FASHION IN THE CITY, REBELLION and PEACE (c) By Polly Guerin

Fashion never disappoints!!! It makes us all marvel at the theatrics on the runway, the rebellion of style and the ever on-going message of peace through fashion statements. Only in New York, the best ofNew York my friends. Here’s the scoop!!!
BEYOND REBELLION: Fasten your seat belt!!! Take a ride on the wild side and go and see  "Fashioning the Biker Jacket" exhibit, organized by the graduate students in the fashion and Textile Studies program and the Museum at The Fashion Institute of Technology. Image: Schott, Perfecto jacket, black leather, circa 1980, USA. Courtesy The Museum at FIT purchase.
Find out about the genesis of the biker jacket and its evolution into a high-fashion garment now coveted by fashionistas worldwide. Although the biker jacket emerged in the early twentieth century as a protective garment to shield riders from the elements, leave it to the fashionistas to claim the biker jacket as their own.
The mystique of the biker jacket has attracted movie stars, young adults and some senior citizens and of course, fashion designers, leading labels such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Yves Saint Laurent and Rick Owens to name a few, who are featured in the exhibit.
Where did this function fashion come from? Well, over the years the biker leather jacket evolved from utilitarian outwear to icon symbol of rebellion, function, and “cool.” By the 1950s, due in part to its appropriation by motorcycle gangs, associations fostered by the movies as The Wild One the jacket has become an emblem of the outlaw biker.

The final section of the exhibit explores the avant-garde reinterpretations of the classic biker jacket such as the 2005 Comme des Garcons ensemble from the Biker and Ballerina collection featuring a sculptural masculine black leather jacket with a girlish pink gingham and tulle skirt…obviously the allure and mystique of the jacket remains on exhibit through April 5, 2013. At 27th Street & Seventh Ave. Tues-Fri, noon to 8pm, Sat 10-5 pm. FREE admission. Image Right: Comme des Garcons (Rei Kawakubo), jacket and skirt, black leather, pink gingham and tulle spring 2005, Japan. Courtesy The Museum at FIT purchase.
HEADPIECES FOR PEACE and  FASHION AT FIAF Celebrates the new forces in fashion from the hottest designers and bloggers to filmmakers. In the Gallery: JESSICA SOFIA MITRANI’S HEADPIECES FOR PEACE offers a wiry examination of fashion and feminism. For the first time in New York, see this video along with the 11 headpieces made from printed fabric designed by threeASFOUR. Style Stories with Garance Dore, March 20 at 7pm, Inside Web-based Fashion Companies, March 26 at 7pm, Thom Browne, March 31 at 7pm.
THE FASHION SCOOP: Fashion runway took on high-jinks theatrics this season. Who doesn’t enjoy tabloid shot of celebrities at the supermarket? Women’s Wear Daily’s sightings: At the Chanel show, staged amid a mock supermarket, the aisles were teeming with celebrities. They marveled at the hundreds of mock products on display as models ventured down the runway with shopping card antics. At the Dolce & Gabbana show the velvet curtain opened to reveal an enchanted forest, with an enormous rotating tree that rises from the floor with falling snow. Then there was the full orchestra at Prada and Roberto Cavalli’s fireworks. What beats me is fashion as theater is fine but with all the theatrical elements does it really make us sit up and take notice of the clothes, the fashion trend or message, if there is one?
FUZZY WUZZY FASHION  Well, DSquared2 put us suddenly back in the Sixties in a mental institution (or rehab facility) where model Malaika Firth and her equally fashionista friends are waiting to be discharged. WHEW!!! What’s the fashion message…seems like by fall there is going to be a lot of fuzzy wuzzy fur flying around the fashion world in fantastically different fur coats.…and I wonder, dear readers, what are those anti-fur groups going to do about it? Watch as the protest fur action unfolds later this year. ALL DOLLED UP Jason Wu has designed a fashion doll for retailer Montaigne Market. Priced at 150 Euros or $200, at the current exchange rate, the limited edition of 250, is a replica of a style from his spring collection.

Ta Ta Darlings!!! Pollytalk went to the preview of ‘Beyond Rebellion,’ it’s a real eye-opener! Fan mail welcome at pollytalk@verizon. Visit Polly’s website pollytalk and in the left hand column click on my other Blogs on fashion, visionary men and hidden treasures in New York.

