Fashion Folk Geek Out Over Brangelina At WSJ. Magazine’s Innovator Awards
“Who’s coming? We just came because Kristina [O’Neill] is our friend and our neighbor,” said Proenza Schouler’s Lazaro Hernandez of the WSJ. Magazine editor in chief, as he made inside MoMA last night for magazine’s 5th annual WSJ Innovator Awards. His design partner Jack McCollough chimed in, “Well, we know Brad and Angelina are coming and she is getting an award — she is pretty iconic, one of our favorites. We have actually never met either of them, they are pretty elusive, but we will probably meet them tonight. We won’t celebrity stalk anyone though, we’ll be on our best behavior.”
As the crowd eagerly awaited the power couple’s arrival, a stream of top models (Karlie Kloss, Jamie Bochert, Martha Hunt), fashion designers (2015 WSJ Innovator honoree Miuccia Prada, Francisco Costa, Phillip Lim, Thakoon Panchigul), business titans (2015 WSJ Innovator honoree Mark Parker, David Geffen, and Larry Gagosian), and actors (Jared Leto showed up with hot pink hair), posed for pictures and mingled in the cocktail area before the awards ceremony kicked off. “Angelina is the most beautiful woman ever—she is a goddess, as a mom, as an actress, as a woman, and a great example for all of us,” said model Constance Jablonski. “I’ve been looking up to her since I was a young child so I’m excited to see her,” added Jablonski, who has been busy getting ready for the upcoming Victoria’s Secret runway show. The veteran VS catwalker offered up some tips for this year’s newcomers to the show (like Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid): “I know this sounds like easy advice, but don’t stress too much. It’s like any other runway, only you are in lingerie, and you get to smile.” That easy, eh?
The Angels came out in force last night—Martha Hunt and Lily Donaldson were also on hand. Hunt, who had just left her VS fitting for the show, revealed, “I couldn’t be more excited for my outfits this year. The wings are a little heavy, I’m a little nervous about that, but I’m trying not to think about that.”
Donaldson found herself in the middle of getting her picture taken on the red carpet right as Brad, Angelina (in a strapless, black Tom Ford gown), and Robert De Niro (who was presenting the Entertainment/Film award to Angie) arrived around 8 p.m. “One of the straps of my dress just broke off—I’m showing my boobs already,” the model said as she tried to hold up her slinky white slip dress. “I got a little scared when they got here,” she said after the trio had left the carpet and she had fixed her dress with her own innovative design—a safety pin.
After Brad and Angelina took a few quick photos, (while everyone else attempted get the perfect Insta or Snapchat shot of them), they were ushered into the dinner and the ceremony got underway. After the likes of Miuccia Prada, Mark Parker, and Slack founder Stewart Butterfield accepted their awards, De Niro took the stage. “This girl has more hyphens than she has children,” he said. “Actor, writer, director, producer, wife, mother, philanthropist, role model, humanitarian, innovator, and oh, Special Envoy of United nations High Commissioner for Refugees. You don’t get that one too often.”
As she accepted her award, the multi-hyphenate said, “I feel that to be innovative is to be willing to stand alone.” She went on, “We are all here tonight because the little kid in us didn’t really go away. I would have loved to have seen what Miuccia Prada did with her dolls, or what [my fellow honorees] Richard [Serra] or Thomas [Heatherwick] were like in the sandbox. For me, in my art, I have tried to listen to my mother and bare my soul, to listen to my kids and make a mess, and to play and be free.” Jolie Pitt, whose latest directorial effort By The Sea (starring her and her husband) hits theaters next week, closed her nearly three-minute speech with this: “When we celebrate innovation, we are celebrating freedom and we can’t put a price on the value of the innovative spirit. I accept this award mindful of those, particularly women, who have not had these same opportunities, and to remind us that as much as we celebrate all that has been achieve through innovation, there is still so much more for us all to do.”
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