Tonight, Thursday Dec 3, from 7 to 9 pm at the amazing Taschen book store in Beverly Hills, triple Grammy award winning art director Kevin Reagan, who’s well known for his album design with Madonna, The Dixie Chicks, Beck and many others, will host a crowd to see his new limited edition art book called “Alex Steinweiss: Creator of the Modern Album Cover.” Steinweiss is a 92 year old who designed the very very earliest album covers as the art director of Columbia Records in 1940. It was his original idea to replace the brown paper (more…)

We’re always in search of a great leather handbag that doesn’t have a great big pricetag to go with it. And even in these days after Black Friday, finding a great bag below eight hundred dollars is not an easy quest to go on. And I stumbled on some this weekend! Perusing Sunset in Silverlake, and imbibing the beans at Intelligensia coffee (which also has a branch in Venice, and is worth the trip), a friend introduced me to Dean Accessories at 3918 Sunset, near where Sunset meets Santa Monica Blvd in Silverlake. Dean is the owner’s name, and he makes handsome leather bags in good hues (over favorite, grey) that range from $195 to about $250, and they are as strong, simple and severe as any of the great designer bags. They’ve got the rock n’ roll craftsman edge of Balenciaga, and the stark lines of Givenchy bags – and you won’t see them coming and going. You can see many of the shapes on Deanaccessories.com, but the best ones aren’t even on the website. Just get in the car and go over there. It’s a great place for gifts, and there are great seventies style watches, as well. One of our coolest male style gurus, art director Kevin Reagan, buys his watches here, so we know it’s cool.

We were lucky enough to be on the guest list for the fabulous party Kelly Wearstler through at the Avalon Hotel Wednesday night – in honor of her new art book, HUE, and a re-design of the hotel’s restaurant (Oliverio) and pool area. Kelly, known well for her wardrobe and her outrageous looks on Bravo’s “Top Design” (where she’s a judge), rocked a short tight black dress, low black boots with high heels, and the biggest hair we’ve seen since Poison was making heavy metal music videos. It was totally eighties redux. Looking rad right next to her was her pal Gwen Stefani, in a black tunic, leggings, cage-style strap shoes, and a black leather jacket. We loved Gwen’s positioning of her blue lace bra under the black clothing, with that hit of red lipstick. That’s pretty eighties, as well. In the cool crowd, we saw hair stylist and landscape architect Art Luna, designer Madga Berliner, members of No Doubt (more…)