MIRA SCHENDEL, LANDMARK ARTIST, BRAZIL (c) By Polly Guerin

To Mira Schendel’s family she was known as “A strong, highly intelligent woman who affected everybody by the sheer magnitude of her personality and artistic achievements,” said her grandson Max Schendel, who in collaboration with Olivier Renaud-Clement organized the exhibition at Hauser & Wirth gallery. No less significant is the fact that to the art world Mira Schendel is known as one of the most important Latin American artists of the 20th century, who has her due recognition in the exhibit at the Hauser & Wirth, 32 East 69th Street gallery through April 26, 2014. Works on view span Schendel’s full career and include the installation, ‘Ondas paradas de probabilidade (Still waves of probability)’, Mira’s luminous masterpiece which was introduced at the 10th Sao Paulo Biennial in 1969. Image Right: Mira Schendel in front of 'Todos,' (All). Courtesy of Mira Schendel and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Mira Schendel archives
INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION
This exhibition follows the acclaimed, first-ever international survey devoted to Schendel held this past autumn at Tate Modern, London, England.
Her work was described by the late Brazilian poet Haroldo de Campos as ‘an art of voids, where the utmost redundancy begins to produce original information; an art of words and quasi-words where the graphic form veils and unveils and symbols which print on the blank page of their luminous foam.’
A woman determined to succeed Mira’s move to Sao Paulo, Brazil would prove the ideal place for her to create a unique visual language that conveys her spiritual and intellectual ideas. Born to a Jewish family in Zurich, Switzerland, Mira was educated in Italy and raised Roman Catholic. The tides of war torn Europe forced her family to move between Bulgaria, Austria and Sarajevo to avoid Fascist persecution, and then emigrated to Brazil in 1949.
VISUAL SILENCE
On the second floor of the gallery thousands of nylon threads hang suspended from the ceiling. Extended to the floor, these delicate strands create a volumetric space at once opaque and transparent. While light filters through Schendel’s installation dematerializes in our presence. It asserts the artist’s desire to establish a relationship between transparency, human existence, and the intangibility of God.
Downstairs in another venue is Mira’s ‘Variantes II’ comprised of fourteen parts and developed in a way that allows the work to be viewed from both sides. Characterized by geometric motifs, delicate lines, or typeset letters,
Schendel’s ‘Monotpias (Monotypes) are rendered with a feeling of temporality and transience. These works give the viewer a sense of floating in space imbuing one’s senses with spiritual awareness.

MIRA SCHENDEL lightens our concept of art, raising our spirit by creating luminous and reflective geometric forms. The ‘Sarrafo’ (Batten) seeries was conceived during the last years of her life and reflects its cerebral and poetically inspired integrity. It reaches beyond the materiality of art and invites the viewer to understand and experience space as a new medium of expression. Mira does this with the most delicate, lighthearted art forms that leave us to ponder their meaning and inspire our appreciation of airy space, movement and suspended time.
Image Left: Untitled (from the series Discs/Discos) Acrylic glass (opague), transfer lettering 1971-1973.Courtesy of Mira Schendel and Hauser & Wirth.

LITERARY LIONS MARCH INTO SPRING (c) By Polly Guerin

March rushes in on a high voltage literary lifestyle that brings ancient and modern culture with a profusion of venues to spring forward into warmer weather. Only in New York, my friends, the best of New York. Here’s the scoop!!!

