Fashion weeks: the parties
Jing Zhang and Francesca Fearon
For some, fashion week is all about the parties. Come evening and the well-heeled start guzzling champagne and letting their hair down, and this season several events stand out.
"There's enough facelifts in here to raise up the Titanic," quips one British journalist at Elie Saab's couture exhibition and cocktail party. She has a point. The designer, popular with wealthy Middle Eastern couture clients, attracts a whole host of them to the swankiest party of Paris Fashion Week. His exhibition at the Four Seasons Hotel George V has floral artwork intertwining with Elie Saab haute couture.
Carine Roitfeld's party in Paris is always a star-studded affair. Rubbing shoulders with the likes of Mario Testino, Cara Delevingne, Miranda Kerr and Katy Perry, crowds flock to the premiere of Mademoiselle C, a documentary about Roitfeld's post-French Vogue career. The screening is followed by a party at Pavillon Ledoyen that lasts into the early hours. The first, and long overdue, retrospective of Azzedine Alaia, curated by fashion historian Olivier Saillard, is unveiled at the Palais Galliera. A few days later Saillard opens a Roger Vivier exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in collaboration with in-house designer Bruno Frisoni. How to tell a Frisoni heel from an original Vivier? Frisoni's are higher!
These events are more civilised affairs compared with the Balenciaga shindig, where Alexander Wang brings some young New York attitude to the French label and singer M.I.A gives a blazing performance.
The fung shui bodes well for Bottega Veneta's first maison, which opens in Milan's Via Sant'Andrea during fashion week. The large, airy space, filled with party-goers for the opening, is bathed with natural light and has a small fountain in-store and another in the pretty garden at the back. The money should pour in.
We almost trip over French screen goddess Catherine Deneuve in the dark at Fendi's cocktail party: in celebration of its "Making Dreams: Fendi and the Cinema" exhibition, which might come to Hong Kong. Fendi has made furs for all the great Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini films, as well as for James Bond.