shop’s mission of promoting sustainable fashion to a visitor. Upstairs, in the same space that the Five Points Gang used as a meeting place, another employee worked on a laptop in the fitting room.Outside, a couple stopped to read the plaque that memorialized Mr. Basquiat’s residence at the address and noted its early use as a stable. Then they reminded each other that they were running late for a hard-to-get dinner reservation at a nearby restaurant. More

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    On ‘Survivor,’ the Clothing Choices Are More Deliberate Than You May Think

    Contestants’ wardrobes are more deliberate than you may think.Year after year, with each new crop of “Survivor” castaways, it’s easy to see that they’re meant to represent a familiar cross-section of archetypes.Even in their off-the-rack tank tops and cargo shorts, characters like the cranky old military vet, the arrogant corporate executive and the pharmaceutical rep next door are recognizable on sight.That’s no accident: While the conventions of reality TV encourage viewers to believe that these contestants arrive with whatever hastily selected items they can grab, their clothing is carefully vetted and assembled with producers and wardrobe staff to maximally portray players’ personalities and emphasize the show’s “Robinson Crusoe” mise-en-scène.Since it debuted in 2000, “Survivor,” which will soon finish airing its 45th season on CBS, has had an ever-shifting cast and has regularly introduced new twists for contestants as they compete to be the last person standing and win a cash prize. Over time, players’ wardrobes — dirt-crusted and minimal though they may be — have helped further plots and create through-lines in the series, which continues to draw among the highest ratings on network television.Jeff Probst, the host of “Survivor” and its executive producer and showrunner, said clothing was at the foundation of the show’s premise.“The idea is, what if you were shipwrecked with a group of strangers?” Mr. Probst said. “A lawyer’s clothing should look very different from a nurse, who looks different from a pizza maker.”Caitlin Moore, a “Survivor” casting producer, works alongside the show’s longtime wardrobe supervisor, Maria Sundeen, to help contestants select clothes for the show. It involves “a lot of going through the closets, trying to find the pieces that will work,” Ms. Moore said.“We are very much in a collaborative process, working together to come up with what really feels like a reflection of their own personality yet also meets the needs of production,” she added.For “Survivor: South Pacific,” producers asked John Cochran, who was then a student at Harvard Law School, to show up in a sweater vest to play up his Ivy League bona fides.Monty Brinton/CBS‘You Should Wear a Red Sweater Vest’John Cochran was completing his studies at Harvard Law School when he was cast in the 23rd season of “Survivor.” He and his mother were at a mall looking for practical attire that could get him through 39 days without shelter on the Samoan island of Upolu, he said, when he got a call from Ms. Moore.“We were, like, looking at REI camping stuff,” said Mr. Cochran, now 36 and a television writer in Los Angeles. “And Caitlin says, ‘We don’t know what you’re going to think of this, but we’re thinking you should wear a red sweater vest.’”Ms. Moore explained that red would be a color scheme for that season, he said. She was hoping to play up his Ivy League bona fides — and his nerdiness — with the vest, he added.Mr. Cochran initially balked at the request. “I’d never worn a sweater vest before,” he said. “I already exude nerdiness. I’m trying to downplay my ruddy complexion and rosacea and red hair.”Mr. Cochran, right, eventually ditched the pink collared shirt from “South Pacific” and just wore his red sweater vest as a tank top. “That was my ultimate act of rebellion,” he said.Monty Brinton/CBSBut in the first episode of “Survivor: South Pacific,” which was broadcast in 2011, Mr. Cochran could be seen furiously paddling a boat across that ocean in a crimson sweater vest, a pink collared shirt and khakis, the tropical sun beating down on his reddening face.This rather ridiculous image made the impression that Ms. Moore and her team had suspected it would, and when Mr. Cochran agreed to join the cast of “Survivor: Caramoan” the year after, it was a no-brainer that he would show up wearing the same attire.