Advanced Style

[Photos Ari Seth Cohen/Text Maayan Zilberman]

Ari burned three meals worth of calories running after this woman to interrupt her afternoon power-walk. The mad rush was well worth the effort, because when we finally caught up with her on the Upper West Side, she was an absolute delight and even more colorful than we realized at first glance.
Elaine, who is known amongst her friends as “Jazzy”, is originally from Montreal (where she was known as “Pepper”, for the condiments she’d put on Poutine). She moved to New York City to enroll at The New School, we’re guessing for DRAMA. This remains a mystery since we focused our chat on more important matters, such as color and where to find the best sandals.
When I asked Jazzy about her layers, she was especially excited to tell me about her romper, a staple in her wardrobe. “I always wear one-pieces. They’re all I wear.” Since Jazzy has lived everywhere from Los Angeles to Florida to Massachusetts, she has done her fair share of dressing for different climates, and prefers light and airy items like this one and the ivory leather studded sandals she’s wearing today.
My favorite thing about Jazzy’s look is her choice of hair color/lipstick/eyeglasses. She says her daughter helps with coloring her closely cropped cut to neon yellow, and her eyeglasses are “just $8 on St Mark’s Place, but the prescriptions cost a fortune!”

I met Maryann at The New Museum and we made a date for me to come visit her home to take some more photos. She is a wonderful self taught artist, who really started concentrating on her craft in the last few years after selling her business. Maryann, like many other people feature makes beautiful things and dresses up because it lifts her spirit and makes her happy. I will post some more pictures of Maryann and her story in a later post!

I was in California visiting my family over the weekend when I ran into this dashing gentleman in Laguna Beach. It was my mom who first spotted his elegant and dapper style amongst the casual beachwear and told me to run up and ask for his photo. She has a great eye for Advanced Style!

As Maayan mentioned in the previous post, the great thing about New York is the opportunity to meet such amazing people, even on the street. The other today I had an incredible run in with design world superstar Hilda Longinotti, an Architectural and Design Liaison for Herman Miller. I didn’t know about her career but admired her wonderful style and especially her red sunglasses. Hilda, 78, told me that she’d love to be the face of T.J. Maxx, in fact The Diva of T.J. Maxx as she buys most of what she wears there and is constantly complimented on her style. She told me that you don’t have to wear Chanel to be in style, that good design doesn’t necessarily mean expensive design.

Everything she was wearing was from T.J. Maxx except the sunglasses which are about 45 years old. Hilda’s favorite colors are red, orange and chartreuse. When I asked her if she had any style advice for young generations she said, “Set yourself apart from the crowd, young people need to find their zone. Style is an evolution, a process.”I hear a lot about the process of finding one’s style from the people I talk to and how with age they have grown to know what they look and feel good in.

After we talked a bit Hilda invited me up to the Herman Miller design showroom and I had the privilege to take her photo amongst some of the world’s best designed furnishings. It was an extraordinary experience. Here is an expert from an article about Hilda from Metropolis Magazine:

I started out as George’s(Nelson’s) receptionist. I think it paid $55 a week. They were so thrilled with me that the designers completely redesigned the reception area, and they made the colors of the space complement me—behind me was a purple felt wall with an orange-and-white Howard Miller clock and the Herman Miller daybed. It was amazing. Whenever they needed to take photographs of anything, they would march me to the roof, and I was the in-house model for all of the prototypes: the Coconut chair, the Marshmallow sofa—whatever they were designing that needed a body, I would sit on it.

Every Monday there were project meetings. Everyone would sit at this huge table, and George would attend. They’d go through the projects, where they were going, the billings, et cetera. In ’62 I bought an old gate house in Whitestone, and Dolores Engle and everybody else at the office was helping me withthe interiors. So one morning George said, “What is the biggest project on the boards that we have at the moment?” And some smart aleck said, “Hilda Longinotti’s house.” And he banged on the door and said, “Goddamn it! I mean paying client!” But he said it with good humor.

Hilda in ads for Herman Miller

[Photos Ari Seth Cohen/Text Maayan Zilberman]

One of the things we love most about living in New York is meeting gems like 90 year old Ilona Royce Smithkin while going about our day. Ari met this beautiful lady on the street recently and insisted I meet her to discuss our mutual interests in painting, dancing, and making our own lingerie.What most first notice about Ilona are her long eyelashes that she crafts out of her own flashy red hair. With a youthful figure and delightful ease in conversation, its obvious she is also a performer with plenty to tell.
I’ll be sitting down with Ilona this weekend to discuss it in detail.

Stay tuned for tips on making your own clothes, how to balance careers, and who should wear false eyelashes..