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Jared Leto at the Heaven by Marc Jacobs party.
Photo: Lexie Moreland/WWD via Getty Images
I’m not going to pretend I’m a grizzled veteran of Fashion Week, tired of it all, even as I keel over every time I stand by the door in a bunch of commoners plus one trying to get into a branded party I know. . for a fact for which I am on the list. But then again, that’s what New York Fashion Week is all about: be in or be out, even if it seems like this biannual show, or at least the open-bar parties that go along with it, are lacking in the high stakes of late. , the messy glamor it once had (not that I was here back then, but still…remember when Cardi B threw a shoe at Nicki?).
Sure, Grace Jones showed up this season looking as fabulous as ever, but she was just announcing a new…Boy Smells candle at the Public Hotel. Meanwhile, the Harper’s Bazaar Icons party, formerly at the gilded Plaza Hotel, has moved to Bloomingdale’s (“No icons, no stars, just little TikTok boppers,” a publicist who was there complained); Vogue celebrated in the ever-used Boom Boom Room at the Standard; Saks had a party at L’Avenue, which of course is above Saks; and both Opening Ceremony and Interview left Manhattan for the club: Schimanskis in Williamsburg and Today in Ridgewood, respectively. There was also a series of dinners in Indochine so mostly more of the same brilliant. Less familiar party spots: Gracie Mansion (hosted by the mayor); the Ned, which is apparently a new members-only club in Nomad (GQ); and old Butter, recently revived as Jean’s (J. Crew.), yet to open.
Standing on the pleasant rooftop of the newly opened “Dimes Square hotel”, Nine Orchard, on Saturday night for the Givenchy party, I could feel the ghosts of fashion week parties to come. The evening was dazzling and marked, the crowd ready to be captured by Cobrasnake while sipping on pre-mixed martinis. Even the ice cubes were embossed with the Givenchy logo (“We’ve got boxes and boxes of these. Want to take one home?” the bartender joked), and a really huge, glittery 3-D logo was placed on the side. The hotel’s 60-foot pergola, which served as a dramatic, misty backdrop for influencers waiting in line to take (and possibly get paid to post?) photographs. Security guards kept busy putting out cigarettes and taking cocktail glasses from the edge of the roof. Still, at least one ever-too-naughty fashion editor was really letting loose. “I’m into Givenchy coke. It’s not a normal coke”, he told me. Unfortunately, she did not share.
If anything has caught the attention of the rest of the world this season, it’s been Tommy Hilfiger’s rainy, celebrity-studded show at Greenpoint, Fendi’s 25th anniversary for its Baguette bag, starring half of the Big Six, and Vogue’s expensive ticketed “World” event. at Meatpacking last night, all but parties or parades and more SEO stunts. And so did the Marc Jacobs party at Elsewhere, a multi-venue concrete club on the border of Bushwick and East Williamsburg, where I headed after Givenchy. It was without a doubt the party of the weekend, taking the place of the canceled Alexander Wang games of previous years. Tellingly, with Marc displaced from his traditional pre-COVID final post for NYFW by CFDA President Tom Ford, it was held in honor of his “polysexual” youth clothing line, Heaven.
And of course getting in was hell. It was just after midnight when I arrived, and outside one of the many door guys was yelling at some party kids fighting for their QR codes: “If you know someone from the Marc Jacobs team, you can try to get them to walk you inside.” . !” For the rest, the club was at its maximum (1,375). Then, to a group of people leaving and returning, he delivered a metaphorical slap in the face of fashion: “You could try going to the House of Yes.” Although Elsewhere is more often used for queer dance parties than drunken social climbing, tonight it played host to Doja Cat and Charli XCX; So for what it’s worth, it wasn’t a queer dance party.
“I think people here are trying to look cool enough to get in, but I don’t think it’s going to work,” said one knitwear designer, abandoning her efforts after 40 minutes. Two fashion students who won competitions at their schools to attend Fashion Week told me they had been waiting for more than two hours, having been invited by a chiseled male model and subsequently ghosts. If anyone was profiting from the confusion, it was the halal cars parked on the street. “What kind of protein do you have? I’m so hungry,” asked a pretty person, ready to sacrifice her dress for the sauce.
By then, a pink-haired Madonna in a baby-blue fur coat had arrived, and a few minutes after 1 a.m., Jared Leto walked by, waving to the crowd like a baby-kissing politician and tossing out empty promises: Everybody! to this place! We’re all going in! You should be there! They all look great!” Bitch.
A few minutes later, Marc himself came out of the building, telling a handsome onlooker on the sidewalk, “I have to go!” before placing his suit jacket carefully in the trunk of a Mercedes and being ushered out.
I finally slipped through a crack in the metal barriers around 1:30am and happened to meet a friendly face at the gate, who let me in. It was certainly a scene, with TikTok stars, porn stars, politicians, people in the industry, and a few familiar faces making you sniff around, wondering: How the hell did they get in here? By then, however, Doja and Charli’s sets were over and most of the guests seemed to be making their way out. According to some club kids I know who took mushrooms to survive waiting in line, the show was worth it. Charli played just two songs, and while one told me Doja’s set was “so iconic I almost cried,” the others grumbled that she was drunk and “spiraling” in real time onstage. “It was like seeing a train wreck,” said a doll wearing latex gloves. A woman in a hunter green mesh top was even less enthusiastic in her review, complaining that the people inside were too shy and, well, too “fashionable” to party and dance. Also, the drink was not free.
Is New York back, as one publicist excitedly told me earlier this evening? Or has he lost the magic of it? “Everybody has access to everything,” complained a well-hydrated partygoer who couldn’t get in. Or maybe TikTok is to blame: “It doesn’t feel as exclusive anymore as it used to. It looks very normal.” It may be so. At the very least, he was grateful to be home before three, well drunk and not feeling too FOMO. I missed Doja, but that’s what my Uber driver was playing anyway.
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