“It was a fun journey to go on,” Ms. Moore said, “and to see him start to lean into it.”Mr. Cochran said he acquiesced to the producers’ vision for his wardrobe partly because, as a fan of the show, he recalled how other contestants’ attire had helped them connect with viewers.He pointed to Rob Mariano, who was rarely without a Boston Red Sox hat in his many “Survivor” appearances, and to Rupert Boneham, another contestant in multiple seasons, who was known for wearing a tie-dyed tank top. (When Mr. Boneham ran a third-party campaign for governor of Indiana in 2012, he evoked his “Survivor” wardrobe by occasionally wearing tie-dye accessories. He finished third in that election, which was won by former Vice President Mike Pence.)“Whether it’s a tie-dye shirt or a Boston Red Sox cap,” Mr. Cochran said, “these discrete, identifiable items become so linked to the person.” His red vest, he added, became “my ‘Survivor’ costume.”Sandra Diaz-Twine spent hundreds of dollars on clothes for “Survivor: Pearl Islands,” but a plot twist that season meant that most of the items couldn’t be used.Robert Voets/CBSLillian Morris, a Boy Scout leader, dressed in a full scouting uniform for the “Pearl Islands” season.Monty Brinton/CBSA Sartorial Plot TwistMr. Probst said that the biggest change to the show’s approach to wardrobe came with its seventh season, “Survivor: Pearl Islands,” which was broadcast in 2003.Before then, each contestant had been permitted a knapsack of clothing items, including some survival gear. But for “Pearl Islands,” the players, who included Mr. Boneham, were surprised to enter the competition with significantly fewer items than they had worked with producers to select.Once cast members arrived at the shooting location, Mr. Probst said, they were asked to dress in certain outfits they had brought to wear for press photos that would be used to promote the show. Mr. Boneham wore his tie dye. Lillian Morris, a Boy Scout leader, dressed in a full scouting uniform. Shawn Cohen, an advertising sales executive, was in an Armani suit.But instead of going to a photo shoot, cast members were plunged immediately into the game, wearing only the clothes on their backs.“Some of the most iconic looks of ‘Survivor’ came from that season,” Mr. Probst said.Sandra Diaz-Twine, the winner of “Pearl Islands,” said she was shocked when she realized that most of the clothes the production crew had approved for her to bring couldn’t be used.“I had charged like $500, $600, on my credit card,” said Ms. Diaz-Twine, 49, who lives in Fayetteville, Ark., and has appeared in several subsequent seasons of the show. “I wanted to make sure that I had a different clean outfit like every day. And then they say you’re jumping off the boat with just the clothes on your back. I was like, Oh my god, I charged all this stuff to my credit card.”Since then, “Survivor” has gone back and forth on what clothing — and how much of it — contestants may bring. “We always listen to players,” Mr. Probst said. “It’s a give and take.”Rob Mariano on “Redemption Island,” the show’s 22nd season.Monty Brinton/CBSBuffs, Underwear and SwimsuitsOne garment worn by all contestants who have appeared on the show is the buff: a scarflike band of stretchy cotton emblazoned with the “Survivor” logo. It is rendered in different colors each season and has become one of the series’s sartorial signatures.“There are clearly guys who have ordered a buff before they go on the show and have put it on in the mirror looking at all the different ways they could wear it,” Mr. Probst said.Parvati Shallow, 41, a recurring contestant who first appeared in “Survivor: Cook Islands,” the show’s 13th season, broadcast in 2006, said the buff is critical for players who have only so many clothes. “You can wear it as a shirt, a skirt, a headpiece, a scarf,” she said.After her fourth and latest “Survivor” appearance, in the “Winners at War” season broadcast in 2020, Ms. Shallow, an executive coach and yoga teacher in Los Angeles, made headlines for criticizing the show’s dress code on a podcast hosted by another “Survivor” alum. She said she was pressured to compete in her underwear rather than the bathing suit she had requested. (In the seasons before “Winners at War,” producers began to discourage wearing swimsuits.)