Tiffany & Co.’s Design Director, Francesca Amfitheatrof, hosted the launch party at The Los Angeles Athletic Club on Friday, October 9th.
The Sporting Guide, is the newest book from the best selling author, Liz Goldwyn. Goldwyn is a celebrated artist, filmmaker, and fashion editor. Some of her previous short films include Underwater Ballet (2008) and Dear Diary (2013).
Inspired by the late 1800’s, the Sporting Guide’s exterior was designed to mimic an original Sporting Guide from the 1800’s. The historical fiction novel is leather bound just like the original Sporting Guides, which were miniature guides on the different brothels in each city. Many came out to celebrate the launch, including Selma Blair, Estee Stanley, Marisa Tomei, Dita Von Teese, Lucy Punch, and Camilla Belle. Tennessee Thomas was the DJ for the event.
Read more about the Sporting Guide below:
Long before the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, Los Angeles was a city where dreamers from all over the world came to make their fortunes—where a madam named Pearl Morton entertained the most powerful politicians and entrepreneurs inside her namesake brothel. In a series of haunting, interlinked stories set in the period, author and filmmaker Liz Goldwyn re-creates a “sporting guide”—a secret diary and guidebook of the best brothels and prostitutes in the city. In this world a hushed conversation inside a velvet-lined boudoir could destroy a man, and the rustle of bushes might reveal a sordid assignation. Based on original research in the libraries and archives of Los Angeles, these fictional stories are often inspired by real historical characters—like the laudanum-addicted Cora Phillips, whose tombstone Goldwyn rediscovered, or Bartolo Ballerino, Italian immigrant slumlord of the forgotten red-light district, or thirteen-year-old Frances dreaming of life beyond the Children’s Orphan Asylum. Interspersed in these stories—and featuring over a hundred historical photos and illustrations—Goldwyn reveals the history of the period, from the rage for corsets to crushed pearl powder cosmetics and the awful cures for syphilis. Sporting Guide evokes a lost world of those on the margins of Los Angeles, of the hustlers who made it into one of the great cities of the world, and Goldwyn gives a poignant voice to the people and stories forgotten by time.
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