Anna Piaggi dies: Fashion world mourns eccentric muse

What a joy it would be to walk around in a world where everyone dressed as if they were Anna Piaggi. It would be terribly disorienting, but great fun: A carnival and a costume party, all rolled into one.

View Photo Gallery: For years, her vibrant dress sense — including funky hats and theatrical makeup — made her a standout at the Paris and Milan fashion shows.

Piaggi, an Italian Vogue editor who died at the age of 81 Tuesday, leaves behind a wardrobe of more than 2,000 dresses and a rich legacy as the most eccentric dresser of the fashion establishment. Her hair was blue, her hats were too big or too small, her neck was always elegantly draped in collars of neon-dyed fur, and her canes were colored to clash. Either nothing matched, or it matched too much. She dressed as though every outing in every outfit was performance art.

Piaggi’s style may not make sense to much of the world, but to photographers and designers, she was a muse of the highest order. Karl Lagerfeld sketched 10 years’ worth of Piaggi in her outfits in his journal. Milliner Stephen Jones considered her his muse, as did shoe designer Manolo Blahnik, and she regularly wore designs by both. She was an inspiration to New York Times street style photographer Bill Cunningham, and was featured in his documentary “Bill Cunningham New York.”

Cunningham photographed Piaggi throughout her career, but one of his finest tributes to her was not an image, but words: In 1994, he wrote, ”Fashion, which often parades as art, can genuinely be called an art form as seen on Ms. Piaggi. She creates her own special environment, and it’s not meant to be imitated.”

So even though a world of Piaggi-alikes would be a marvel, it would be a poor tribute to a fashion icon who was truly one-of-a-kind. We’re not as brave as she is, anyway. Piaggi didn’t just wear her imaginative get-ups to Fashion Week — she wore them everywhere. The office. The bank. And, as she told Paper Magazine, “Also for the supermarket. My life is quite normal. But I enjoy dressing all the time.”

Northern Va. teen wears homemade newspaper dress to the Newseum

Each year, thousands of visitors pose with the Newseum’s “Front Page Gallery,” which displays the front pages of more than 80 newspapers from around the world on any given day. A Falls Church teen decided she didn’t want to simply pose with the page. She wanted to be the page.

Jennifer Tran, 15, raised a few eyebrows when she visited the Newseum wearing a dress — from the shoulder straps all the way to the pleated skirt — made entirely of newsprint.

“And thread,” she clarifies. “To hold it all together.”

Jennifer Tran, a 15-year-old Falls Church resident, wears a homemade dress made entirely of newspapers at a recent visit to the Newseum.
(Sandra Tran)

Within days of the visit, photos of Tran and her homemade newspaper dress were making the rounds online.

“Fierce dress,” someone commented on the Newseum’s Facebook page.

“I would subscribe to this,” wrote another.

This wasn’t the first time Tran, who says she has “loved artsy things like sewing and baking” since she was little, made her own clothes. “I’ve made skirts before. And I’ve turned sweaters into pillows. I love repurposing things,” she says.

But it was her first attempt at an original design. “I never expected it would get all this attention,” she says.

Tran created the newspaper dress in the fall of 2011, when she was a freshman at Mclean High School. “It was my Halloween costume,” she says. “I liked the idea of making my own costume and I wanted it to be eco-friendly and recyclable. I decided to make it out of newspaper.”

The front of the dress, which Tran originally made as a Halloween costume, features pages from The Washington Post
(Sandra Tran)

She found instructions for her craft project online. Since her family reads news on the Web, “I had to actually go out and buy a bunch of newspapers.” She came home with a stack:
The Washington Post
and The New York Times.

She used The Post to create the front of the dress as well as the belt, which prominently features the paper’s name. The Times was used for the backside of the dress.

The Times “is a physically larger paper, and I needed to cover more area in the back,” she explains. “And I really wanted The Post to be in the front since that’s where I’m from.”