“It was a point of contention with me,” she said in a recent interview with The New York Times. “I went back and forth with wardrobe. They said no, nobody was getting a bathing suit.”She ultimately went with patterned undergarments that gave the impression of a swimsuit, but said it was not a happy compromise. “I had just had a baby,” she said. “I was like, My body looks nothing like it used to look like.”Mr. Probst said in an email that Ms. Shallow’s characterization was not accurate. He added that the choice to move away from bathing suits on the show was a creative one. “‘Survivor’ wardrobe has always centered around the conceit that the players were shipwrecked and left only with the clothes on their back,” he said.For Ms. Diaz-Twine, returning to “Survivor” after winning the “Pearl Islands” season offered the chance to upgrade those clothes. In preparation for the show’s 20th season, “Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains,” she said, “for the first time ever, I bought a Victoria’s Secret bra.”“I won a million dollars,” added Ms. Diaz-Twine, who will appear with Ms. Shallow in the second season of “The Traitors,” another reality TV competition, which will be released in January on Peacock. “I can’t show up in panties from Walmart.” More

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    The Year of the Mega Sleeve

    Raglan, fluted, leg o’ mutton, bishop, puffed, balloon — whatever you want to call them, we wore them.When Holly Waddington, the costume designer for “Poor Things,” Yorgos Lanthimos’s much heralded phantasmagorical film about a young women’s psychological and sexual awakening that opened on Friday, began thinking about what her heroine would wear, she said she was thinking “skinny arms and these kind of straight skirts with the big bustle.”The film, which is based on a 1992 book by Alasdair Gray and stars Emma Stone, is set in an unidentified time period that is sort of like the 1880s — if the 1880s took place in an alternate dimension in which time folded in on itself, so the past was also the future. In part, that’s why Ms. Waddington was drawn to a silhouette that was slim on top and exaggerated at the bottom.Also, it’s “quite phallic,” she said, “and that felt right.” Mr. Lanthimos had other ideas.“He said, ‘It’s about the sleeve,’” Ms. Waddington recalled. And so, indeed, it is.Ms. Stone amid a sea of ruffled sleevage.Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight PicturesPuffed, ruffled and ruched to bulbous extremes, the sleeves worn by Ms. Stone’s character, Bella Baxter, are impossible to ignore. About 15.5-inches wide, they bounce across the screen in every scene like giant hot air balloons or supersize mammaries, bigger than her head, absurd and weirdly alluring, dainty and dominant. They are “vast,” Ms. Waddington said. “Huge.”But monumental as they are, they are also utterly on trend. “There’s something in the air,” Ms. Waddington said. “Yorgos was very tuned into that.” It’s not the marketing tsunami that was Barbie pink; it’s merely one of those cosmic moments when fashion and culture collide.Forget the power shoulder: 2023 was the year of the power sleeve. No matter the exact style — puffed, bishop, fluted, belled, leg o’ mutton, statement, mega, dramatic — all that really mattered was that it was big. Off screen as well as on.We have, said Daniel Roseberry, the creative director of Schiaparelli, “hit peak sleeve.”Sleeves, Sleeves, EverywhereStyle watchers began talking about a sleeve sweep at the end of 2022. “Forget what you knew about the statement sleeve,” the influential Italian boutique Luisa Via Roma proclaimed on its website. “This season, the style is more dramatic and bolder than ever.” The fall ready-to-wear shows were filled with sleeves — brushing the floor at Balenciaga and Rodarte; bowling ball-size at Thom Browne; rounded and sculptural at Schiaparelli.By Oscar time, sleeve mania had migrated onto the red carpet thanks to Florence Pugh, who wore a palatial puff-sleeve Valentino taffeta robe atop shorts; Jessie Buckley, in a Shakespearean-sleeve black-lace gown by Rodarte; and Mindy Kaling, whose white Vera Wang dress had detachable gauntlets-cum-sleeves.Puffed up: Clockwise from top left, Florence Pugh in Valentino; Kendall Jenner in Marc Jacobs; Jessie Buckley in Rodarte; and Michelle Yeoh in Lagerfeld. Nina Westervelt and Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAt the Met Gala in May, Kendall Jenner wore a sequined Marc Jacobs look in which the designer seemed to have taken all the fabric from what would have been the pants and transferred it to the sleeves. (Also joining the statement sleeve set: Michelle Yeoh, Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne.)Then Vogue put Carey Mulligan on its November cover in a peachy gown from the Louis Vuitton 2024 resort collection that had such complicated sleeves it looked as if she’d stuck her arms elbow-deep into two giant cream puffs. And then came “Poor Things” with