Cory's World
By CAROLINE RYDER
Wednesday, August 2, 2006 - 3:00 pm
Cory Kennedy, ubiquitous club urchin and object of desire for fashion-mag hags everywhere, is hanging with her buddies after The Like show at MoCA. One of them is designer Jeremy Scott. “Cory’s the It Girl!” he announces. Then, pointing to her boyfriend, nightlife photographer Mark “The Cobrasnake” Hunter, he adds, “She’s always being hounded by the paparazzi!” Giggles all ’round.
A blonde girl is hanging out with them, and I ask how she knows Cory. “I just met her tonight,” she drawls. “We’re really close now.” She turns to Cory and asks how it feels to be a celebrity. Cory brushes a tendril of matted brown hair from her eyes and pauses. “I don’t really think about it.”
Away from the group, we sit facing each other, cross-legged on the edge of the MoCA fountain. The New York Times interviewed Cory the other week. It must have been kinda surreal, I suggest, especially because she’s only 16.
“I can’t even grasp it yet,” she says, all big eyes and spindly legs, like a foal. She tells me they asked her about her childhood, her fashion sense and the controversial nature of being her.
Controversial?
“I think that’s why I’ve gotten so much attention, because I’m so controversial,” she explains. “People either love me, or they hate me, hate me, hate me.”
She twiddles a ’90s-rapper-style gold chain, which she wears over a Marc Jacobs T-shirt dress, worn backward. A metallic American Apparel boob tube glimmers beneath the giant armholes. A Marc Jacobs scarf is tied around her right bicep and her flat gladiator sandals — Salvation Army, $4.50 — are falling apart. One is held together by a hair band.
Why does she think people hate her?
“Maybe it’s ’cause most celebrities are, like, perfect,” she ventures. “They have their hair brushed and their makeup done and no bruises on their legs . . . and I’m like BLEURRRRGH!”
Then there are those who hate on her for being, as Gawker.com put it, “a malnourished teenager who dresses like she raided her retarded grandma’s basement and does nothing with her wasted life but pose for pictures on a Web site and hang out and live off her parents while waiting to get famous for some as-yet-unrevealed talent.” Ouch.
Either way, Cory’s life has changed dramatically ever since The Cobrasnake made her his intern and splashed photos of her all over his Web site. A latter-day Bianca Jagger in ballet flats, she’s the one with the messy long brown hair, the crooked smile and the glass of white wine perpetually in hand. Now she gets MySpace messages from admirers all over the world, and fashion bloggers in Europe, Australia and South America have been asking “Who is Cory Kennedy?”
Apparently, the worldwide Cory craze started in the Netherlands.
“They were the first international place that started giving me attention,” Cory says. “Then it went to Spain, and then London, and blah blah blah . . . and Australia kinda came last, and Canada’s chillin’.”
People usually ask her about her age, and her clothes. She says her biggest fashion inspirations are Jean-Luc Godard’s À Bout de Souffle, the 1920s through the ’40s, Twiggy, Edie Sedgwick and Kurt Cobain. She loves to mix vintage with designer, and lists her favorites: Chanel, Oscar de la Renta, Marni, Jeremy Scott, Isabel Marant, André Courrèges, Obesity & Speed, Pierre Cardin, Tsumori Chisato and Mary Ping.
She tells me she’s especially excited to be working with Jeremy Scott on his next collection. “I bring him stuff and say, ‘Look at this!’”
I wonder where Cory gets the money to buy designer clothes. “My parents are good to me,” she says, adding, “But I’m good to them.”
She lives in Santa Monica and has a twin sister (not identical) who doesn’t go out clubbing like she does. She also has two younger sisters, ages 14 and 13. Her folks run education programs for adults who did not complete high school. They don’t want Cory to end up one of their pupils.
She agrees, and plans on getting her high school diploma before pursuing her career, probably in fashion. Her parents are vaguely aware that she has a following, but “they don’t really understand. It’s kind of weird because I say, ‘Yeah, I kinda have some fan sites and stuff,’ and they’re like, ‘That’s cool.’”
