Image by Sarah Moroz

Merrill Garbus, founder of the musical project tUnE-yArDs, was sporting some serious face paint when I first saw her perform. It stretched from her left eyebrow to right cheek, transforming her into a David Bowie-esque stage warrior wielding vocal gymnastics with her deep voice. She performed instrumental acrobatics in tandem, puncturing songs with raw and visceral HAs! And WAOUs! These loops and layers imbue her music with a handmade feel and can be anthemic, almost evangelical, in their delivery.

Merrill’s music reflects a variety of influences, likely a product of her rambling life path. The singer grew up on the East Coast, studied in Africa and launched her professional music career in Montreal before moving to California. Currently, she is touring the world as the opening act for Beirut. As it turns out, she is as gracious and articulate in person as she is experimental and fascinating onstage. Post-concert in Paris, I spoke with her about the trappings of language, the importance of intuition, her love of Montreal and her favorite weirdos.

Sarah Moroz: The whoops and amazing guttural sounds you make tap into something really powerful and almost primitive. How much of that is crafted, and how much of that is just what comes out of you by surprise?

Merrill Garbus: I definitely start with intuitive stuff, with as little thinking as possible. That’s where the sound exploration really helps me, because as soon as I start thinking about things too much, they feel contrived. I always wanted tUnE-yArDs to be not contrived and really honest. I had this experience of doing real theater work and then being in the indie rock world with another band, and in both of those cases there was a sense of…it tended towards pretense, I guess. With tUnE-yArDs, I always wanted it to come from a human place that anybody could understand.
Especially these days I can experiment with the looping pedal. I have facility with it that helps me be very spontaneous. The song “Bizness,” was just an experimentation thing. It just came really naturally. Words are the thing that do require some kind of crafting, but at the same time I want to have that spontaneity with words—and even a kind of Dada aesthetic to the lyrics… It’s evoking something different than the actual meaning of the words. That’s been really challenging for me lately.

Sarah: Is it easier or more liberating to perform in front of an audience that doesn’t speak English?

Merrill: It actually feels better. It feels easier that I am communicating more with the sound of words, than actual words. There’s this one lyric: “My man likes me from behind,” and people are like, “Is it hard to say those things?” I fear that people are taking lyrics too literally. So to perform in front of people who don’t understand half of the lyrics is wonderful. Maybe that’s why I’ve enjoyed this European tour so much—maybe that’s part of it: feeling free from the meaning of the music, being more in the feeling of it.

Sarah: You started using a handheld voice recorder, spotlighting the haphazards of doings things spontaneously. Why this approach?

Merrill: I started with [the recorder] because it was a gift from friends of mine. I really just needed to get down song ideas and I had no money at the time and then these friends very nicely gave it to me. Immediately I was using it all the time to record things, but I was also like, “Oh, that sound!” It started changing what I was hearing, instead of just recording myself, and I was listening more. That summer and the summer after that, I was a nanny so I was with this kid. It was fascinating to be around him as he learned words and learned how to formulate language. So I was carrying this thing around, recording him. I loved the sound of that recorder and all of a sudden I was like, “Oh that’s OK, that sound, and it doesn’t mean I’m not a valid musician. It doesn’t mean I’m not a valid recording artist.” That was a big thing. I felt really frustrated as a puppeteer—and just frustrated in general. Then I started importing the files from [the recorder] into my computer and using free recording software to multi-track things with it. It was like working with Play-Doh! It helped to be around the kid; I think he was inspiring me to be naïve, in a way, and go back to this very basic “What do I want to hear?” What do I want to hear instead of creating something that other people want to hear? It was really important for that to be a formative theme for tUnE-yArDs.