what Ms. Waddington called its “commitment to sleeves.”Little wonder that in January, the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology will kick off its 2024 programming with “Statement Sleeves,” an exhibition of almost 80 pieces from the permanent collection that will focus on how sleeves serve as “signifiers of status, taste and personality,” according to a news release. And though they cycle in and out of fashion, so it has always been.Arms and the WomanBig sleeves have been a part of dress for almost as long as there has been dress. Colleen Hill, the curator of costume and accessories at FIT, who is behind the museum’s sleeves show, said the world’s oldest woven garment — a V-neck linen shirt from the fourth millennium B.C., now in the collection of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology in London — includes knife-pleated sleeves. During the Renaissance, sleeves were often the most elaborate part of a dress, as well as detachable; grooms often gave sleeves to their new brides.Sleeves became even more prominent in the Elizabethan, Victorian and Edwardian eras. By the 1830s there were so many different sleeve shapes and names, Ms. Hill said, that a woman’s sewing guide from the period stated, in effect, “we’re not going to give you all the styles of sleeves because it is impossible.”Carey Mulligan got big sleeves for her Vogue cover in November. VogueMs. Waddington said that when she was researching these periods for “Poor Things,” she went into fashion archives and discovered sleeves so extreme they were almost unbelievable. “This is the thing that fascinates me about historical dress,” she said. “The shapes are wild.” What looks like science fiction, she added, actually comes from “a 19th-century pattern.”Sleeves got big again in the 1940s thanks to designers like Adrian, the Hollywood couturier whose giant ruffled sleeves were a favorite of a young Joan Crawford and a precursor to the equally giant shoulder pads of World War II. And sleeves made a famous return in the 1980s, thanks in part to Princess Diana and the enormous fairy-tale-on-steroids sleeves of her wedding gown.It’s probably not an accident that the episodes of “The Crown” that focus on Diana, including the recreation of her wedding dress, have coincided with the return of big sleeves. Simon Porte Jacquemus specifically name-checked Diana as the inspiration for his fall 2023 show, which featured inflated sleeves. He said he was obsessed with her “dramatic round puffy sleeves.”“It shaped her silhouette in a sensuous way, but still with a poetic and naïve ’80s touch,” he said.What’s in a Sleeve?At first it may have seemed that pandemic lockdowns and the ascension of comfort clothing would kill the big sleeve. But the way that altered reality shrank our interactions to the size of a computer monitor may actually have turbocharged the trend.“We’re so often seen onscreen these days from the waist up, and sleeves are a way to stand out,” Ms. Hill said.Ms. Waddington said much the same, noting that the torso “is what the camera sees most of the time, so the information needs to be happening between the waist and the head.” And how much better when it is conveyed at volume. Or, rather, in volumes.Indeed, Mr. Roseberry said, sleeves “draw the attention upward to the face and the person wearing the garment.”Maximalist sleeves at Thom Browne. Simbarashe Cha for The New York TimesSleeves like a giant circle at Schiaparelli.SchiaparelliSleeves to the floor at Rodarte.Kessler StudioNo matter what, Mr. Lanthimos said, “they really make an impression.” Sleeves are inclusive: They can be worn by myriad bodies in myriad ways and exist at myriad prices. They are theatrical. (Forget talking with your hands; talking with your arms is much more effective.) And they can be resonant of sexuality, safety and strength.That makes sleeves the rare design element that is equally showy and swaddling. Simone Rocha, whose balloon sleeves walk a fine line between childlike and sensuous and have become something of a design signature, said she was drawn to the way “the proportion sculpts around the body almost like a cocoon, creating a sense of security.” Also: big, puffy sleeves are old-fashioned and contemporary at the same time, speaking to history and, she said, “the pragmatic feeling of a work-wear bomber.”Whatever the association, however, the result is universal: “In an upside-down world, emphasizing your physicality in space, taking up room, is a way of asserting yourself,” Mr. Roseberry said. “Of giving yourself importance.”Ms. Waddington agreed. “I think that they’re about empowerment,” she said. Which is, in the end, the hero’s journey of “Poor Things,” and the heart of its emotional appeal.“I feel like I’d quite like to wear big sleeves now,” Ms. Waddington said. More

