Art-world figures join the Obamas on Vanity Fair’s Best-Dressed List

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It may come as no surprise that fashion-forward first couple Barack and Michelle Obama made Vanity Fair’s 2009 International Best-Dressed List.

But Culture Monster is pleased to report that a number of arts figures also made the cut alongside the predictably chic Hollywood stars, politicos, businesspeople and lesser-known royalty.

Those nattily attired artists include American abstract painter Cy Twombly, 81; photographer Bruce Weber, 63; Agnes Gund, former Getty Trust board member and president emerita of New York City’s MoMA, and Ike Ude, an artist and founder of aRude magazine, who cites as his fashion influences Edward VIII and Charles Baudelaire.

There is also one arts leader in the popular lesser-known-royalty category: Count Manfredi Della Gherardesca, 48, a resident of London, who describes his personal style as ‘classic with many twists.’

Here’s Twombly, above, in a contemplative mood at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art in 1995 during a comprehensive survey exhibition of his work. You can see for yourself that the artist looks far more fashionable and certainly less rumpled in Vanity Fair.

Sad to say, Culture Monster did not make this year’s list -- but, for the record, we clean up nicely too.

-- Diane Haithman