Sarah: Your spell tUnE-yArDs with a mishmash of uppercase and lowercase letters, and onstage you wear this great face paint. It seems like you put some significant thought into creating interesting visual elements, in addition to aural ones…

Merrill: It is important to me. People are like, “What’s with the capitalization?” I think it’s an aesthetic thing more than having a great amount of meaning behind it. It’s the visual attached to it. The face paint may be a little different thing, because I think that there’s a process that I go through when I’m putting on the face paint before I go on. It’s like my first improvisation of the night. There’s some part of my brain that’s like, “Ok, this is how things are gonna be tonight” and giving myself permission to listen to the sounds I wanna hear that night, which may be way different than they were the night before. I think I need to think of sound in a visual way, so it makes sense to me to have artistic components for everything. It reflects, for me, the visual effect, the understanding of the music.

Sarah: Can you tell me a bit about living in Montreal, and being part of Sister Suvi? How was working with that band different than tUnE-yArDs?

Merrill: My feelings about Montreal run deep, because it was the first time that I really felt young, even though I was 26 when I moved there. I happened to be working at this camp the summer of 2005. I quit my puppeteering job and went to work at this camp where I met Nate Brenner, the bass player, and also my friend Patrick Gregoire. I was living at my parents’ house and I was really depressed, things were really bad. I didn’t have any reason for living, etc., etc., and then [Patrick] and I just started playing together. My mom had just given me this ukulele. So I started going up to Montreal to visit him because he was at Concordia studying music and we started a band. Patrick had this knowledge about what music could do. I didn’t have this idea that you could make a living as an artist, really at all. I thought I would be on food stamps for the rest of my life and that being an artist also meant being a reject from society. That’s really what I felt like. And he said, “Your songs are really good, and we could make money playing your songs”. We would go up to Montreal and play these shows at Café Dépanneur up on rue Bernard, and people actually came and put money in the hat and really paid attention and loved it. That show was really historic for us. And all of a sudden I thought maybe making art can actually be fun. There can be so much love in it and it can inspire love in other people. It was just the right time and the right place, and a place where the living was cheap and the people were so encouraging of what we were doing as Sister Suvi and what I was doing as tUnE-yArDs. The two began at the same time because Patrick was touring with his other band, Islands. So when he would do Islands, I would do this thing and they just both sort of grew and grew and grew.

Sarah: I read a past interview in which you stated: “I feel this stuff, so I owe it to myself to do it. Otherwise, my other option is to die.” That’s a very impassioned, powerful thing to say. What inspires you to keep up that energy; what do you draw from?

Merrill: Well, first of all, I’m glad to be reminded that I said that. Also I’m glad you didn’t say: “And I found that very overdramatic.” Though it is a dramatic thing to say. If I didn’t have this outlet, I would have gone the other way, at that point in my life. It’s funny because when you get yourself out of depression, things don’t feel as black and white anymore. But to answer your initial question—life or death—it’s like tonight, for instance. That was a hard show for me—maybe more difficult than other shows because it’s a stuffy place. It has a weight to it. It’s huge and it’s not full of tUnE-yArDs fans; it’s full of Beirut fans, so it’s just a different thing. If I wasn’t attached to this idea that it’s either this or dying, then I would get distracted by, “Oh, they don’t like me,” or “Oh, things aren’t going well,” or feeling sorry for myself instead of getting back to what feels like a more spiritual attachment to my work. I’m so fucking lucky to be a) alive and b) doing what I love as my work. It’s that kind of thing where it’s just a beautiful reminder every single day that there’s tough shit that we deal with, but it’s very minimal in the scheme of things. And it feels that I found a way live.

Sarah: You’ve said, “It’s really good for women of all ages to see other women being really weird and bizarre and loud.” Who were some of those female icons for you?