THE PASSION OF JEAN-BAPTISTE CARPEAUX, the first retrospective of the 19th-century sculptor and painter’s brief but illustrious career opens March 10th at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and extends to May 26. The exhibition explores the life and work of the exceptionally gifted, deeply tormented sculptor who define the heady atmosphere of the Second Empire in France (1852-1871). This first full-scale exhibition devoted to Carpeaux (1827-1875) features about 160 works including sculptures, paintings, and drawings, which will be organized around the major projects that the artist undertook during his brief and stormy career. Carpeaux is best known today for a single masterpiece, Ugolino and His Sons and Prince Imperial with his Dog Nero IMAGE; UGOLINO and HIS SONS, Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Carpeaux was a multifaceted and prolific artist who imbued his work with strong movement and visceral drive. He strove for anatomical realism in all media, but especially in his marble sculptures and busts, which seem to capture flesh and blood in stone. His dramatic, highly independent paintings, barely known. during his lifetime, will also be on display Carpeaux, who was plagued with violent mood swings throughout his life, was only 48 when he died. Despite this, he was extraordinarily productive, accomplishing a vast body of work. Met Museum will hold two events in conjunction with the exhibition---Sculpting Sound: The Music of Carpeaux’s Circle with Susan Graham, mezzo-soprano, on April 28 and Friends and Demons: The Life and work of Carpeaux, a presentation by curator James David Draper, on May 14.
GAUGUIN; METAMORPHOSES is the first major monographic exhibition on Paul Gauguin (French, 1848-1903) ever present at The Museum of Modern Art, and the first exhibition to focus particularly on the artist’s rare and extraordinary prints and transfer drawings and their relationship to his paintings and sculptures. Approximate 160 works are on view from March 8th through June 8th 2014 in the International Council of MoMa’s Special Exhibition Gallery. More than any other artist Gauguin inspiration from working across mediums. Though most celebrated as a pioneer of modernist painting, at various moments Gauguin was also intensely engaged with wood carving, ceramics, lithography, woodcut, monotype, and transfer drawing—all medium that ignited his creativity. Gauguin, who had no formal artistic training, led a peripatetic life, settling for extended periods in different regions of the world—including most famously, Tahiti. His search for culture unspoiled by European mores and restraints paralleled his eagerness to work with unfamiliar techniques in order to create entirely new types of artworks. This exhibition focuses on these less well-known, but arguably even more innovative aspects of Gauguin’s practice, especially the rare and extraordinary prints he created in several discrete bursts of activity from 1889 until his death in 1903. At MoMA, 11 E. 53rd Street.
JEAN-BAPTISTE BARRIERE As part of the “Composer Portraits” series of its 25th-anniversary season, Miller Theatre of Columbia University presents works by the multimedia artist and computer-music luminary Jean-Baptiste Barriere, who will take the stage himself. The program includes three world premieres and the composer’s seminal 1983 piece “Chreode,” featuring synthesized human voices. A concurrent exhibition offers a fuller perspective on Barriere’s multifaceted artistic pursuits. Date: March 29. Info: Millertheater.com
A LA FRANCAISE: Calling all Francophiles. New York City Ballet’s A La Francaise program includes the world premiere of Artistic Director Peter Martin’s second collaboration with Marc-Andre Dalbavie, a former Boulez protégé and among the most widely performed composers of his generation. Also slated: Jerome Robbin’s duet “Afternoon of a Faun,” with a score by Debussy.
Ta Ta Darlings!!! Pollytalk went to the preview of Gauguin, highly recommended, it is a real eye-opener! Fan mail welcome at pollytalk@verizon. Visit Polly’s website pollytalk.com and in the left hand column click on my other Blogs on fashion, visionary men and hidden treasures in New York.