While she doesn’t remember which stories were on the front page of the papers she used, Jennifer says she “tried hard to pick pages that weren’t depressing. Nothing about the prime minister of some country getting assassinated.”

She describes the process of making the dress as “kind of a disaster.” For two weeks, she spent several hours each day sitting on the floor patching the pieces together.

“I thought about laminating the pages, but then I thought that would take away from the aesthetic. So I just used paper and thread.”

While it was aesthetically more pleasing without reinforcement, the medium was fragile and prone to ripping. “Every time anyone walked in the room, I’d be like ‘Aghhh.’”

The back of the dress is made from pages from the New York Times. She used the Times because it “is a physically larger paper, and I needed to cover more area in the back,” says Tran
(Sandra Tran)

In all, she estimates that about three newspapers were used to create a fabric sturdy enough to be worn.

Jennifer debuted the dress on Halloween, luckily without any wardrobe malfunctions. “I was praying that it wouldn’t rain and that it wouldn’t rip in the car.”

The dress not only survived, but continued to sit in her room for the next eight months. Last week, Jennifer’s older sister, Sandra, suggested they visit the Newseum. Jennifer jumped at the chance to take the dress out for another spin.

“I was sure the staff would get a kick out of it, but I didn’t expect people at the museum to follow me around. From far away it looks like a real dress. It’s a little stiff, not comfortable to sit in,” she says. “But people took pictures of me and a couple of them wanted to be in the picture with me.”

Jennifer is already contemplating this year’s Halloween costume, which she plans to design again. “I’m thinking candy wrappers,” she says. “Ot maybe playing cards. We’ll see.”

Tell us: What is the most unique thing you’ve ever done with a newspaper? Share in the comments below.

Make your own newspaper dress:

Give it a try. Here are directions from CutOutAndKeep.com, an arts and crafts website.

Things We Saw Today: The Best Geeky Cosplay For a Baby Bump

Things We Saw Today

by Jamie Frevele | 4:57 pm, June 11th

Share on Tumblr

Informal poll: If you found yourself pregnant and hankering for some cosplay, what do you do about that growing belly? It starts heading into “cheesy Halloween costume” territory, doesn’t it? Pregnant Leia, pregnant Wonder Woman … but why stick to humans and try other orb-shaped elements of geekdom? Like this expectant mom did with the Death Star? See more pics at Global Geek News.

Marissa Willman at The Frisky discusses how everyone’s favorite Jim Henson mammoth Snuffleupagus saved her relationship. Who is your spirit Muppet?

Etsy seller VaLa Jewelry is selling this Star-Trek-inspired engagement ring for when your Trekkie lover is ready to “engage” or “make it so.” Get it? See what I did there? I tried. (via Fashionably Geek)

A subway worker in Boston jumped onto the tracks to save Nummy, a little girl’s stuffed bunny. I can’t even … it’s too adorable (and perilous). (via The Jane Dough)

Want to turn your iPhone into an iPhone-shaped Star Wars character? PowerA introduced these cases at E3 last week, and they can totally be yours. [insert Chewbacca cheer here] (via Nerd Approved)

Are you following The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, Google +?

TAGS:
cosplay | DC Comics | geek jewelry | Geek mom | Liu Yang | Prometheus | Renae de Liz | Star Trek | Star Wars | Wang Yaping

• 
  
  5 TV Characters Deserving a Spinoff
  
• 
  
  Sansa Stark Give Us A Break!
  
• 
  
  The 100 Greatest Horror Movie Quotes of All Time
  
• 
  
  Criminal Minds’ AJ Cook: Snappy Answers to Silly Questions
  

• Why don’t they make Star Wars cases for the Droid phones? I want my Droid to look like R2-D2!

• If Darth has a boy she should name it Luke so one day she can say: “LUKE….I AM YOUR MOTHER.”

