Someone's got that make-out glow!
We can't think of a more fitting scene for the last night of Fashion Week parties than watching a gay in sunglasses whipping his best girl with a leather jacket on the dance floor of a grungy loft. With most of the shows over, designers and models were positively ebullient Thursday night, and the parties were by far the happiest and danciest of the week.
Our travels took us straight from Zac Posen to the Wool and the Gang dinner at a cool new space on Bond Street called the Smile, a mixed-use concept-store-and-cafe by Earnest Sewn's Carlos Quirarte and Matt Kliegman opening on March 6. There we spotted Kirsten Dunst, Barneys fashion director Julie Gilhart, and the Shipley & Halmos boys, but were far more interested in the hors d'oeuvre, which were provided by the Smile's in-house chef, Melia Marden (daughter of Bryce), and included mini-lamb-burgers, sandwiches made of Manouri cheese, fig preserve, pear, and truffle oil, and a cheese bar with jars of homemade pickles. The drinks, made with St. Germain, the elderflower liqueur from the French Alps, were among the best we've ever tasted in our many years of party-hopping. Michael Stipe later told us that he'd found the party crowded and annoying but found himself unable to leave because the drinks were so good.
Next it was on to the Wool and the Gang after-party at the Bowery Hotel, which started out promisingly enough with a D.J. set from Matt Creed, Beatrice Inn's house D.J., that included the Cure, Velvet Underground, and Dolly Parton. The Wool and the Gang girls (co-founders Lisa Sabrier and Carolyn Main, and Nadège Winter, who does styling) and Ellen von Unwerth were having a hilarious, very French dance-off, which we sidled up to only to find ourselves bouncing around next to Mary-Kate Olsen as she made out with her new boyfriend, artist Nate Lowman, who, by the way, really needs to give Carlos D his haircut back.
Also spotted: Shalom Harlow, contemplating rushing the men's room since the line to the women's restroom was taking forever. We're not ashamed to say that seeing her look positively bookish in glasses and a Harry Potter scarf kind of made up for being surrounded by rail-thin 15-year-old glamazons all week. The room was starting to get packed around midnight, but that was also around the time they decided to cut the fun dance music in favor of a musical performance by some retro emo band named Chief. We made our exit, but not before laying eyes on our best fashion moment of the week: a woman in Working Girl pumps, one white, one black.
Our final stop of the night was at Radar Entertainment's loft party to celebrate the second issue of The Last Magazine. Natasha Poly was the official host, but we would have needed to bring a periscope to find her amid all the smoke and tall, bony blondes. The party was being held at a photo studio in the kind of grungy converted industrial building that will never have properly functioning plumbing. This was confirmed when we walked up to the second floor immediately following Vladamir Roitfeld and were met with a waterfall of water coming down the stairs. There was no way to not get hit with stray drops, so we followed Roitfeld's lead and just ran through the torrent, praying it wasn't coming from an overflowed bathroom. (No such luck.)
The first person we saw at the top of the stairs was Michael Stipe. "What was that?" we asked him. "That? That was the best part of the party," he replied. "Good luck in there." It turns out we have a different idea of fun than Stipe does, though, because the second we got inside we ran into Phillip Lim and Richard Chai, drinking some well-deserved post-show beers, and Alexander Wang, whose adorable jumping-around to "Like a Prayer" with Zoe Kravitz has forever cemented him as the designer we'd most like to make our friend.
