Letter from the editor: November

Let me tell. you about my evening last night. At about 10 P.M. I found myself at a dinner in midtown New York for Zac Posen, the 22-year-old American designer who grew up here in SoHo and is rightly being hailed as one of the bright lights in the newest generation of fashion designers (Interview ran a piece on Posen's work in May, soon after he presented his very first full collection). It was one of those nights that tingled. There we all were at Mr. Chow's restaurant--artists, musicians, kids, adults, fashionistas, ordinary citizens, stars, society types and a few crashers--having a blast and celebrating the arrival of a passionate new talent.

At a certain point in the evening I looked up at the hilarity that was going on around me and realized that it was very much like a scene I'd witnessed from the same seat at the same table of the same restaurant 20 years earlier. Same courses of food, same electricity in the air. Same laughter, same sense of spirit. Back then, the celebration was for the now legendary painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Interview's founder, Andy Warhol, was presiding over a crowd that included a number of the same people who were there last night, too. We all looked at each other and the sense of continuity made us smile. Yes, we really miss those who are no longer with us, like Basquiat who died tragically of a drug overdose and, of course, Andy himself. But we knew that we were experiencing something magical, something that has to do with the power of the human spirit.

There was Sean Lennon, engaging with artists and buddies the same way his father, John, had once done. There was Posen, feeling on top of the world the way the young designer Halston must have felt once upon a time when everything seemed possible for him. There was Lola Schnabel having a serious conversation about the difference in her art work when it's framed ver sus when it's not--it was the exact same kind o conversation that I've heard her father, the artist and director Julian Schnabel, get into on many occasions. The night was all mixed up generationally--and that's part of what made it so great. With us at the table was the singer k.d. lang. Much earlier in the evening I'd gone to see her perform with Tony Bennett at Carnegie Hall. The sight and sound of these two one-of-a-kinds, a generation apart, singing together like it was their favorite thing of all to do in a place that has been the home to generation after generation of great musical artists, brought the audience to its feet.

So did the 76-year-old Tony Bennett when he belted out one of the most popular songs ever, What a Wonderful World." Hours later I still had the last lines of that song in my head when we were all having such a ball at Posen's bash:

"And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

Yes, I think to myself, what a wonderful world."

Those words say it all. Let's not let them go out of mind in this complex, uncertain moment of world history, when each of us has a role, big or small, in moving the civilization forward, not backwards. Let's never forget to celebrate those who remind us and show us what this world is all about--like the people featured in this issue. Speaking of remarkable worlds, enjoy Part Two of Interview's L.A. Special.

INGRID SISCHY

EDITOR IN CHIEF