CANTERBURY'S 12th CENTURY TREASURES (c) By Polly Guerin

No need to travel to England to see these rare 12th-Century treasures. For the first time in 800 years a breathtaking presentation of near-life-size enthroned figures in stained glass from England’s historic Canterbury Cathedral are in New York for a temporary and rare exhibition, “Radiant Light,” at the Cloisters, a branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
   Not to be missed; the exhibition completes the celebration of the 75th-anniversary year of the founding of The Cloisters and represents the first time the panels have left the cathedral precincts since their creation in 1178-80. The exhibit opens today at The Cloisters through May 18, 2014. Only in New York my friends, the Best of New York. Here’s the scoop!!!
RADIANT LIGHT
The brilliant windows in rich color captured in frozen glass were originally from the clerestory of the cathedral’s choir, east transepts, and the Trinity Chapel feature six figures---Jared, Lamech, Thara, Abraham, Noah and Phalec, which were part of an original cycle of 86 ancestors of Christ, and represent the most comprehensive ancestor cycle in art history. These imposing figures are masterpieces of Romanesque art, and exude an aura of dignified powers.
   The angular limbs, form-defining drapery, and encompassing folds of the mantles all add a sculptural quality to the majestic figures…even remarkably legible at a distance. One complete window (Thara and Abraham), nearly 12 feet in height, is shown with it associate rich foliate border.The glass painting of Methuselah Master to whom the figures of Jared and Lamech are attributed, is distinguished by a remarkable delineation of form by means of a fluid graduated line and bold shading. Images: JARAED: The Anestors of Christ Windows, Canterbury Cathedral, England 1178-80, Colored glass and Vitreous paint; lead came. Photographer Robert Greshoff. Courtesy: Dean and Chapter of Canterbury.  
MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL
Thomas Becket, who is venerated as a saint and martyr both by the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his martyrdom in 1170 when King Henry II’s knights on command murdered Becket in the cathedral. The opera so inspired by this event, “Assasino Nella Cattedrale”, composed by Lldebrando Pizzetti’s operatic version of T.S. Eliot’s play, “Murder in the Cathedral” was performed many years ago on the steps of Boston’s Cathedral, and I am pleased to remember that I sang in the chorus. As evidenced in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a literary masterpiece from the 14th century the Cathedral was an important pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages and stories spun out in legends and lore. Becket was canonized in 1173
WORLD HISTORIC SITE
Founded in 597, the cathedral is one of the oldest Christian structures in England and its popularity increased after the construction of a shrine to Thomas Becket. Today, Canterbury Cathedral is the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion worldwide. Recent repairs to the stonework of the south transept window for this magnificent historic structure necessitated the removal of many of these stained-glass windows, all of unparalleled beauty. And that my friends, the repair work, is what made possible the loan of these magnificent windows to travel to America and The Cloisters.
INTERACTIVE PROGRAMS
   An interactive panorama of the Canterbury Cathedral on a large touch-screen monitor provides visitors with a 360 degree view of the building’s interior with the windows in their original location. Take time to view the short video "Recreating a Medieval Window," which is shown in the gallery. For further enlightenment do take an audio tour with Metropolitan curator Timothy Husband and the very Reverend Robert Willis which is available for rental.
   To get into the medieval mood, the early-music ensemble Blue Heron will perform “Music for Canterbury Cathedral" on Sunday, April 13, at l:00 and 3:00 p.m. in the Fuentiduena Chapel of The Cloisters.($40)
Ta Ta Darlings!!! Pollytalk went to the preview, “Radiant Light” yesterday and I plan to go and hear the Blue Heron concert at The Cloisters, you should too! Fan mail welcome at pollytalk@verizon. Visit Polly’s website pollytalk and in the left hand column click on my other Blogs on fashion, visionary men and hidden treasures in New York.

FASHION CAPITAL's RED CARPET VENUES (c) By Polly Guerin

New York City’s reputation as the Fashion Capital of the World spreads its red carpet activities all

over the City in museums and showy venues elsewhere with Fashion Week taking the spotlight as well as an upcoming Museum gala. Only in New York my friends, the Best of New York. Here’s the scoop!!!

JEAN PAUL GAULTIER: The Fashion World of John Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalks to the Catwalk: Don’t put off seeing this spectacular exhibition mounted at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which closes on February 23. This is your final chance to see the 140 haute couture and prêt-a porter ensembles dating from the 1970s to today. Many fashions are displayed on high-tech mannequins with interactive projected faces that seemingly cast an eye in your direction and start up a conversation. The life-size figure of Jean Paul Gaultier lets you interact with the artist in an uncanny way. From sketches to film clips to stage costumes, the stunning exhibit illustrates the designer’s fondness for collaborating with fellow artists as varied as Maurice Bejart, Pedro Almodovar and Madonna. Gaultier has consistently embraced an irreverent and fun-loving aesthetic, and this exhibit pays homage to his genius.
Image: Jean Paul Gaultier's take on nauticals. The sailor, one of the high-tech mannequins, has a tendancy to flirt and talk to the visitor..

FENDI’S DRONES Fashion shows are notorious for their entertainment venues so what’s next? An unprecedented event in the fashion world. Yes, my dear fashion aficionado high-tech enters the arena. Viewers will be able to connect to fendi.com and chose the “classic view’ or the aerial shots captured by the flying “Drone Cam.” Viewers will then be able to replay the video on demand with the “Drone Cam” footage. To this end, Fendi is reaching out to hundreds of thousands of individuals who are eager to see the collection, particularly the younger customer base, but cannot be physically be at the location. Four or more drones will fly above the heads of the models to capture the red carpet fashion show. The drones are said to be small and Fendi management says, “We will increasingly get used to such technology.” Whew…what a concept!!!