Merrill: My mom, number one. My grandma, number two, who I thought of tonight because she’d be really proud of me for playing on a stage like this, with lots of makeup on and speaking French a little bit. My mom is a piano teacher and professional pianist, but she also has incredible theatricality to her personality. I saw her be a performer a lot in her life, and my grandma too. [Also] Ani Difranco was a huge. Maybe that’s uncool to say, but that was huge for me when I was in high school to have this real violent and brazen female voice. And you know, Björk, a total weirdo in every sense of the word—again [she’s inspiring] for her art, and being accepted in this world of music and art because she’s so out there and just really doing what she feels and what she envisions. I guess Nina Simone, too, at a certain point, because of her voice. My voice is low and people are often like, “Oh, I thought you were a guy at first.” As a teenager I had a lot of gender anger, wanting to rebel against what a woman was supposed to be and yet at the same time feeling insecure about not being the woman who I felt most men were gonna be attracted to—or anybody was going to be attracted to. And Odetta, Patti Smith… There were a lot of them along the way who are really wild: Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill…the list goes.

Sarah: In terms of process, there is Owen Pallett, who also loops sounds and really builds songs from scratch. Do you know other musicians who use this technique? How did you decide that kind of DIY live process was for you?

Merrill: I don’t know enough loopers. Owen and I know each other, though I’ve never seen him play live, which is a total shame. But I don’t many other people, perhaps on purpose, who use that. White Hinterland is a band that we know. They’re friends of ours who have been using looping a lot and creating a certain layering. We had this wonderful opportunity to play with The Roots when we did a TV show in the States. They’re huge heroes of mine. I really look forward to collaborating with hip-hop artists more because I think it is a philosophy of looping and listening for sounds, and using those sounds to build a piece of art. That’s definitely an oversimplification of hip-hop, but that’s a big part of it. It’s a collage [and] I’m interested in collages of sound that reflect the present tense, To me, hip-hop is one of the only genres that does that effectively—and powerfully. I love Erykah Badu and I would love to collaborate with her. I realize that might never happen but I respect her so much. Again, she’s weird in the way that she’s just doing what she hears and feels, and she’s not paying attention to what anybody else thinks about. As a result, she’s doing really groundbreaking stuff and that’s where I want to be: on the growing edge of music.

Sarah: As you tour, are you able to be creative, given that you have to dedicate so much energy to the shows? Or do you need to carve out separate time for creativity?

Merrill: A little bit of both. I’m trying to write this new song on the road and it’s a real struggle. But then again, these days it’s a struggle at home too because there’s my laptop and my laptop is filled with business. What I’m trying to do is give myself some real time off in the next little bit, where I can get back to that sort of naïve place—not thinking about the effect. You can’t write songs thinking about how it’s going to affect your income for the next five years. I experiment a lot during sound checks with the looping pedal, and then I’m improvising that loop. That’s been really nice but that crafting part that comes after it is really hard and requires some serious sitting with a piece, sitting with myself. That’s what there’s not a lot of room for afterward—and there’s a lot of creativity that happens onstage too. If we have over an hour, it can really be this sort of sculpted thing.

Sarah: I had read that you’d like to bring attention to the African musicians you so love. What do you have planned?

Merrill: I was thinking about that just today, actually. The problem with doing interviews is that there’s a lot more talk than action! I’m talking about stuff, but then I’m on tour so my energy is divided between the music business and making music, and there’s not room for much else. But today I was thinking about what that is. I am so glad that there are these bands like Khaira Arby, this singer from Mali who I got to play with. Ladysmith Black Mambazo, because of their association with Graceland, have been touring in the States a bunch. But it’s becoming part of “indie rock,” touring circuits for these bands to come through and that’s totally amazing. Those are the bands that we have access to. It would be wonderful to open for them or collaborate with them.