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    Humberto Leon’s Making of a Girl Group

    Last year, it became Humberto Leon’s job to shape the appearances of 20 young women, whose ages ranged from 14 to 21.He decided what kind of clothing, shoes and jewelry they would wear. He told them how their hair should be cut and their makeup applied.“You have to imagine, with 20 girls, I want each and every one of them to stand out,” Mr. Leon said.Still, young women do not always take kindly to being told how to dress. There were tears. “That’s not how I like to do my hair,” some of them told Mr. Leon.“I said, ‘I know, but trust me. I’m helping you own your personality,’” Mr. Leon recalled. “They think they know what’s best for them. And I have to give them an objective opinion of what I think would look great on them.”Professionally, it was in their best interest to listen to Mr. Leon. Under his guidance, they could become the main characters in their own makeover montage — a tradition stretching from “Pygmalion” to “The Princess Diaries” to, perhaps more relevant to this group, “The Hunger Games.”Mr. Leon rose to prominence in the aughts with Opening Ceremony, which he founded in 2002 with Carol Lim, a college friend. After the pandemic, he decided to expand his horizons.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesThese 20 girls were in direct competition with one another. Six of them would eventually be named members of a new pop group. Upon its debut, this group would already have the support of Hybe, the company that brought K-pop to the world, and Universal Music Group, the world’s largest record company. The competition would also be the subject of a Netflix documentary series.Throughout it all, the contestants’ public image would be in the hands of Mr. Leon, a 48-year-old fashion designer who rose to prominence in downtown New York during the 2000s with his store Opening Ceremony — a popular boutique for up-and-coming labels — then was recruited to reinvigorate a luxury brand in Paris, then started opening restaurants with his family during the pandemic in Los Angeles.In September 2022, he was brought on as creative director for this girl group competition — a partnership between Hybe and Geffen Records, which is owned by Universal Music Group — in which 120,000 applicants from around the world were narrowed down to 20 contestants, or “trainees,” all of whom were relocated to Los Angeles to train intensively in singing and dancing.When those contestants were announced in August, Mr. Leon dressed them for their first group photo shoot in matching gray schoolgirl uniforms. They wore blazers bearing the name of their competition: Dream Academy.By November, half of this group was eliminated through a combination of fan voting and judges’ evaluations. The culling was chronicled on YouTube. (“We’re not forming a friend group, we’re forming a girl group,” one young woman said during a particularly tense elimination round.)For the final photo shoot before the six winners were announced, Mr. Leon dressed the trainees now as “elevated” schoolgirls. This time they showed more skin in tailored gray sets, trading their chunky white socks for black mesh, looking like more polished, modern versions of Britney Spears in “ … Baby One More Time,” the music video that made a 16-year-old girl a star.One morning in Hollywood, I watched as Mr. Leon oversaw these final portraits. He reminded one 17-year-old contestant, Megan, to correct her stance. She had a tendency to stand with her legs wide apart, which Mr. Leon had nicknamed “the Megan.” As in, “Don’t do ‘the Megan,’ Megan.”Later, while the 10 remaining trainees filmed a music video, I noticed that Megan had a way of staring down the camera with a cool, come-hither expression — similar to the seductive one Ms. Spears adopted. (Megan, of course, was not yet born when “ … Baby One More Time” was released.)This tendency was not corrected.When it came to being sexy, Mr. Leon said he had always told the girls, “Whatever you’re doing, do it for yourself, because you want to feel that way.”A “Dream Academy” trainee poses at a Hollywood studio days before the final six winners were announced.