So Sweet, So Very Black Leather

The Standard Hotel was Hotel LaChapelle the other night when fashion photographer David LaChapelle threw an intimate soiree for about 80 to celebrate his color-saturated book of celebrity portraits (“Hotel LaChapelle,” Bulfinch Press, $60).

“I wanted to have sort of a holiday gathering and give everyone a book,” said LaChapelle, who is very sweet despite his bad-boy, black-leather-clad image.

The shutterbug is in town shooting a music video with electronica wunderkind Moby.

“It’s about an old man looking back on his life,” LaChapelle told us. “We are shooting B-roll-type stuff all over town.”

A camera was even filming party-goers Wednesday night as they munched on chopped salad and sipped champagne. Crowded into the Standard’s narrow coffee shop were Moby, Gwen Stefani and Tony Kanal of No Doubt, Rose McGowan (sans fiance Marilyn Manson), Vince Vaughn, David Spade, Andy Dick, Stephen Dorff, feng shui master David Rainey, Ricky Martin’s main music man, Robbie Rosa, hotel owner Andre Balazs, and Ian Denson, in town from London to launch the new Melrose Avenue salon Sally Hershberger at John Frieda.

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Over at Oxygen Media’s new Hollywood studios, where principals Geraldine Laybourne, Marcy Carsey, Tom Werner and Caryn Mandabach hosted a party Wednesday night, the sets are very E!, with lots of bright colors and retro-looking furnishings.

With a launch planned for Feb. 2, the new women’s network will offer a cooking show with celebrity taste-testers (celebrities eating . . . now there’s something different), a girl’s movie night with Katie Puckrik and a talk show with Candice Bergen, who told us she is a tad nervous about the gig, a one-on-one interview four times a week.

“When they first asked me to do it, the only person I called was Charlie Rose because his show is supposed to be the model. I asked him if it was too hard and he said no,” she said. “I’m going to give it a shot.”

From one chatterbox to another, we wish her the best.

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Those looking to provoke conversation on Christmas may want to consider giving this gift: performance artist Karen Finley’s recently published “Pooh Unplugged: A Parody” (Smart Art Press, $19.95). A compilation of work on view at Track 16 Gallery in Santa Monica earlier this year, the book follows Pooh and his pals (who are dysfunctional and oversexed, not cute and cuddly) as they frolic pornographically and debate a Disney buyout.

“I don’t care what you pay me Mike. . . . I won’t do any spinoff that involves mud baths or any of that wee wee wee all the way home [stuff],” a cell-phone-toting Piglet says in the book.

But “Pooh Unplugged” isn’t all about dissing the Mouse; it has a deeper anti-paternalism agenda, Finley, 43, told her audience Wednesday at a book signing in West Hollywood. She began thinking about Pooh when she was up late one night with her 6-year-old daughter, Violet.

“I was intrigued that all children’s stories seem to lack women,” she said.

Finley has not let her daughter read the book, although she has let Violet see the risque drawings.

“She wants me to do a parody of Pokemon next,” she told the audience at Book Soup.

It’s about time.

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Booth Moore can be reached at booth.moore@latimes.com.