Cory’s starting to get fidgety. We wander back into the courtyard, while she tells me about some haters who have been posting mean things about her on livejournal.com. Then she spots Mark and yells his name with extraordinary force for one so petite. He comes over. There’s a party downtown, he says. There’s a possibility it may be lame, and they carefully weigh their options. It’s a tough call — after all, Cory isn’t even supposed to be out. Turns out she’s grounded.
JULY 31,2006
Breaking: Cobrasnake Guy's Relationship With Young Girl Not Illegal, Merely Creepy
The following just came over the transom, regarding our earlier post on interns , from Maureen Tkacik, author of the original Times piece that mentioned 21-year-old Los Angeles party photog Mark Hunter (a.k.a. Cobrasnake) and his 16-year-old intern/girlfriend, Cory Kennedy:
"Separate conversations with Cory Kennedy, Cory's mom and Cory's best friend Maggy led the reporter to believe that Cory Kennedy has never actually had sexual relations with Mark "Cobrasnake" Hunter, which would, as Cory's mom Jinx pointed out, "be a felony." Further, though this may come as a surprise to many bloggers, according to Cory's mom, Cory is also drug-tested once a week at UCLA, and has never tested positive for any illegal drugs. And yes, that includes blow."
Gawker is glad to clear the air on this matter. It's a relief to know that no felonious underaged fucking went on. Just like Jeffrey Epstein. Allegedly.
Hanging out with high schoolers
`Intern' employers value the access
By Maureen Tkacik
New York Times News Service
Published August 6, 2006
It was a typical Sweet 16 '70s-theme party. Drama geeks in vintage bell-bottoms circled the rink at the Cherry Hill Skating Center in southern New Jersey, a disco ball spun overhead and a yellow sheet cake with chocolate frosting that read "Happy Birthday Claire" sat beneath balloons in the corner. Then someone made the inevitable call for a game of spin the bottle.
"Spin the bottle?" cried out Rose Luardo, a rail-thin guest in a platinum Afro wig, as she looked up from the Diet Coke she was sipping through a Twizzler. Will Christianson, 16, a tall boy in a patchwork sweater and a mop of blond highlights who was sitting beside her, laughed mockingly.
Luardo, after all, is 34 years old. And she had come to be among this sea of dewy-faced high schoolers not as a chaperone or older sister, but because Will is her personal unpaid intern. She met him when he came to see her band play in Philadelphia last winter. They got to know each other through MySpace and instant messaging, and when Luardo needed to channel the voice of a teenager for a marketing project, she enlisted Will's help.
Since then he has been her point man for keeping up with all things young. In turn she has been spending many a weekend shuttling him from his home in Moorestown, N.J., to parties, concerts and the occasional summer blockbuster.
Learning their ways
At one time, there was no way to better broadcast one's failure to thrive as an adult than to hang around high school kids. But now, according to young professionals working in fields in which fluency in the dialects and habits of teenagers is paramount, hanging out with high schoolers is cool, and sometimes even professionally advantageous.
Often these teenagers are known as "the intern." They are working for little or nothing at clothing labels, guerrilla marketing firms and one-person event-planning operations, making coffee, opening mail and tagging along with their employers in environments they deem interesting. While they get college-resume-boosting work experience, not to mention entree into clubs and parties, their employers get around-the-clock muses and ambassadors to youth culture.
"I don't need to look at the Internet anymore, I just look these kids straight in the eyes and they tell me everything I need to know," said Luardo, a former buyer for Urban Outfitters who is now a musician, sales representative and freelance marketer. A few weeks ago, Luardo, Will and one of his friends, Dot Goldberger, were eating enchiladas at a restaurant in Center City Philadelphia.
