The New Yorker:

The co-founder of Paper magazine recounts Kim Kardashian’s famous photo shoot and serving Jackie Kennedy.

By Ariel Levy

Recently, Kim Hastreiter—artist, curator, co-founder of Paper magazine, and legendary downtown bon vivant—was having one of her parties. There were six kinds of soup and at least as many kinds of people: the tennis player John McEnroe; the artists Sarah Sze and Lisa Yuskavage; the musician James Murphy, of LCD Soundsystem, and his wife, the activist and restaurateur Christina Topsøe; the guy who did Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden. An unusual scent wafted from the kitchen, the merging vapors of tom yum and ribollita.

Hastreiter, who was wearing her “uniform” of a custom-made Mao jacket and a pleated skirt, has been called the Gertrude Stein of her era because of her knack for bringing together extraordinary combinations—of flavors, visual elements, and, above all, creative people. Standing in her living room, in front of a painting of a name tag that read “hellomy name is Satan,” Hastreiter recalled a dinner she once gave for the director Pedro Almodóvar, her longtime friend, to which she’d invited Todd Solondz, who’d just released his indie hit “Happiness.” “It’s, like, my favorite movie—I die for it,” Hastreiter said. “And I knew Pedro would have a heart attack if I got Todd to come. So I’m getting ready, cooking, I hadn’t even taken a shower, it’s five-thirty, and the doorbell rang.” She had invited her guests for seven-thirty, but Solondz was there early. “He sat for two hours in my house, alone, waiting for the party to start!”

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