When I was in Kenya, I befriended and was very much saved by a bunch of hip-hop musicians in Nairobi. They just don’t have access to the resources that we do, [but] they actually do have pretty good music videos up there. Something that I thought about was having some kind of tUnE-yArDs focused radio station, where we could feature their music and potentially release their music at some point. Again, these are huge ideas that are hard to make happen, but that would be ideal. It’s the idea of making more active the sharing of music that’s already there. Certainly they’re listening to our music, and we’re listening to theirs. That’s already happening. To open the resources that we have in the Western world—especially now that we have successful indie bands here referencing African music and making a lot of money on it, comparatively to most African musicians. There’s always this danger with Africa, even for myself, that it becomes romanticized. It probably is a very hard place to travel in, logistically, but I would also love to tour in Africa and be able to document that. It would be more to learn what’s going on there and learn about the music there. And, these days, how climate change affects people who are living on what they’re growing. I feel that I was privileged enough to be able to go there and learn the Swahili language and I want to use those things for good—idealistic as that might sound.

Twin Shadow’s music has been christened many things: a resurrection of synth-laced 1980s tunes! Hazy new wave-tinged pop! Bedroom electro-disco! All of these revival features have garnered the band’s founder George Lewis Jr. enough cred to earn him the moniker the “black Morrissey,” and not without merit. His songs have wonderfully danceable beats, yet the tinge of perpetual melancholy in his voice adds emotional depth.

Twin Shadow is Lewis’ brainchild. And, yes, he is a twin himself (fraternal). The Dominican-born performer grew up in Florida and currently lives in Brooklyn—if absently, as he’s been touring steadily to promote his debut album, Forget. The album is the result of both Lewis’ solitary bedroom-indie experimentation and the influence of Chris Taylor’s (of Grizzly Bear fame) production. After hearing Lewis’ demo recordings, Taylor elected to release the album on his label, Terrible Records.

Lewis is not solely known for his music. He’s responsible for some awesome remixes, from Lady Gaga’s Born This Way to Surfer Blood’s Floating Vibes. He’s also known for his impressive and self-conscious style (as if to confirm this, he changed between our interview and his stage performance). His look samples from Prince and Little Richard, riffing on each icon’s signature pompadoured coif and trim mustache. We met just before Twin Shadow’s performance at La Machine du Moulin Rouge in Paris, where Lewis playfully discussed his formative influences, who he cops style ideas from and his nostalgia for the virtues of certain cable television programs.

Sarah Moroz: You’ve lived in various places and you’re currently on a European tour; how much does place influence your work?

George Lewis Jr. : I’d say that it’s more people than place. I mean, people, place, they go hand in hand. But I’m influenced by people, and [places] where I haven’t met anyone interesting, haven’t left much of an impression on me.

Sarah: Your home base is in Brooklyn. Given how much music comes out of that borough, what does being a “Brooklyn musician” mean to you?

George: I’m almost never there, actually. Since November, I’ve spent maybe… 20 days there? So I don’t see much of ol’ Brooklyn. I don’t know if there’s an identity… The thing I love about Brooklyn is that it seems there could be this sense of community there if you really seek it out. And there are a lot of young people trying to do things together, and I think that’s appealing. Not that I’m a part of it in any way, because I don’t have the time.

Sarah: You’ve done a variety of remixes, from groups like Bear in Heaven to Oh Land to Gaga—how do you go about deciding which songs you want to reconfigure?

George: Usually people approach me, and based on how good the song is, how good the vocal is, I say yes or no. I say no a lot more than I say yes. It’s something I got into because people asked me. I had never done that before, and I was interested in doing what I’d never done before.

Sarah: Is it something you do on your own, or it is collaborative?

George: It’s usually just me working with the song. But part of it, in doing that, was to try to start moving towards getting some co-writing and working with other people.

Sarah: Who are the people you would like to collaborate with?

George: Anybody and everybody. I’m really pumped on everybody right now. I’d like to work with Odd Future, The Dream. Madonna, Janet Jackson… I’d love to write Janet Jackson a song. She should ask me. She needs one of my songs. I’m serious.

Sarah: On your website, you’ve posted a few of your own drawings and paintings. Can you talk about other creative outlets, aside from music, that are important to you?