"Rose doesn't know anything about music," Dot said, as Will sneaked a sip of Luardo's blood orange margarita. Besides the fact that he likes hanging out with Rose, Will said he was glad to help her because it kept him busy and might look good on a college application. Will's father, Allan Christianson, said he was just thankful that Luardo was willing to share the task of driving his son around. "At first I thought, `Gee, she's a little older,"' Christianson said, "but a lot of people get old only because they think they are."
Good for the portfolio
There is no way to quantify how many young professionals are employing high school students, but Mark Oldman, a founder and a co-president of Vault.com, a career-information Web site, said his firm estimates that the number of high school students doing internships has increased 30 percent in the past five years. "It's one very potent way of diversifying your high school portfolio" on a college application, he said.
To employers desperate for a hot line into the Clearasil demographic, the young interns offer both cheap labor and the frisson of authenticity. "It's amazing how working around teenagers just injects a buzz into the office," said Doug Kennedy, 36, the founder of Reverb Communications, a marketing firm. He employs seven high school interns for $7 an hour--and unlimited junk food--to test video games and write positive reviews of them on message boards.
But beyond the office, young interns have also become popular companions, conferring a certain status on the 20- and 30-somethings who let them tag along after hours. But hanging out with high schoolers has its own complications: Do you buy beer for them? Make them drive? Is it OK to be attracted to the intern? Luardo sets boundaries up front: She won't buy them beer or hand over her keys, but they "mostly just want to go to all-ages shows" and other events her older friends are too tired to attend. And the people involved in these arrangements say the relationships don't typically cross over into romantic territory.
One exception is 16-year-old Cory Kennedy, who since last fall has been working as an unpaid intern for the Los Angeles party photographer Mark Hunter, 21. Since her job began, she has become both his girlfriend and something of an Internet phenomenon thanks to Hunter's Web site, thecobrasnake. com, which is dominated by pictures of her with her signature unbrushed hair and improbable outfits.
While Cory said that her internship with Hunter involved its share of drudgery, she is also getting credit at her charter high school, where she was able to label her work an independent study in photojournalism. Most enticing, though, it gave her an entree to hip fashion and entertainment industry parties. "I was just leading this crazy exciting new life," she said. (Her mother, Jinx, said she was keeping a close eye on Cory, but in general thought Hunter was a good influence.)
October 25, 2006 -- "BROWN Bunny" director Vincent Gallo, 45, has a new friend - Los Angeles "It" Girl Cory Kennedy, 16. Kennedy, who blogs about her nightlife exploits and dalliances with celebrities despite being underage, has called Gallo a "keeper" on her blog and posts pictures of them together. Asked to comment, Gallo - who stressed there is no sexual relationship between the two - told Page Six: "With the psychotic, middle-aged Madonna out there on the loose buying up all the stolen Negro babies in Africa, I felt it my social and humanitarian duty to take in any young, beautiful and sexy orphaned Jew teens running wild in Beverly Hills. Cory's a great kid, and I'm proud to be her daddy."
WATCH THIS
Good Charlotte, "Keep Your Hands Off My Girl"
Admittedly clubbier than their usual stuff, in their new single, rockers Good Charlotte drop lyrics like "I've got brass knuckles hanging from my neck and my chain." However, in this exclusive video, it isn't the Madden brothers getting rowdy. Directed by NYLON's Editor-in-Chief Marvin Scott Jarrett, "Keep Your Hands Off My Girl" instead stars L.A. it-girl Cory Kennedy feasting on Indian food to the song that, by the looks of it, is hotter still. Check it out... SAMANTHA GILEWICZ
Add one more girl to the stack of Fashion Week casting cards:
Cory Kennedy just signed up with Muse models.
The boutique agency has a small stack of sex bombs whom they call their
muses - yes - which includes Nylon favorite Holly Hayden and also Kemp, who
may be best known in the States for her Young Love video with Terry
Richardson, but also has a huge Maybelline campaign in France.
Now they've got Cory "by special arrangement," which we think is code for "we must bring her Mochaccinos whenever she's on set."
Whether she's signed in time to walk a runway is something, of course, we'll keep investigating...