• *SPOILER*

  But Charlize WHY DIDN’T YOU JUST RUN TO THE SIDE?? /facepalm

• This post on live jourley by user cavalorn might just be enough to change your mind. Maybe.

  http://singaporecity360.com/marina-bay-sands

   

• @Laura:Disqus my friend’s sister-in-law earned $21343 past week. she is making an income on the internet and moved in a $493500 home. All she did was get lucky and put to work the guide shown on this web page 

  *Just Click At My name for The Link*

• Pregnant Leia, pregnant Wonder Woman … but why stick to humans and try
  other orb-shaped elements of geekdom? Like this expectant mom did with
  the Death Star? See more pics at Global Geek News.

  http://www.tapestrycatalogue.com/
   

Green Lights, Yo! After 80 Years ‘The Great Gatsby’ Is All The Rage

I don’t know how it happened, but after 80 years F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal novel The Great Gatsby has become the coolest, most talked-about thing in culture.

It has a Kanye soundtrack for God’s sake.

Today Baz Luhrmann’s upcoming film adaptation of Gatsby, starring Leonardo “I have decided to speak in a very strange half-British accent in all of my movies” DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan, released its first trailer, and it’s making a big splash.

If you hadn’t known the trailer was for a film adaptation of The Great Gatsby, you might have believed it was for Jazz Age: The Ride or Old Timey Costume Party: The Ride. But it’s not. It’s for The Great Gatsby, and Luhrmann is going to release the film in 3D so we can swoop through 1920s Manhattan like Spiderman and also get motion sickness like Spiderman. But also it might be pretty awesome.

In less than a day this thing has racked up well over 300,000 views:

Luhrmann told MTV recently that he was always a huge fan of the book, but it was in the early 2000s, riding a train through China, that he re-listened to it on audiobook and fell in love with the story all over again.

And Luhrmann is hardly the sole artist to rediscover these Gatsby-inspired emotions. A similar majesty crept over the creators of Gatz, a long-running and award-winning play from the theatre company Elevator Repair Service, at around the same time. They were so enamored with the book, in fact, that they decided to read it out loud onstage, in its entirety, for over six hours, whether you liked it or not.

Since 2005 Gatz has been slaying critics and wooing audiences the world over. The New York Times has raved about it consistently, calling it a work of “singular imagination and intelligence,” and said the magic of the show comes from “that elusive chemistry that takes place between a reader and a gorgeous set of sentences that demand you follow them wherever they choose to go.”

Back in April the actor Jim Fletcher, who plays Gatsby in the show, told Huffpost that the power of the book lies in its resistance to immediate interpretation. It’s about so many things, he said, to so many people.

“It’s ecstatic, it’s an ecstatic vision of America, New York City, and yet it’s a forward-looking kind of ecstasy,” he said. “That really, you still can’t, you can’t grab it.”

But you can reference it! In the past few years, the novel has been mentioned on the Showtime series, Californication, which dedicated an entire episode — The Great Ashby — to the book. On Entourage, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s favorite show*, Vincent Chase starred as Nick Carraway in a fictional adaptation of the book.

Hell, somebody even created a Nintendo game about the damn thing. You can play it right now by clicking on this sentence. Hurl your strange boomerang at waiters and other partygoers and collect coins as you walk through a glamorous mansion. Go ahead, it’s fun.

Certainly The Great Gatsby wasn’t an obscure book, by any means. It’s one of the most canonical pieces of literature of our time, after all. But it does say something that in the world of Toddlers and Tiaras and Transformers 17 and the upcoming Ouija Board movie, so much fuss and Hollywood money and creativity can still be poured into a classic, multi-layered novel written before the Great Depression.

So whether or not you think F. Scott Fitzgerald is turning over in his grave at the idea of his book being turned into a multimillion-dollar 3D Hollywood epic with a killer soundtrack, you might at least appreciate that it can be.

Perhaps another piece of classic literature will take the reins in the next few years. I call dibs on Anna Karenina: The Ride And Also Movie.