George: Long before I wanted to be a musician, I wanted to be a cartoonist or a painter. And it’s something I don’t have the time to do, to learn to do well. But it’s something that I keep in the back of my mind, as something I’d like to achieve one day. It scares the shit out of me, you know… Sitting in front of a canvas is daunting. While it’s something that I’d like to do, it’s something I’m very afraid of. So we’ll see if I can get over that.

Sarah: But as a musician, especially in the early stages of creating your music, you’re dealing only with yourself internally… Why do you consider that confrontational aspect differently for painting?

George: Yeah, it’s awful. It’s great at first, because nobody is telling you what to do, and I can just have my own way with everything. But at some point you start to talk to yourself and tell yourself that you’re not good enough, that you’re wasting your time—and that’s a scary thought to deal with.

Sarah: So how do you evolve from uncertainty to confidence?

George: Well, it’s not just self-doubt; it’s things that happen in your own mind that you can’t explain. At some point, you climb over the wall. But, I don’t believe everybody can do that. Nor do I even believe I can do it again. There has to be something different the next time. Someone else has to get involved—or they don’t and maybe I fail. I’m just saying that—just like I’m saying about paintings—it’s really scary, and sometimes you go and you make it, and sometimes you don’t. It’s not a better or worse thing. It’s just what it is.

Sarah: Everyone who talks about your work inevitably whips out the comparison to ‘80s music sounds and production. What are you ‘80s-era cultural touchstones, outside of the music scene?

George: Same as everyone’s, probably: John Hughes… USA’s Up All Night is the one that not a lot of people know about. It was this great program hosted by Rhonda Shear and Gilbert Godfrey on the USA Network, and they basically showed horror flicks for kids. This was actually well into the ‘90s. It started in ’85 or something. It was my first time seeing punks and surfers and fake boobs and people riding motorcycles and all kinds of crazy things.

Sarah: Aside from your music, style seems to be really important to you. How do you go about feeling connected to fashion?

George: I painted these shoes. I ripped them off from this guy from The Dandy Project. I mean, mine don’t look like his; these look like a mess. I just pay attention to people around me. New York kids have been slacking a little bit, it seems. But you walk around Paris and… Look at this beautiful gentleman [gestures to Greg, who works for the music agency Super Mon Amour], I like his shoes. I’d get those. It’s just coveting. I love whatever sin that is: I love coveting.

Sarah: You started playing music in a punk band, and earlier you cited wanting to collaborate with The Dream. You’re obviously interested in very different musical genres; do you think you’ll change direction with the music you make at some point?

George: It’s all harmonious to me. I’ve always done music from a performative standpoint. Only when this record happened was I doing it because it was more about me, more about my own creativity, not necessarily sharing it. Well, now I’m sharing it, with a touring band. And to me there’s never been any blockage. I’ve always loved R&B, I’ve always loved punk music—I’ve always loved everything about playing music and I see the beauty in all that. So everything I do from this point on is probably just going to be a continuation of what’s going on now. Because you realize there’s a point where you can’t just spread yourself thin, you need to kind of stick to one thing and do it really well. So that’s what I’m trying to do. Yeah, so, it’ll just be a continuation of this, but if it sounds a little this or sounds a little that, or I collaborate with The Dream…

Sarah…or Janet Jackson…

George: …I’ll try to make her sound more like me.

In her ongoing search for fragility and truth, Dossier contributing editor Spela Kasal photographs everything from emerging models to still-life scenes. The resulting images land somewhere between fashion and fine art, and as of this Tuesday, February 23, they will be on display at Ofr in Paris. The solo exhibition, titled I Miss You When You’re Not Here, features a recent series of intimate portraits and landscapes, sometimes fusing the two subjects into a singular shot. For those of us not lucky enough to make it to the City of Light, her postcard book is on offer on Ofr’s website and at Dashwood in New York City.

I Miss You When You’re Not Here runs February 23-28th at Ofr: 20 rue Dupetit-Thouars, Paris 75003.