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesK-pop, But Not“Dream Academy” was not Mr. Leon’s first time working with a girl group.In 2021, he met the Linda Lindas, a punk quartet that went viral after performing at the Los Angeles Public Library. At the time, its members were between 10 and 16 years old. They had come to eat at Mr. Leon’s restaurant Chifa, named for a Chinese restaurant his mother, Wendy, opened in Peru in the 1970s before the family moved to the United States. When Mr. Leon offered to direct their first music video, the group said yes. “Growing Up” showed the four girls and four cats shredding in a suburban home, dressed in 1970s-inspired outfits.When she saw the video, Michelle An, now president of creative strategy at Interscope Geffen A&M, said she thought it was “so cute and so innovative and so appropriate for their age.” She was particularly taken with the illustrations of cats painted on the girls’ closed eyelids.The final 10 trainees rehearse an original song, “All the Same.” Their outfits, hair and makeup choices were directed by Mr. Leon and his team.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesMs. An’s job is to help her labels’ artists, like Billie Eilish, with “visual world building,” she said. “You make this music — what imagery do you want out there to help your fans understand what this song is trying to say?”Geffen had an unusual project in the works with Hybe, a Korean entertainment powerhouse. What began as a conversation about music distribution ended with Bang Si-hyuk, the chairman of Hybe, proposing that they build a group together. Hybe would bring elements of K-pop’s famously rigorous training and development program — the same system with which Hybe built BTS — to the United States for the first time, filling it with trainees from various regions, not just East Asia.One hurdle, though, was the Americans’ concern that the group could seem too factory-produced. “K-pop has a reputation of being manufactured,” Ms. An said. Even outside K-pop, the history of boy bands and girl groups reeks of “not being as organic and real,” said John Janick, the chief executive of Interscope Geffen A&M, pointing to glossy reality shows of the 2000s, like “Making the Band.”In order to make the group feel real, the executives said, the girls had to feel real. Their personalities couldn’t be forced; there would be no extreme archetypes, no Posh or Sporty or Baby Spice. They needed someone who could draw out the girls’ distinct backgrounds and abilities but also make them cohere visually as a group. They were convinced Mr. Leon could be that person.“In the entertainment business,” Mr. Janick said, “everybody wants to have taste, but not all people do.”‘A Curious Mind’Instead of going to fashion school, Mr. Leon likes to say, he worked at the Gap for 10 years.At 14, he was hired at a store in West Covina, Calif., and learned he had a skill for designing windows. He continued working on visual displays for Gap while attending the University of California, Berkeley. After graduating in 1997, he accepted a corporate job with Old Navy in San Francisco.In 2000, Mr. Leon left for New York, working at Burberry as the director of visual merchandising. Mr. Leon called Lara one of the most “fashion savvy” of the group.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesA selection of shoes. Some trainees were more confident performing in heels than others.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesIn 2002, he founded Opening Ceremony with Carol Lim, a college friend.“We have a similar approach to life,” said Ms. Lim, who was the business-minded chief executive to Mr. Leon’s creative director. “A curious mind,” she called him.A decade later, having cultivated a Midas-touch reputation for coolness, the duo became design directors at Kenzo, a LVMH-owned brand in Paris.At Kenzo, Mr. Leon took a particular interest in marketing visuals. Mr. Bang, the Hybe chairman, called a 2016 fragrance advertisement starring a frenetic dancing Margaret Qualley, directed by Spike Jonze, one of his “favorite fashion artworks.”Mr. Leon and Ms. Lim left Kenzo in 2019, then sold Opening Ceremony and closed its stores in 2020, moving to the same neighborhood in Los Angeles to raise their families.Around this time, Mr. Leon said he had an epiphany: Even if he was “good” at it, he didn’t have to keep working in fashion. “I was able to create a feeling, and a feeling can transfer,” he said. “I decided to open up my world a bit.”Sometimes Mr. Leon still designs clothes; recently he got a call from the choreographer Justin Peck about creating costumes for a spring performance of the New York City Ballet. But what appeals to him now is making things not for runways but for culture. For example, when Heidi Bivens, the costume designer for “Euphoria,” was working on the teen drama’s first season, she sourced several outfits from Opening Ceremony. The “‘Euphoria’ effect” became a phenomenon, inspiring trends in fashion and beauty.The label hoped that given Mr. Leon’s experience raising daughters, he would be sensitive in guiding the young women, here with Megan, through the competition.Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times“I went to them, and I said, ‘For Season 2, let’s design this from scratch, so everything you see on ‘Euphoria’ is something we’ve never seen before,’” Mr. Leon said. Consumers could then directly buy the clothes they saw onscreen.That pitch didn’t work out, but it’s an idea Mr. Leon still wants to explore. .‘Trust Me’In November, Mr. Leon showed me a video of his twin daughters at their 10th birthday sleepover. In matching pajamas, the girls recreated choreography from a “Dream Academy” mission. (Missions were essentially live music videos in which the trainees’ singing and dancing skills were tested.) Five of the trainees had participated in a rump-shaking cover of “Buttons” by the Pussycat Dolls.The twins had become invested in who would win the competition. So had fans around the world, some of whom paid for billboards in an effort to drum up votes for their favorites, like Sophia (20, Filipina) and Manon (21, Swiss-Ghanaian).Still, during the 12 weeks that the competition unfolded on YouTube, “Dream Academy” did not exactly become an international phenomenon. Just three of the trainees’ 15 missions cracked more than one million views — somewhat underwhelming by K-pop viewership standards.Next year, around the time the six winners will release music under their new name, Katseye, the project has another chance to break through. In summer 2024, Netflix will release a documentary series about the competition by Nadia Hallgren, who directed the Michelle Obama documentary “Becoming.” This may be the ideal format for capturing the drama, major and minor, of the process.When the 20 contestants were introduced in August, Mr. Leon dressed them for a group photo in matching gray schoolgirl uniforms.HYBE x Geffen RecordsThe six winning members of Katseye come from the United States, South Korea, the Philippines and Switzerland: Daniela, Yoonchae, Lara, Sophia, Manon and Megan.Kanya IwanaWithin just an hour on set, I watched a trainee in a silver paillette minidress with tendinitis in her knees fight back tears, take after take, while filming a video for an original song called “Dirty Water.” I watched another in a tube top and reflective wide-leg pants be told to exert better control over her hair flipping.I also watched the adults in the room engage in a delicate dance of evaluating, correcting and handling these young women, while trying to be sensitive to the fact that they were young women. (The youngest was 15.)“Tell the girls it’s us, it’s not them,” the director of one music video instructed an assistant during a technical delay.In hiring Mr. Leon for the project, Ms. An hoped his experience raising two girls would help in this regard. His first self-appointed task was interviewing each contestant individually before making any decisions on their new looks.“I wanted to look in their eyes,” Mr. Leon said. “I wanted to ask them the hard questions about their upbringing.”He told the trainees who came in wearing heavy makeup to take it off. “I want you to look gorgeous and beautiful, and I want you to be yourself,” Mr. Leon recalled saying.“I think it’s hard for people to see themselves,” Mr. Leon continued. “You need somebody to tell you that you look amazing without much.”To assist in the makeovers, he brought in stylists who worked on the “The Idol” — an HBO show about the relationship between a pop star and a cult leader. He brought in the hairstylist to Bella Hadid.To the 14 trainees who didn’t make the final group, he seemed to want to send a message: “I did the best thing I could for you. And you have to trust me.” More

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    Winona Ryder Fans Celebrate New Photo Book of the ‘Eternal Cool Girl’

