At last night’s opening of the Jeanne Lanvin retrospective at the Palais Galliera, the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, sent a strong message about la mode, pledging 60 million euros to support French fashion designers and artisans—including a special commitment to giving the fashion museum’s curator, Olivier Saillard, more space to maneuver, financially and literally. It turns out that the current usable space in the neo-Renaissance museum is only half the story, and Saillard, standing nearby, drew a ripple of laughter as he pretended to grab a shovel and start breaking new ground.
Inside the packed exhibition, designer Alber Elbaz and co-host Nadja Swarovski welcomed a starry crowd including three generations of Missonis (or four, if you count Margherita Missoni Amos’ second child, due in a couple of months), Diane von Furstenberg, Azzedine Alaïa, Donna Karan, and Rick Owens. “People have been telling me over and over again how they would love to wear some of these dresses now, 100 years later,” offered Saillard. “Maybe that speaks to where fashion is heading, toward more simplicity and things that you hold on to forever—like we do with design.”
From there, many headed up the street to the after-party in the gilded first-floor salons of the Shangri-La Hotel. “The thing about dreams is that sometimes you can’t attain them,” offered Elbaz. “Tonight, I think we actually surpassed the dream.”
Waiters sporting Swarovski-studded Lanvin bow ties kept the drinks flowing for a glittery crowd. Carine Roitfeld, Valentino designers Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli, Kelly Rowland, Jeremy Scott, Edie Campbell, and Jamie Bochert all flocked to congratulate Elbaz despite, in Bochert’s case, having been up since her 5 a.m. call for Loewe. By the time Jared Leto showed up, Stefan Filey had heated things up enough that Catherine Baba was floating through a flapper moment on the dance floor under the watchful eye of a (stuffed) white peacock dressed, fittingly, in a teal bow tie.
It was far from the only ticket in town amidst a brimming social calendar, though. A cadre of industry-types (Sarah Rutson, Ken Downing, and Lisa Marie Fernandez among them) flocked to private digs for Eddie Borgo’s cozy dinner. And over at the Galerie Perrotin at the joint Terry Richardson-Xavier Veilhan opening, everyone from Catherine McNeil and Lindsey Wixson to Duffy turned out to see (and be seen posing with) the old-school novelty cutouts of Richardson’s latest show, The Sacred and the Profane. Whatever the critics will say, among the Instagram-oriented, it’s a sure hit.
—Tina Isaac-Goizé, Style.com