*Entourage is not F. Scott Fitzgerald’s favorite show. That I know of.

Follow Lucas Kavner on Twitter:

www.twitter.com/lucaskavner

Firm known for foreclosures and costume party settles

The agreement settles allegations that the Steven J. Baum Firm, one of the state’s largest-volume foreclosure companies, engaged in “robo-signing” and other paperwork shortcuts to process a huge number of foreclosure cases for clients including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, HSBC and Citibank, according to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office.

Schneiderman said his office has been investigating the suburban Buffalo firm since April 2011, months before the company drew withering public criticism over pictures from its 2010 Halloween party that were published in The New York Times.

• STORY: Watchdog questions spending at Fannie, Freddie

• STORY: Federal court freezes assets of 5 mortgage firms

They showed part of the office decorated to resemble a row of foreclosed homes. In one picture, a person had a sign around her neck that read: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served,” apparently mocking the explanation of some homeowners facing foreclosure. The Times said a former employee provided the pictures.

The firm’s president, Steven J. Baum, who was labeled as insensitive and held up by the Occupy movement as a symbol of corporate greed, later apologized. The firm announced in November that it would close.

Between 2007 and 2010, Baum attorneys filed more than 100,000 foreclosure actions, about 40% of all of those brought in New York courts. Examiners determined the firm prepared complaints in “assembly-line fashion,” enlisting the services of an affiliated document processing firm, Pillar Processing. Pillar, which Baum started, also is named in the settlement, along with Brian Kumiega, the Baum firm’s managing partner.

“The Baum firm cut corners in order to maximize the number of its foreclosure filings and its profits,” Schneiderman said. “This settlement demonstrates that my office will not allow New York homeowners to face the drastic consequence of foreclosure based upon inaccurate documents filed in court.”

Baum attorney Elkan Abramowitz said the firm is relieved by the settlement but disputed some of the state’s findings, including that attorneys were wrong to rely on representations of their clients, absent documented proof, that foreclosure proceedings were justified.

“A century of legal precedent states that an attorney is entitled to do just that,” Abramowitz said.

He said the settlement includes no admission of wrongdoing.

“It is important to emphasize,” Abramowitz said, “that after an exhaustive 10-month investigation, the attorney general’s office did not identify a single instance where a foreclosure proceeding was brought by the Baum firm where the homeowner wasn’t actually in default.”

The attorney general’s office said $2 million of the settlement funds will aid New York residents who are in or at risk of foreclosure. Under the agreement, Baum and Kumiega agreed to not represent lenders or servicers in new foreclosure cases for two years.

Baum’s foreclosure practices also fell under intense federal scrutiny last year, culminating in November when Fannie Mae joined Freddie Mac in barring the firm from receiving new referrals from the federally backed mortgage giants. The firm and Pillar announced soon after they would close.

Following an investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in New York City, Baum agreed in October to pay $2 million and change its practices after admitting to errors in legal filings that it blamed on the high volume of mortgage defaults and foreclosures it handles.

NY Firm That Had Foreclosure Costume Party Settles

A New York law firm that was harshly criticized after pictures surfaced from a company Halloween party where people dressed as homeless has agreed to pay $4 million in a settlement with the state over some of the tens of thousands of foreclosures it filed, attorneys said Thursday.

The agreement settles allegations that the Steven J. Baum Firm, one of the state’s largest-volume foreclosure companies, engaged in “robo-signing” and other paperwork shortcuts to process a huge number of foreclosure cases for clients including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, HSBC and Citibank, according to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office.

Schneiderman said his office has been investigating the suburban Buffalo firm since April 2011, months before the company drew withering public criticism over pictures from its 2010 Halloween party that were published in The New York Times.

They showed part of the office decorated to resemble a row of foreclosed homes. In one picture, a person had a sign around her neck that read: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served,” apparently mocking the explanation of some homeowners facing foreclosure. The Times said a former employee provided the pictures.