Click “Read More” for additional images.

Staying out all night is nothing new for Parisians, but this weekend, they will do so in the name of art. This Saturday, October 3, Paris’ Nuit Blanche returns for its 8th year. This free annual event (which translates roughly to “sleepless night”) celebrates art’s integral role in the life of the city and its diverse communities.

While this year’s fete has no explicit theme, it is dedicated to the notion of exploration, and visitors can follow prescribed “dream-like trails” mapped out in various Paris neighborhoods. As in years past, the Marais will form the center of the event, but exhibitions and installations will be featured in northern Paris (in and around the Parc Buttes-Chaumont) and on the Left Bank (in the Jardin du Luxembourg and the Latin Quarter).

From sundown until sunset, artists from around the world will display their work in the city’s churches, galleries, museums, parks, theaters, and plazas. The art itself ranges from photo and painting exhibitions, to performance art, to musical performances, to interactive installations. Featured artists include Doug Aitken, Vincent Olinet, Nathan Coley, and dozens of others.

All venues and exhibitions are free and open to the public throughout the night. Designated pubic transport (metro lines 11 and 14 and night buses) operate all night long to help facilitate the event.

For more details and to download a full program with a map of the “dream-like trails” (in English), visit their website.

I’ve long believed that Paris and New York are jealous lovers-mutually obsessed, covetous, but still fiercely stubborn and, ultimately, true only to themselves. Nowhere is this dynamic more apparent than in the kitchen, where American innovation has borrowed from (and then challenged) the French standard that has dominated for so long.

This Friday and Saturday (the 25th and 26th), in a glorious and long overdue collision of American and French culinary love, P.S. 1 will play host to Le Fooding d’Amour Paris-New York. “Le Fooding,” the French culinary movement that celebrates food-made-with-feeling, has long applauded upstart chefs and their efforts to shake up the French food scene. This weekend, some of New York’s best (David Chang, Wylie Dufresne, Daniel Boulud) will showcase their craft alongside some of Paris’ wiliest culinary talents.  Among the French attendees are Inaki Aizpitarte (Le Chateaubriand), Stéphane Jégo (L’Ami Jean), Yves Camdeborde (Le Comptoir du Relais), and others.  

Cocktails from both sides of the Atlantic will be flowing, as will music from Paul Sevigny (New York) and Kolkoz and Benjamin Moreau (Le Baron, Paris). All proceeds support Action Against Hunger.

As the summer crowds descend on Paris, art lovers would do well to avoid the Louvre in favor of the more discrete exhibitions that are popping up in neighborhoods around the city. This Friday, the 7th edition of the “Parcours Saint Germain” draws to a close after a two-week run in Paris’ 6th arrondissement. The Parcours, an annual contemporary art exhibition, celebrates the creative spirit of the Saint Germain neighborhood by inviting 30 international artists to create work inspired by a specific theme. The works are exhibited throughout the district, on display in public squares, historic cafes, hotels, and luxury boutiques.

This year’s theme—“Playtime”—evokes the spirit of childhood, prompting artists to explore the world of children’s games, to skirt the boundaries between the logical and the absurd, to blur the lines between the world we inhabit and the world we imagine. Locals won’t need to go out of their way to view the exhibits, which are on display at neighborhood institutions like the Café de Flore (Guy Limone), Les Deux Magots (Gérard Pétremand), Louis Vuitton (Philippe Ramette), Sonia Rykiel (Elisa Strada), Place St. Germain-des-Prés (Tadashi Kawamata and Nicolas Buffe), and even the local Monoprix (Xiao Fan). Grocery shopping has never been so thought-provoking.

As always, St. Germain continues to be a neighborhood where art and community collide.

The show runs through June 12th at various locations throughout the 6th arrondissement.

