Fashion's Night Out - photo: courtesy of wireimage.com

I started first doing homework with my daughter and then preparing dinner for her and then it was time for mommy to get ready for a shopping night out. My friend and makeup artist Sam Fine met me at home and hooked me up with a good face and I put on an Alexander McQueen jacket with leggings and over-the-knee boots! I found in my storage a 1980’s Thierry Mugler over the knee boots… very S&M! That is why I never give away my accessories because they never go out of fashion or at least the trends keep on coming back. Accessories are those extras that keep on giving.

We started with Barneys as the idea was we will hit one mega department store and we chose this… it was a complete mayhem but in a good way…. people were actually shopping! I saw boys actually buying girls jackets… talk about androgynous! Then we were off to Dolce and Gabbana to pay a visit to my friend Megan who is the pr but then realized when we got to the store that she was at D&G in Soho so we ran back in the car and we were off to Dior and on our way there we passed Bergdorf Goodman and there were lines outside… my goodness, you would think they were giving clothes away and the streets looked like a fashion show. Fashion turn to the right… Fashion turn to the left… Fa Fa Fa Fa Fashion…… everyone was dressed to the hilt… killers!

Dior was a little bit civilized but every hip hop artists and wanabees were in there and I am sure paying full retail. My friend the photographer Arthur Elgort set up a make shift studio and we took pictures together… let me give you a bit of history here… Arthur was the first photographer who shot me for a magazine and it was for Vogue on my third day in New York way back in 1975! We laughed about that! Dorothy, we are not in 1975 anymore.

Sam insisted we stop by Prada on our way to Soho and so we did and we just missed the book signing of Grace Coddington, Creative Director of Vogue … don’t miss her great “acting” performance in The September Issue documentary that is in theaters now.

I was getting pooped and, girl, my bunions were killing me but we had one more stop at my dear friend Rachel Roy’s pop up store you definitely have to check out her new line Rachel Rachel Roy (very affordable and very downtown chic) exclusively at Macy’s.

Well, Spring Street in New York is a mess even on a good day and tonight it was a lot of a mess. It took us forever to get there but it was worth it as she was shocked to see me that I made the effort and said that she owes me till eternity… You are my witness in case she forgets that promise! It was worth it but was way overcrowded. Lots of beautiful black girls including Estelle ( she is collaborating with Rachel on a jewelry line) who was ensconced in a corner but I never made it to her as I was famished so we were off to Indochine where we met up with Tyson Beckford and his beautiful Australian girlfriend, my closest friend Bethann Hardison, Eric Sartore of Betsey Johnson and a sleuth of rotating friends. Tonight was a huge success and I only wished that they had made the whole week Fashion’s Week Out and allocated one day to Madison Avenue stores, next to 5th Avenue stores day because I felt we lost a lot of time in traffic traveling from one end to the other.

Came home very late, barely got out of my clothes and committed a beauty sin that I haven’t done since my Studio 54 days…I went to bed without taking my makeup off! Bad, bad very bad girl. I am sure to regret this! Pray for me!

With Liya, Naomi and Bethann Hardison

LACK OF BLACK IMAGES IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY My closest friend Bethann Hardison put together a panel discussion during New York Fashion Week to discuss the lack of black models in the fashion shows. Naomi Campbell, Liya Kebede, Tyson Beckford and myself were among the attendees. The situation was starkly evident during the New York shows and some say it’s worse in Europe, where most black models don’t even bother to book shows in Milan. The problem isn’t only in the modelling world: we also pointed to the scarcity of black designers, photographers and executives in the fashion industry as a major issue. Is there discrimination in the fashion business? You bet!

Photo by Michael Thompson

I AM AFRICAN As the Global Ambassador of Keep A Child Alive, I am spearheading a timely and thought provoking campaign called I AM AFRICAN. It is designed to spark a global conversation, turn heads, and create a new level of engagement about the AIDS crisis by connecting each of us to our Motherland. The campaign speaks to the African ancestry we all share. I have appealed to various celebrities to show their African roots in this I AM AFRICAN campaign to appear in a modern take on African tribal makeup; photographed beautifully by top photographer Michael Thompson with his team: hair stylist Serge Normant, makeup artist Dick Paige, and stylist Joe Zee, and Art Direction by Trey Laird. Alicia Keys, David Bowie, Elijah Wood, Sarah Jessica Parker, Gwyneth Paltrow, Liv Tyler, Sting, Elizabeth Hurley, Richard Gere, Gisele Bundchen, Lucy Liu, Heidi Klum and Seal, Tyson Beckford, Lenny Kravitz, Mischa Barton, Alan Cumming, Janet Jackson, and myself, have all been photographed acknowledging our African heritage. Please join us and help. For One dollar a day you can make a difference in someone’s life. Visit www.keepachildalive.org