Team Party Crash: DKNY Jeans Directors Label Launch
Did the Alanis quadruplets in the "Ironic" video give you night terrors for much of 1995? Blame this guy.
"What better way to kick off fash week than with a celeb-filled party with supermodel Helena Christensen on the decks?" Fashion Week Daily wondered yesterday. There is no better way, of course. Except that Helena was off the schedule before the party even started. Last night's DKNY Jeans Directors Label Launch bash, celebrating the launch of four more Directors Label DVDs — music-video auteurs Mark Romanek, Anton Corbijn, Stephane Sednaoui, and Jonathan Glazer joined previous honorees Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and Chris Cunningham — lured us in with glittering promises of VIPs galore. So we jammed mysterious staff photog Nikola Tamindzic and Mediabistro refugee and new Gawker correspondent Jill Singer into a taxi and sent them off. After the jump, they find lots of A-list no-shows and dig through the B-list detritus.
[You can view Nikola's complete gallery here.]
We pull up to a warehouse space near the West Side Highway a little past 10 p.m. A crowd is gathered around the door, and there's a guy outside wearing a t-shirt that says "Protect Yourself from Hollywood." No need for that tonight, sir, but thanks. The paparazzi staking out the entrance fail to recognize how glamorous we are, so we sail unassaulted into the party to the rockin' beats of... Billy Joel. Really. Replacement DJ Questlove from the Roots is up in a loft, overlooking the proceedings, spinning the highly underrated "Stiletto." This is later followed by Michael McDonald's "I Keep Forgettin'" — equally ballsy! — but Questlove eventually depletes his cred by playing a song by the Roots. Dude! Isn't that some unwritten law of the DJ? It's like when Chris Martin walked in to The Spotted Pig and they started playing Coldplay. Lame.
We'd been promised Marc Jacobs! Liv Tyler! Drew and Fab! Dreamy Peter Sarsgaard! Adam Duritz! But we quickly realize that barely any of the A-listers made good on their RSVPs. We should have known better: Between the Fashion Rocks fashion week kick-off at Radio City and the season premiere of The O.C., the city's celebrity elite were clearly spread too thin. It's gonna be a long night.
At least Adam Duritz showed up.
It's a shame Michel Gondry can't permanently remove our memories of this party. Just kidding!
We're nominating pseudonymous blogger Perez Hilton to play the role of Bret Easton Ellis in the film adaptation of Lunar Park. Clearly they share an adorable, youthful insouciance. And a general "Fuck off, I'm going to do some coke in the bathroom" vibe.
We didn't know Gene Simmons would be here.
Damon Albarn from Blur winks at us, but not from the crowd, of course. There's a giant split screen on the wall playing each of the directors' videos on rotation. We'll admit we didn't know a couple of these directors by name without extensive Googling, but we knew the work. The "Heart-Shaped Box" video with the strung-up fetuses? Corbijn. The sliding furniture and dorky ski hat in Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity"? Glazer. The Red Hot Chili Peppers boys all slathered up in silver paint is Sednaoui, and Fiona in her rec-room undies is vintage Romanek. Frankly, all of them are so astoundingly awesome, we can't in good faith mock them. Thank God the same can't be said for their partygoers.
This guy, we're told, is "the Tom Cruise of Greece." What does that even mean? Does he know the history of psychiatry? Is he a closeted shipping magnate? Does he have an uncontrollable urge to jump on ottomans?
We're so not surprised this is they guy behind L.A.'s The Cobrasnake. Tale of Two Cities, take it away.
Career socialite Fabian Basabe, fresh off his appearance on Oprah, canoodles.
It's 11, and the most famous person we've seen so far is Hollywould's Holly Dunlap, who's never far from an open bar. Model types are milling around, flaunting goodie bags from the James Perse launch party earlier this evening. There's a rumor that Chris Rock is here, but we haven't seen him. (Which is probably best. Last time we saw Chris Rock, he was glowering at us for accidentally stomping on his wife's foot; we cringed as we imagined becoming part of some white girls can't even walk straight! bit in his next act.) We run into WWD's Jeff Bercovici and Jacob Bernstein with a girl from W. They're going to the Fashion Rocks afterparty at the Rainbow Room, which sounds a lot better than being chatted up by wannabe dudes with man cleavage and earrings. But we soldier on.
"We're holding a private screening for Dick Cheney!" F-Word producer Tanya Selvaratnam whispers to uber-stylist Maripol.
"Do the interns get glocks?" We barely recognized Life Aquatic's Vikram without his red turban!
The video screens seem to have the whole party in thrall, which isn't making for the most fascinating conversation, and the light from the screens is making the space feel like a high-school gymnasium. People who do show up are quickly leaving. We run into Bravo's newest reality star in the making, Hud Morgan, but it's impossible to penetrate the preppy coterie that surrounds him, and he's soon out the door. Page Sixer Chris Wilson, apparently wanting to avoid further confrontation with us, looks frightened, and scurries away. We spy James Iha from the Smashing Pumpkins, but we're unimpressed. Saying you saw James Iha at a party is like saying "I brushed my teeth today."
We never thought we'd write this sentence but: Hud Morgan shows us his guns.
A guy in a D.A.R.E. t-shirt is doing the hand jive. A girl trying to press through the crowd is doing the robot. Cinematographer Christopher Doyle is there and he's formed a makeshift dance floor around him. "He kept pulling this girl's skirt up!" the guy next to us yells. We chat with Mark Romanek, who is single-handedly trying to save America from the digital revolution. He's got a bag full of CDs from Other Music — how quaint! — and he's spent his Jay-Z royalties on a Bjork/Matthew Barney collab (no, he didn't buy their baby) and Brazilian pop. "I'm kinda shell-shocked," he admits. "I don't go out much." Buddy, you don't even know. If this is a crazy party for you, we advise you to stay inside this weekend.
"Hey y'all, see you at the Sean John show, lates!"
Our old friend the gypsy lover has started his own jewelry line!
At around midnight, the models got very, very hungry.
Turns out even this party has an afterparty, so half of us head down to La Esquina, the now totally unsecret underground hotspot, and half of us head home, having snagged three of the four DVDs they're giving out in place of goodie bags. We may not have gotten the celebrity love tonight, but we've got Adam Brody waiting for us on the TiVo, which is all the love we need in this world. We're out!