Images (left to right): Arnaud Pyvka, courtesy Le BANK galerie, Paris and Parcours Saint Germain. Philippe Ramette, croquis du projet pour Louis Vuitton, 2009. Courtesy Galerie Renos Zippas, Paris and Parcours Saint Germain.

There’s some pretty shredding rock/roll/dance shows coming to France from now through the March.

Running from February 11th – 22nd, the Super! Mon Amour festival is relatively intimate as far as music happenings go. Featuring 14 bands and seven shows in some of the better venues in Paris, the fest has done away with the filler and chosen to present most shows as a one-two punch of solid acts (except for the dance parties, but everyone is supposed to be bouncing around and waving their hands and not really paying attention to who’s playing at those, anyhow). The Black Lips, The Handsome Furs, Chairlift, Women, Gang Gang Dance and others fill out the guitars-and-singing side of things, while folks like Dat Politics, Radioclit and Theocknbullkid will be bringing the twitch and shout.

If for whatever reason the Super! line-up isn’t enough for you to completely party your face off -– or, you know, if you’re the type of person who’s aware that there is actually a country called ‘France’ within which Paris is only a small part -– then the Generiq Festival may help you get in some more much-needed sleepless nights. Featuring a few dozen bands playing multiple shows each in various towns and cities around France, the festival runs concurrently with Super! Mon Amour. This means that some of the oft-overlooked parts of the country get to witness top-notch talent that would typically choose Paris over somewhere like Mulhouse.

Oh, and Jay Reatard is the country to play four shows in March. Doesn’t seem to be part of any event, but he’s the best shit ever and I’m thinking about stowing away in a ship of some kind so I can get over there and get sweaty.

SUPER! MON AMOUR | Collection hiver | Festival d’Épopées Musicales | Feb 11-22

FESTIVAL GENERIQ | Tumultes Sceniques En Villes | Feb 12-22

While Monday everyone was still busy talking about last week’s Demolition Party, (where yes, Jude Law participated in the destruction of a French hotel, and no I was in Corsica and didn’t go) tomorrow no doubt everyone will be talking about last night’s Lacoste-Visionaire party, held on the Paquebot on the River Seine. The party was to celebrate Lacoste’s 75th anniversary, and to sneak a peak at Visionaire 54 Sport, a collaboration between the two brands.

Thanks to a pretty lax schedule I go to my fair share of parties in Paris, often under the guise of whatever party being the best party in Paris (or else why go, right?). My friend Taylor (aka Joy@institutedubonheur) claims her parties in the Jardin Bagatelle top the list; friends of Andre (no last name) say Le Baron on any night of the week is the best in town (though don’t ask me how a superlative can span a full week at a time; that seems wrong, right?) But if Joy can unite Paris’ best and brightest (and ultimately have a tiresome blue-blooded mix) and the Baron’s doormen can filter out who’s hot from who’s not (until the club becomes almost frigid from coolness, despite having the best music in town) last night demonstrated that a party can be hot, AND exclusive, AND at the same time really fuckin’ fun!

Amidst the fanfare of swimming pools and water gun fights, Lacoste kindly provided bathing suits and pool toys for those inclined to take a dip, such as Christian Louboutin, Mark Ronson, and Ellen Von Unwerth. Meanwhile, on deck Margherita Missoni and Karl Lagerfeld took shelter from the debauchery in the VIP section of the helm in deck chairs adorned with the beautiful images we appreciate so much from Visionaire. While getting in was not so easy, (a special thanks to the lovely Melissa Little over at Lacoste for her persistence in getting myself and Pucci-designer-gone-photographer for the evening, Devika Dass, into the party) once in, there was something for everyone. The party boys got to party, (half naked in pools and on the dance floor) the fashionistas got to be fashion-ey, the drinks were cold, the music: awesome, the see-and be seen-ers both got their rocks off, and we had a blast! We can’t wait for the book in the fall.

Mark Ronson

Karl Lagerfeld

Christian Louboutin

Margherita Missoni

Yours Truly