FOREVER WINTOUR This just in!!! The Metropolitan Museum of Art is showing its appreciation of Anna Wintour’s staunch support of The Costume Institute by naming the space The Anna Wintour Costume Center. The center includes the Costume Institute’s exhibition galleries, library, research areas, conservation, laboratory and offices. Why such an honor you ask? Well, Wintour’s contributions to the museum have been extensive. Since 1995, the Vogue editor in chief and Conde Nast artistic director has cochaired fifteen Costume Institute benefits and for the past fourteen years, she has been a trustee of the museum. She’ a big “WOW!” Wintour has raised about $125 million over the past two decades for the Costume Institute, and played an instrumental role in the $40 million redesign and two-year renovation of the complex set to reopen to the public May 8 with the “Charles James: Beyond Fashion” exhibition. Remember you first heard about this from Pollytalk.

'DOWNTON' IN DELAWARE Fashion never seems to get tired of those sometimes doughty wardrobes of the female players in the most popular British period television costume drama ever to be produced-- not only in America but is a huge hit worldwide. Now Winterthur, the Delaware house museum that was formerly the mansion of Henry Francis du Pont, has staged a new show, “Costumes of Downton Abbey,” using clothes and accessories that have appeared on the program. Costumes featured include both upstairs and downstairs attire worn by the fictional Downton. One aim of the Winterthur exhibition, which will open March 1st, is to compare country living life in England and America during the first decades of the 20th century. It will be interesting to see the comparisons, but you’ll have to travel to Delaware.

Ta Ta Darlings!!! Pollytalk has passed up Fendi’s drones and is heading to Delaware to see Winterthur’s Downton show. Fan mail welcome at pollytalk@verizon. Visit Polly’s website pollytalk and in the left hand column click on my other Blogs on fashion, visionary men and hidden treasures in New York.

CULTURE CITY'S RARE AND RICH VENUES (c) By Polly Guerin

New York City’s reputation as “Culture City” spans a wide range of exhibitions and venues to not only stimulate one’s intellectual pursuits but take you into the warmth of institutions that can only exist in the capital of the world. Only in New York my friends, the Best of New York. Here’s the scoop!!!

PIERO della FRANCESCA: In a modest and rare exhibition you need go no further than the Metropolitan Museum of art where the devotional paintings of Piero della Francesca are brought together for the first time through collaboration with the Gallerie dell-Accademia, Venice, and the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino with the Met which hosts this unique presentation. Francesca’s “Personal Encounters” features paintings of Saint Jerome and a Supplicant (ca.1460-64) and Saint Jerome in the Wilderness (dated 1450) Madonna and Child with Two Angeles (ca. 1464-74) to name a few. Education programs include a Friday Focus Lecture on February 28, and exhibition tours. Additional info is available on the museum’s website metmuseum.org Don’t miss this opportunity to view these historical paintings. Through March 30, 2014. Image: Piero della Francesca's Madonna and Child with two Angels (ca. 1464-74) Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, Italy.
   At the same time visit the GENESIS OF THE AMERICAN GUITAR at the Met which features thirty-five rare guitars that illustrate the early history of the instrument in America drawn from the Museum’s holdings as well as from the Martin Guitar Museum in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, and traces the contributions of Christian Frederick Martin, a German immigrant who invented a uniquely American form of the guitar in the first half of the 19th century. Also on view is the 1939 guitar made by Martin Guitar that was place by Eric Clapton on MTV’s Unplugged series in 1992. On view through December 7, 2014.

WHERE'S WALDO? Women’s Wear Daily reports that Emerson designer Jackie Fraser-Swann made her Friday night walk-off a family affair, taking her four young daughters for a quick lap around the runway. The family coat of arms is treasured by the designer who great-great-great grandfather was the famed essayist and poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson. “My favorite quite of his is, ‘Break the monotony, Do something strange and extravagant.’ That’s what I am all about," said the designer.

FOREVER VREELAND In Lorna Koski’s review she says, “Diana Vreeland was a marvelous, self-invented character. Never a beauty, she transformed herself through style, will and charm into a south-after-debutante and married banker T. Reed Vreeland, one of the handsomest men of his day. The word “icon is brandied about much too freely today, but Diana Vreeland, fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar and curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art really was one. It is good news that her grandson, Alexander Vreeland, has gathered together a large group of memos she wrote at Vogue in one book, “Memos: The Vogue Years/l962-1971/Diana Vreeland” (Rizzoli, New York) and the book gives unique insight into the way she worked and communicated with her staff. Her longtime colleague Sarah Slavin called her, ‘a joy to worth with.’”

