“There’s a few people that I’ve missed, but I try to get everybody,” she said. “Even people I don’t really know.”
The book of Polaroids she has amassed included, in August, her mother, her pickleball instructor, the blockbuster producer Joel Silver and the acclaimed painter Mark Bradford. As she turned each page, pointing to the faces, her voice was low, relaxed, unbothered.
“This is one of my best friends.” Flip. “That’s Alice, who helped with the wedding.” Flip. “He’s an agent at WME.” Flip.
“Here, we had just moved in, and it was the most random crew,” she said, arriving at some poolside photos. “P. Diddy just hands everybody a blunt.”
Her world was already very L.A., but it became even more so in May, when she married Ari Emanuel. Mr. Emanuel’s career as an agent famously inspired Ari Gold’s character on “Entourage,” but his influence today, as chief executive of Endeavor, reaches beyond Hollywood. His company’s holdings include the talent agencies IMG and WME — representing athletes, authors, musicians, models and many of the behind-the-scenes people who make those professions possible — along with the art fair Frieze and the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
In a short time, Ms. Staudinger went from fireworks-close-out-her-New-York-Fashion-Week-show famous to paparazzi-stake-out-her-Greek-vacation famous.
For the most part, she has just found that funny.
One recent afternoon, while driving to her store on Melrose Place in her electric pickup truck, Ms. Staudinger nodded to the house where she lived as a teenager. It was big and white with six tall pillars out front, the kind of house you’d envision if your knowledge of the Westside was built on the pop culture of Ms. Staudinger’s youth, like “Clueless” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
After graduating from high school, Ms. Staudinger attended the New School in New York, focusing on media studies, though taking some fashion courses at Parsons, too. “The clothing business was in our blood,” said her mother, Joanna, whose father was the president of Mode O’Day, a large chain of clothing stores founded in Los Angeles in the 1930s. In the 1970s, Joanna designed popular rhinestone T-shirts and ballet shoe wedges; she was a “bohemian child,” she said, wearing silk skirts, stacked bracelets and “hippie hair.” But she had an innate sense for “what everybody wanted to wear.” So did her best friend, Cher. (...)
(Cher, by the way, doesn’t mind her closet playing muse: “Look, there are only so many inspirations,” she said, and Ms. Staudinger has “made them her own.”)
The aesthetic package can be hard to articulate, even for the people closest to her. It’s based primarily on Ms. Staudinger’s “feminine instinct and intuition,” Mr. Augusto said.
But it can be traced to Ms. Staudinger’s childhood, spent largely in observation mode, her mother said.
“I wanted her to be aware of what she looked like, what she acted like,” Joanna said. “We’d drive by a group of older girls, and I’d say, ‘OK, Sarah, which girl do you think has class?’ She would say, ‘The girl in the red dress’ or something. I’d say: ‘You’re going to be standing in that circle one day. Which girl do you want to be?’” (...)
Five years later, the first night of their three-day St.-Tropez wedding was held at Senequier. The ceremony was later officiated by Larry David. The wedding was, naturally, a paparazzi target. Leaked guest names included Brad Pitt, who didn’t end up attending, disappointing the single women who’d wanted Ms. Staudinger to seat them nearby, and Elon Musk, who spent much of the wedding in conversation with Mr. David, or with Ms. Staudinger’s 11-year-old half brother. (...)
The couple discouraged wedding gifts, though Ms. Staudinger noted that several well-wishers sent “Hermès blankets, which is, I guess, a standard wealthy person thing to send as a congratulations.” The most thoughtful gift she received, she said, was from friends who commissioned a ceramic sculpture of Ms. Staudinger’s favorite type of chips. (She is deeply obsessed with chips and, in particular, a vegan take on pork rinds called Snacklins.) The bag now hangs in a guest bathroom of their estate, which was bought in 2020, reportedly for $27.5 million.
After graduating from high school, Ms. Staudinger attended the New School in New York, focusing on media studies, though taking some fashion courses at Parsons, too. “The clothing business was in our blood,” said her mother, Joanna, whose father was the president of Mode O’Day, a large chain of clothing stores founded in Los Angeles in the 1930s. In the 1970s, Joanna designed popular rhinestone T-shirts and ballet shoe wedges; she was a “bohemian child,” she said, wearing silk skirts, stacked bracelets and “hippie hair.” But she had an innate sense for “what everybody wanted to wear.” So did her best friend, Cher. (...)
(Cher, by the way, doesn’t mind her closet playing muse: “Look, there are only so many inspirations,” she said, and Ms. Staudinger has “made them her own.”)
The aesthetic package can be hard to articulate, even for the people closest to her. It’s based primarily on Ms. Staudinger’s “feminine instinct and intuition,” Mr. Augusto said.
But it can be traced to Ms. Staudinger’s childhood, spent largely in observation mode, her mother said.
“I wanted her to be aware of what she looked like, what she acted like,” Joanna said. “We’d drive by a group of older girls, and I’d say, ‘OK, Sarah, which girl do you think has class?’ She would say, ‘The girl in the red dress’ or something. I’d say: ‘You’re going to be standing in that circle one day. Which girl do you want to be?’” (...)
Five years later, the first night of their three-day St.-Tropez wedding was held at Senequier. The ceremony was later officiated by Larry David. The wedding was, naturally, a paparazzi target. Leaked guest names included Brad Pitt, who didn’t end up attending, disappointing the single women who’d wanted Ms. Staudinger to seat them nearby, and Elon Musk, who spent much of the wedding in conversation with Mr. David, or with Ms. Staudinger’s 11-year-old half brother. (...)
The couple discouraged wedding gifts, though Ms. Staudinger noted that several well-wishers sent “Hermès blankets, which is, I guess, a standard wealthy person thing to send as a congratulations.” The most thoughtful gift she received, she said, was from friends who commissioned a ceramic sculpture of Ms. Staudinger’s favorite type of chips. (She is deeply obsessed with chips and, in particular, a vegan take on pork rinds called Snacklins.) The bag now hangs in a guest bathroom of their estate, which was bought in 2020, reportedly for $27.5 million.
by Jessica Testa, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Dafydd Jones[ed. Thanks NYT, we needed this. “I hope she'll be a fool -- that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby). If you're blocked by the NYT paywall, check out these (86!) photos in Vogue: Inside Ari Emanuel and Sarah Staudinger’s St. Tropez Wedding.]