The firm’s president, Steven J. Baum, who was labeled as insensitive and held up by the Occupy movement as a symbol of corporate greed, later apologized. The firm announced in November that it would close.

Between 2007 and 2010, Baum attorneys filed more than 100,000 foreclosure actions, about 40 percent of all of those brought in New York courts. Examiners determined the firm prepared complaints in “assembly-line fashion,” enlisting the services of an affiliated document processing firm, Pillar Processing Inc. Pillar, which Baum started, also is named in the settlement, along with Brian Kumiega, the Baum firm’s managing partner.

“The Baum firm cut corners in order to maximize the number of its foreclosure filings and its profits,” Schneiderman said. “This settlement demonstrates that my office will not allow New York homeowners to face the drastic consequence of foreclosure based upon inaccurate documents filed in court.”

Baum attorney Elkan Abramowitz said the firm is relieved by the settlement but disputed some of the state’s findings, including that attorneys were wrong to rely on representations of their clients, absent documented proof, that foreclosure proceedings were justified.

“A century of legal precedent states that an attorney is entitled to do just that,” Abramowitz said.

He said the settlement includes no admission of wrongdoing.

“It is important to emphasize,” Abramowitz said, “that after an exhaustive 10-month investigation, the attorney general’s office did not identify a single instance where a foreclosure proceeding was brought by the Baum firm where the homeowner wasn’t actually in default.”

The attorney general’s office said $2 million of the settlement funds will aid New York residents who are in or at risk of foreclosure. Under the agreement, Baum and Kumiega agreed to not represent lenders or servicers in new foreclosure cases for two years.

Baum’s foreclosure practices also fell under intense federal scrutiny last year, culminating in November when Fannie Mae joined Freddie Mac in barring the firm from receiving new referrals from the federally backed mortgage giants. The firm and Pillar announced soon after they would close.

Following an investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in New York City, Baum agreed in October to pay $2 million and change its practices after admitting to errors in legal filings that it blamed on the high volume of mortgage defaults and foreclosures it handles.

NY Foreclosure “Costume Party” Firm Settles for $4M

A New York law firm at the center of a foreclosure controversy has agreed to a settlement with state prosecutors.

Steven J. Baum PC drew widespread criticism after the New York Times published photos of a firm Halloween party during which employees decorated the office with tents, tarps and cardboard signs while dressed as homeless people.

The Baum Firm, based in suburban Buffalo, was the largest foreclosure defense firm in New York.  It handled cases for all the major banks but Attorney General Eric Schneiderman accused the firm of using deceptive practices, including so-called robo-signing.

“The Baum Firm cut corners in order to maximize the number of its foreclosure filings and its profits,” Schneiderman said.

The firm admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to pay four million dollars in what the attorney general’s office said was the largest foreclosure law firm settlement in the nation.

“For too long foreclosure law firms like Steven J. Baum PC have wreaked havoc on homeowners,” said Elizabeth Lynch of MFY Legal Services, which represents homeowners who may have been improperly foreclosed upon.

Investigators said the Baum Firm routinely brought foreclosure cases without verifying the bank it represented actually owned the mortgage.  Prosecutors described “an assembly-line” in which attorneys signed documents prepared by a processing firm without reviewing their contents.

Steven J. Baum PC shut down in November after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced the firm was no longer eligible to handle foreclosures.  Baum himself and managing partner Brian Kumiega must pay the four million dollars in settlement money themselves

NY firm that had foreclosure costume party settles

By CAROLYN THOMPSON

BUFFALO, N.Y.

A New York law firm that was harshly criticized after pictures surfaced from a company Halloween party where people dressed as homeless has agreed to pay $4 million in a settlement with the state over some of the tens of thousands of foreclosures it filed, attorneys said Thursday.