Ta Ta Darlings!! Pollytalk has passed up a trip to Italy and went to the Met instead to see Piero della Francesca's magnificent paintings, you should, too! Fan Mail is always welcome: send to pollytalk@verizon.net  Visit Polly's website pollytalk.com and in the left hand column click on my other Blogs on fashion, visonary men and hidden treasures in New York.

MUSEUM VENUES and A Magical Story (c) By Polly Guerin

Despite the frigid weeks on end the abundance of museum venues will keep you hopping from enchanting exhibitions to serious works that engage your attention and stimulate the cabin-fever brain. The Little Prince winds his way into our hearts, as do the openings of architecture and avant-garde artists. Only in New York my friends, the Best of New York. Here’s the scoop!!!
THE LITTLE PRINCE: A New York Story. One of the 20th Century’s Most Beloved Books, Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince is the subject of a major exhibition at the Morgan Library & Museum and will thrill you to a charm with the original manuscript on display, as well as photographs and letters. Remarkably this French tale of an interstellar traveler who comes to Earth in search of friendship and understanding was written and first published in New York, during the two years that the author spent here at the height of the Second World War. The exhibition to warm the hearts of adult and child alike  features Saint-Exupery’s original watercolors and heavily revised manuscript, and there are child-friendly seats to honker down and read the book on site. The exhibition explores the American origins of a story that reminds us that what matters most can only be seen with the heart. Saint-Exupery died while piloting a one reconnaissance flight in 1944 but the silver identity bracelet that he was wearing when his plane went down was recovered. It is inscribed with Saint-Exupery’s name and the address of the American publisher of the Little Prince, Rynal & Hitchcock, 386 Fourth Avenue, N.Y.C., U.S.A. Through April 27, 2014. 225 Madison Ave. www.themorgan.org, Cover of Book: Antoine de Saint-Exupery The Little Prince, New York, Rynal & Hitchcock, 1943, The Morgan Library & Museum. Photography by Graham S. Haber, 2013.
JEWELS BY JAR: Brings together 300 precious bijoux and objects d’art, in the first U.S. retros0pective of the work of Joel A.Rosenthal, a native New Yorker who has operated an ultra-exclusive shop on Paris’ Place Vendome since 1978. If you can’t afford a real big diamond….JAR was the place to find something just a beautiful. JAR was best known for his pave techniques in which very small stones are set so closely together in such delicate settings that the effect is a glittering mass that sparkles with faceted fascination.
Not to be missed: Through March 9 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. metmuseum.org.
PARIS in the 1920S with KIKI de MONTPARNASSE is a cozy read on a cold winter’s night. “You can’t go wrong with Kiki de Montparnasse,” says author art historian and art history professor Xavier Gerard. This is a big splashing and lavish comprehensive study of the woman who was considered the greatest muse of her day, the mistress of Moise Kisling, who painted a dozen portraits of her; Foujita, who did a series of monochrome nudes of her, and Man Ray who created the famous portrait of her, “Le Violon d’Ingres,” (a photo of her back with superimposed violin) which appears on the cover of the book. Published by Assouline.
THE EMPIRE IS BACK: .Many New Yorkers, myself included, remember the thirties-era Empire Diner, at the corner of 22nd Street and Tenth Avenue when Harry Connick Jr. played the piano in the corner when there was a piano there and on any day or night you could spot celebs hanging out or movie stars hashing it down with java. The good news: Executive Chef Amanda Freitag with partners have opened the doors of the Empire diner and aiming to bring back the nostalgic era. It is just open for dinner, has upgraded to a seasonal menu but offers old favorites such as omelets, pancakes and milkshakes and ice cream will be made in-house. To attract the kids in the neighborhood the diner will be offering after-school special menu featuring kid-friendly grilled cheese and turkey nuggets. Curious tourist visiting the High Line will also find health-conscious beverages, such as smoothies and kale-centric juices. Empire Diner, 210 10th Ave. (between 222nd 7 23rd Sts.) 212.596 7523.

Ta Ta Darlings!!! Pollytalk is going to re-read The Little Prince, which engages the reader to a charm. Fan mail welcome at pollytalk@verizon.net.Visit Polly’s website pollytalk.com and in the left hand column click on my other Blogs on fashion, visionary men and hidden treasures in New York.