Farfetch and Assouline launched their new curatorial alliance last night with a dinner at Charlotte Stockdale and Marc Newson’s apartment, aka an awe-inspiring temple of contemporary design. As if to prove the point about the umbilical relationship between fashion and food made by Farfetch Curates: Food, the first book in the collaboration (Design and Art to follow), the Asian fusion menu was designed and produced by Jonathan Saunders. His was a tour de force performance, not only cooking flawlessly for 28 guests, but also remaining remarkably unfazed in his chef’s whites while those guests were busily swarming around him in the kitchen.
Farfetch founder José Neves’ fellow diners included Katie Grand and Steve Mackey, Poppy Delevingne, Nicholas Kirkwood, Bella Freud, Tati Cotliar, Patrick Cox, Lulu Kennedy, Luella Bartley, and Leandra Medine (who appears in the book, as does Saunders). This was the first time Anna Sui, in the U.K. for speaking engagements at Central Saint Martins and the Bath in Fashion festival, had met Saunders. She instantly fell under his spell. Any man who cooks—and looks—this good is pretty darn irresistible, after all. And kudos to the theatrics at the end of the meal, when the waiters ringingly hammered giant slabs of chocolate into bite-sized smithereens.
The Farfetch dinner wasn’t the only action in town. Over on Mount Street, nestled among the Balenciaga, Marc Jacobs, and Céline boutiques, Christopher Kane was celebrating his first-ever store. The shop was designed by the architect John Pawson, who has previously put his minimalist aesthetic to a Czech monastery, an Italian yacht, and the Calvin Klein boutique on Madison Avenue. “It really is a pinch-yourself moment,” Kane told Style.com. “We’ve worked our guts out to get to this point. Working with Pawson was a dream situation; he’s very charismatic and a true perfectionist. I don’t think people expected it of me, but I wanted something that would be classic today, but also classic in five years’ time.” The pristine two-level space’s only downside? “When people come in with wet feet,” Kane explained, “I wish they’d take their shoes off.”
A dinner at the Phillips gallery followed the opening party.
—Tim Blanks and Mhairi Graham, Style.com