The agreement settles allegations that the Steven J. Baum Firm, one of the state’s largest-volume foreclosure companies, engaged in “robo-signing” and other paperwork shortcuts to process a huge number of foreclosure cases for clients including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, HSBC and Citibank, according to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office.

Schneiderman said his office has been investigating the suburban Buffalo firm since April 2011, months before the company drew withering public criticism over pictures from its 2010 Halloween party that were published in The New York Times.

They showed part of the office decorated to resemble a row of foreclosed homes. In one picture, a person had a sign around her neck that read: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served,” apparently mocking the explanation of some homeowners facing foreclosure. The Times said a former employee provided the pictures.

The firm’s president, Steven J. Baum, who was labeled as insensitive and held up by the Occupy movement as a symbol of corporate greed, later apologized. The firm announced in November that it would close.

Between 2007 and 2010, Baum attorneys filed more than 100,000 foreclosure actions, about 40 percent of all of those brought in New York courts. Examiners determined the firm prepared complaints in “assembly-line fashion,” enlisting the services of an affiliated document processing firm, Pillar Processing Inc. Pillar, which Baum started, also is named in the settlement, along with Brian Kumiega, the Baum firm’s managing partner.

“The Baum firm cut corners in order to maximize the number of its foreclosure filings and its profits,” Schneiderman said. “This settlement demonstrates that my office will not allow New York homeowners to face the drastic consequence of foreclosure based upon inaccurate documents filed in court.”

Baum attorney Elkan Abramowitz said the firm is relieved by the settlement but disputed some of the state’s findings, including that attorneys were wrong to rely on representations of their clients, absent documented proof, that foreclosure proceedings were justified.

“A century of legal precedent states that an attorney is entitled to do just that,” Abramowitz said.

He said the settlement includes no admission of wrongdoing.

“It is important to emphasize,” Abramowitz said, “that after an exhaustive 10-month investigation, the attorney general’s office did not identify a single instance where a foreclosure proceeding was brought by the Baum firm where the homeowner wasn’t actually in default.”

The attorney general’s office said $2 million of the settlement funds will aid New York residents who are in or at risk of foreclosure. Under the agreement, Baum and Kumiega agreed to not represent lenders or servicers in new foreclosure cases for two years.

Baum’s foreclosure practices also fell under intense federal scrutiny last year, culminating in November when Fannie Mae joined Freddie Mac in barring the firm from receiving new referrals from the federally backed mortgage giants. The firm and Pillar announced soon after they would close.

Following an investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in New York City, Baum agreed in October to pay $2 million and change its practices after admitting to errors in legal filings that it blamed on the high volume of mortgage defaults and foreclosures it handles.

NY firm that had foreclosure costume party settles

By CAROLYN THOMPSON, Associated Press
–
58 minutes ago 

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — A New York law firm that was harshly criticized after pictures surfaced from a company Halloween party where people dressed as homeless has agreed to pay $4 million in a settlement with the state over some of the tens of thousands of foreclosures it filed, attorneys said Thursday.

The agreement settles allegations that the Steven J. Baum Firm, one of the state’s largest-volume foreclosure companies, engaged in “robo-signing” and other paperwork shortcuts to process a huge number of foreclosure cases for clients including Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, HSBC and Citibank, according to Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office.

Schneiderman said his office has been investigating the suburban Buffalo firm since April 2011, months before the company drew withering public criticism over pictures from its 2010 Halloween party that were published in The New York Times.

They showed part of the office decorated to resemble a row of foreclosed homes. In one picture, a person had a sign around her neck that read: “3rd party squatter. I lost my home and I was never served,” apparently mocking the explanation of some homeowners facing foreclosure. The Times said a former employee provided the pictures.

The firm’s president, Steven J. Baum, who was labeled as insensitive and held up by the Occupy movement as a symbol of corporate greed, later apologized. The firm announced in November that it would close.

