BlackBook Magazine

George Clooney may have Darfur, and Brad Pitt has New Orleans, but Anna Sui has a plight of her own: saving the Garment District. The New York designer is doing what she does best -- designing -- in order to rescue the rapidly evaporating manufacturing center. You can purchase a T-shirt that reads "Save the Garment Center"; on the back are the phone numbers for important NYC government officials. Sui told WWD, "What are we going to do? In my lifetime, I have seen the area changing, but I can't believe New York can't set aside some building designated to preserving the industry here." The root of the garment industry problem is rising cost of rents (what else?!). The T-shirts will be available for $6 through Thomas Miller at Anna Sui; all orders must be submitted by Friday in order to wear by Fashion Week.

Los Angeles has the best movie theaters in the entire country. Perhaps it’s because Hell A is the artery through which all of “The Industry” must pass; perhaps it’s the overabundance of set designers and over-the-top-producers in the area. Whatever the reason, it makes for a superfine moviegoing experience. Check out our top list of places to catch a flick, then rehash scene by scene over dinner.

1. Arclight + El Compadre
Arclight brings the hammer down on the rest of the wanna-be theaters in the Los Angeles arena. The train-station lobby tickertapes film selections -- though you won’t have to bother waiting in line, or even showing up early, because seats are individually reserved and purchased online.

From the land that gave us the Kremlin, vodka, and the faux-Sapphic pop stylings of Tatu comes the subject of photographer Paul Eng's latest exhibit. Titled "Russians," the show features artwork commissioned by Russian clients as well more personal pieces, all of which aim to pick apart the simplistic distillation of Russian culture and present something more authentic and three-dimensional.

Laugh Legend Caroline Hirsch of the eponymous Caroline's on bringing the funny, luring tourists, and laughing off a recession.

Point of Origin: I was born in Brooklyn and moved to Manhattan when I was, I think, 24 years old and went to City College and FIT, which is how I ended up in retail. I was working at Gimbels, which was going out of business, so as market reps, we were out, too. Because I was collecting unemployment, I had a little time to look around. Then I kind of fell into this business, the business of comedy -- it just happened. Bob Stigley just loved to go to a comedy club called Freddy's on 49th Street, and before long, he and a couple of other friends wanted to open a cabaret. Bob decided to use a woman's name for the cabaret we planned to open in Chelsea, and that was the start of Caroline's.

Jane Mayle may be bowing out of her New York shop, but in her place comes gothy Danish designer Camilla Staerk. The designer, who relocated to New York from London after losing her namesake to her backers there, says of the change, "I'm going back to my roots in leather and texture." You see this not just in her latest collection but also in the design of the 500-square-foot store, with its dark wood floors, leather, and walnut chairs. In other retail action, it's expected that China will see its first American Apparel store after many delays.

Curators are kind of like the tour guides through a collection of artwork, attempting to bridge that ever-expanding rift between artist and slack-jawed visitor. Sometimes their job is like arranging visual grammar; at other times, they act as human Rosetta Stones -- not explicating the art so much as placing it in cultural context. So for that reason, there's something novel about "Young Curators, New Ideas," a show at Brooklyn's Bond Street Gallery (closing September 6), which tracks trends in current art photography through the eyes of six curators (some seasoned veterans, some green newbies.

It seems like just yesterday that I arrived at work to find a young editorial assistant wide-eyed and shaken. "Someone called for you," she gasped. "He said he was going to slit your throat." Not a normal Monday-morning message in the mag business. "He said something about hunting and demanded a Porsche or something." Ah, now it made sense. It was my friend Hunter S. Thompson. I'd been trying to convince Porsche to drive a new all-road model from Los Angeles to Woody Creek, Colorado, for Hunter to test drive and me to write up for the San Francisco Examiner Magazine. She played the message, and that familiar staccato baritone filled the conference room. "I want that Porsche. And I want it now. If I don't get it, I will hunt you down like an animal and slit your throat." Such love.

Turning their attention curbside, fashion and pop culture notables are getting down and dirty for charity. “Have you ever walked by the back of a restaurant at night?” asks fashion designer Michael Bastian. “It’s insane how much food goes to waste, those huge garbage bins full of stuff.” Waste and its whiff of economic imbalance led Bastian, the creative director of menswear atBill Blass, to partner with Danish design company Vipp, creating a one-off receptacle inspired by the current varsity theme of his eponymous line. “It’s a big, sexy football trashcan,” he reveals.

Think of late installation artist Ed Kienholz's work as Bukowski-esque fare that Judy Chicago or Ghada Amer would balk at. That's not a bad thing at all in fact, because Kienholz is the genius behind "Back Seat Dodge '38," which depicts a drunken hook-up (or ironically enough, those hook-ups that we try to forget by choosing to imbibe further). And although the Los Angeles County Museum of Art got some flack for purchasing "Dodge," some years ago, they faced even larger odds until very recently when trying to add "The Illegal Operation" to the collection.

Has anyone seen Ewan McGregor lately? No? Exactly. He's been riding motorcycles around the world and occasionally adopting a baby along the way. He's also making movies again and has nine flicks in the can for next year. But there's always time to shill for scents, right? Flip through any September glossy and you'll see the Scot -- scarfed, unshaven, gazed and hairy -- pitching his new fragrance for men by Davidoff called Adventure (available at Dillards!).