    Fans of Winona Ryder lined up outside Dover Street Market in Manhattan on a recent chilly evening to attend a launch party for “Winona,” a book of Polaroids and cellphone shots of the Gen X cultural idol.“She’s so famously private that any peek into her interior life is delicious,” Daniela Tijerina, a writer and editorial assistant for Vanity Fair, said. “I’ve molded so much about my own style after a woman I know so little about, and that makes her as cool as a person can possibly be.”The shots in the book were taken by Robert Rich, who started photographing Ms. Ryder soon after becoming friends with her more than 20 years ago. His images capture her in unguarded moments: eating pizza during a sleepover at his Hell’s Kitchen apartment; and smoking a cigarette in a bathroom, while the model Daria Werbowy quoted lines from “Reality Bites” to her.Robert Rich, whose candid shots fill “Winona.”Ye Fan for The New York TimesPortraits of the Gen X star from the book “Winona.”Robert RichAt the party, Mr. Rich, 57, signed copies of his book, as guests mobbed a merch table selling T-shirts, caps and tote bags, all of which read: “Winona.”“What we love about Winona is that you know nothing about her,” Mr. Rich said. “We love that she’s a mysterious woman. I used to never recognize her when I’d meet her. She’d always be wearing a visor or a pageboy cap. I’d walk through the city with her, and no one even knew who I was with.”He befriended Ms. Ryder when he was a manager of the Marc Jacobs store on Mercer Street in SoHo in 1999. The shop was a hangout for Selma Blair, Sofia Coppola, Parker Posey and Kate Moss, and Mr. Rich often took Polaroids of celebrity clients in his basement office.He got to know Ms. Ryder during fittings at the store and later helped dress her in Marc Jacobs pieces for parties, premieres and magazine photo shoots. After Ms. Ryder’s shoplifting trial in 2002, he became a confidante during a period when she retreated from public view.Joe Jonas, left, looks through “Winona.”Ye Fan for The New York TimesA shot from the new book.Robert RichA year ago, Mr. Rich found himself thinking about all the Polaroids he had amassed in several shoeboxes in his closet, and he texted Ms. Ryder about the idea of collecting them in a book. After she said yes, the London-based book dealer and publisher, Idea, took on the project. Marc Jacobs wrote the foreword.As the party guests sipped champagne and flipped through the book, Mr. Jacobs made an appearance.“She was our young Garbo,” he said. “A Winona sighting was always a big deal back then. She came to one of my shows at the time, and I still remember she was a little like a deer in the headlights. She’s not snobbish. She’s not the red carpet girl. And that has always added to her cachet and cool.”Francesca Sorrenti, who designed and edited the book, reflected on Ms. Ryder’s enduring appeal.“To understand Winona, you have to understand the youth movement of the 1990s,” she said. “There are only a few personalities quite like hers out there at any given time, and in her era, it was Kate Moss and Winona. You’d just see them and you’d want to know, Who is that?”Another of Mr. Rich’s shots from “Winona.”Robert RichAt the party, Marc Jacobs likened Ms. Ryder to the reclusive Greta Garbo.Robert RichMs. Sorrenti said that Ms. Ryder’s shyness added to her mystique.Robert Rich“I’ve hung out with Winona,” Ms. Sorrenti added. “And yes, she’s shy, and that shyness also projected itself into what her fans consider her mystique.”Hanging out by a rack of Comme des Garçons jackets was Inna Blavatnik, a creative director. “I’m of the Generation X era that Winona represented,” she said. “It was all about having a moody cool and not giving a you-know-what, and she became my role model as a teenager.”As the night progressed, the fashion designer Zac Posen and the musician Joe Jonas stopped by — and a question loomed: Would Ms. Ryder show?“I texted her about the party,” Mr. Rich said, “but I haven’t heard anything back yet.”The filmmaker Zoe Cassavetes offered: “I’ve known Winona for a long time, and when you get to know her, she’s extremely present and generous, but she’s also good at disappearing into the ether.” She concluded: “If she were coming, she wouldn’t tell anyone she was.”The filmmaker Zoe Cassavetes said Ms. Ryder was “good at disappearing into the ether.”Robert RichGuests at the “Winona” party.Ye Fan for The New York TimesMs. Ryder ultimately never materialized, but Jayna Maleri, a fashion editorial director, said she preferred it that way. “I almost never want to see Winona Ryder in person,” she said. “Not because I think she’d disappoint me, but because she occupies a place in my brain so rooted in my nostalgia that it would be jarring.”“She’s an icon of my youth, the eternal cool girl who embodied the authenticity of the ’90s,” she continued. “And I want to hold onto my illusions of her.”A Robert Rich collage.Robert Rich More