Team Partycrash: aRude Party at Diane von Furstenberg's Studio

For our ongoing examination of how the other 1/10th lives, photographer Eliot Shepard and Staff Drinker Andrew Krucoff weaseled their way into designer Diane von Furstenberg's studio the other night for a party in honor of a magazine we'd never heard of — aRude, published by the conceptual photographer Ike Ude.

Celebrating the international magazine's "CHARMED issue" were a host of artists, models, photographers, eccentric society types, and gays. Lots of 'em. Just another party at the DVF Studio, right? We had the over-exposed and Style-section-often-photographed man about town Patrick McDonald in the house showing off his Sinatra pork-pie hat. Can we be frank, Frank? Time for a new look! Publisher (and friend of/fellow dandy with Patrick) Ike Ude can pull off the whole "frowning and looking imperious" in his white suit and fucked-up hair. I thought his disdain for me would result in puke on my face when we briefly chatted. Charmed, I'm sure. Then I saw a WHITE man in a white suit and *I* nearly puked. We almost had a full-scale epidemic in our hands — and on the floor.

The rumor that Martha Stewart was making an appearance died in the pan (along with a fistful of the biggest jumbo shrimp I've ever seen in my life) but a guy named Eliot Jordan was there and he sells castles. He was carrying around a printout of this photo He also sells townhouses. As for the rest of the people, it was a who's who of "who? who?" but damn if that isn't a younger, transgendered Donatella Versace in one of the photos.

For a magazine focused on "style, art, fashion, culture, scenes and beyond" it was all there, especially the beyond part. We left a trail of shrimp shells (and apparently a cigarette in DVF's handprints on the sidewalk out front) behind us and made our own after-party at Welcome to the Johnson's where we clutched PBR's with the last remaining bits of our dignity.