When last I ran into her, Diane von Furstenberg was photographing an antique shoe with curlicue heel-I imagine for inspiration– at the Brooklyn Museum's excellent new “American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection.” Sibling to the Metropolitan's “American Woman: Fashioning a National Identity,” viewed this week, the show features masterworks from the Brooklyn Museum costume collection: fashion as fine art in the work of Charles James, Charles Frederick Worth, Madeleine Vionnet, Steven Arpad, and many others. 

The shoe collection is one of the most unusual, with Ferragamos, Delmans and Valentinos. And a display at the Met features a rack of extraordinary lacy footwear. But as anyone-even the likes of Anna Wintour who wore a Proenza Schouler day dress to the press conference, posing for the discerning lens of Bill Cunningham– will tell you, women do not live by shoes alone.

Wednesday night in the DVF Design Studio in the meatpacking district, Diane von Furstenberg hosted the annual Independent Filmmaker Project gala in honor of daughter Tatiana von Furstenberg and Fransesca Gregorini's movie “Tanner Hall” to open this fall. Sipping champagne and red bull cocktails, New York's downtown film community and well wishers including Blythe Danner, Mamie Gummer, Uma Thurman, Ed Burns, Mira Nair, Alexander Olch, Jean Doumanian, Christine Vachon, Cynthia Rowley, to name a mere few, watched clips of the film. Patricia Clarkson and Amber Tamblyn wore hot pink look alike sheaths and first mocked shock and dismay and then a forgiving embrace. Anthony Bregman came from the Westchester shoot of his new movie “Oranges” starring the winning “Please Give” actors Oliver Platt and Catherine Keener. 

Dressed in hippie chic, DVF huddled in deep talk on a banquette with talented young photographer Francesco Carrozzini whose giant portraits of Keith Richards and Scarlett Johansson with Liev Schreiber hung over the elegant dinner.