Between 2007 and 2010, Baum attorneys filed more than 100,000 foreclosure actions, about 40 percent of all of those brought in New York courts. Examiners determined the firm prepared complaints in “assembly-line fashion,” enlisting the services of an affiliated document processing firm, Pillar Processing Inc. Pillar, which Baum started, also is named in the settlement, along with Brian Kumiega, the Baum firm’s managing partner.

“The Baum firm cut corners in order to maximize the number of its foreclosure filings and its profits,” Schneiderman said. “This settlement demonstrates that my office will not allow New York homeowners to face the drastic consequence of foreclosure based upon inaccurate documents filed in court.”

Baum attorney Elkan Abramowitz said the firm is relieved by the settlement but disputed some of the state’s findings, including that attorneys were wrong to rely on representations of their clients, absent documented proof, that foreclosure proceedings were justified.

“A century of legal precedent states that an attorney is entitled to do just that,” Abramowitz said.

He said the settlement includes no admission of wrongdoing.

“It is important to emphasize,” Abramowitz said, “that after an exhaustive 10-month investigation, the attorney general’s office did not identify a single instance where a foreclosure proceeding was brought by the Baum firm where the homeowner wasn’t actually in default.”

The attorney general’s office said $2 million of the settlement funds will aid New York residents who are in or at risk of foreclosure. Under the agreement, Baum and Kumiega agreed to not represent lenders or servicers in new foreclosure cases for two years.

Baum’s foreclosure practices also fell under intense federal scrutiny last year, culminating in November when Fannie Mae joined Freddie Mac in barring the firm from receiving new referrals from the federally backed mortgage giants. The firm and Pillar announced soon after they would close.

Following an investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office in New York City, Baum agreed in October to pay $2 million and change its practices after admitting to errors in legal filings that it blamed on the high volume of mortgage defaults and foreclosures it handles.

Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

In Depp doo-doo

Alice-in-Wonderland-gate continued brewing yesterday as the Obama administration was beset with questions over a report that officials kept secret a lavish, star-studded White House costume party hosted by Johnny Depp during the depths of the recession.

That pricey party (pictured) and revelations of nasty bickering over Michelle Obama, both of which are exposed in the new book “The Obamas,” forced administration officials to try to spin the furor as a tempest in a teapot.

“The Obamas,” by New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor, disclosed that during President Obama’s first Halloween party, in 2009, the White House’s State Dining Room had been transformed into a fairy-tale set designed by director Tim Burton in the style of his movie “Alice in Wonderland.”

Depp, decked out in his Mad Hatter costume from the film, welcomed the guests.

“White House officials were so nervous about how a splashy, Hollywood-esque party would look to jobless Americans . . . that the event was not discussed publicly and Burton’s and Depp’s contributions went unacknowledged,” the book says.

White House spokesman Jay Carney rhetorically asked, “If it was a secret, why did we invite the press in? Why was there a pool report? Why were there contemporaneous photographs?”

But when a White House reporter retorted that there “was no pool report . . . about Johnny Depp being there,” Carney backtracked.

“This wasn’t a publicity event for the outside. This was an event for military children and their families inside the White House, where the press came, photographs were taken,” Carney replied. “It was contemporaneously known who was there.

“There are outlets that have reported this as a ‘secret’ party, which is just silly. And it’s irresponsible reporting to suggest that, that you would have a pool report and the press at an event that’s secret, and have it attended by hundreds if not thousands of people.”

But just as Carney was forced to respond to the book, Obama’s former spokesman Robert Gibbs was compelled to address its claim that he told Kantor he no longer took presidential senior adviser Valerie Jarrett seriously after a blow-up between the two.

Gibbs had reportedly cursed at Jarrett and said “F–k her, too” — referring to Michelle Obama — after Jarrett claimed the first lady was unhappy about his handling of a report that she considered living in the White House to be “hell.”

“In any high-pressure work environment there are occasional arguments and disagreements and that is certainly true of the White House,” Gibbs said yesterday.

geoff.earle@nypost.com