Last night, Seventh Avenue was buzzier than downtown Manhattan, and it was all about Horst. Carolina Herrera hosted an intimate cocktail soiree, bringing together fashion royalty including Ralph Lauren and Valentino Garavani to celebrate Hamish Bowles and Ivan Shaw’s latest book, Around That Time: Horst at Home in Vogue. What did Bowles enjoy most about writing the book? “I think discovering some stories that I didn’t know,” he said. “The most exciting thing was Ivan’s discovery that between the Vogue archive, the Condé Nast archive, and the Horst estate, we had the original film for every single story.” And in those gems was a hidden photo of Mrs. Herrera herself. “They photographed Carolina, who was engaged to Reinaldo, but they hadn’t married and her picture never ran. That’s the first time she’s seen the picture since then,” noted Bowles.
Also taking in the magnificent photographs were Anna Wintour, William Ivey Long, and Jesse Carrier, but it was Herrera who was entranced most by the book. “He had the best eye I had ever seen,” said the designer of the photographer, noting, “I saw him working and he was amazing. He was really fabulous and [had] such an elegant eye. That was his whole thing, and he used to catch the right moment to make it beautiful and dreamy.” And live forever in print, it would seem.
