Optimism was the sentiment pulsing through the new crop of Americans in Paris designers who were being celebrated at a cocktail Friday night.
“It’s a mix of designers at the beginning of their journey, and their opportunity is not defined by the way things have been done for so many years, but more by what they can do,” said CFDA President and CEO Steven Kolb, who co-hosted the party with Gigi Hadid and Vogue’s Selby Drummond. “They’re not beholden to traditional business models. It’s a new day and there is optimism around that.”
Said Americans – 2016 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Funders Laura Vassar Brock and Kristopher Brock of Brock Collection, Adam Selman, Krewe’s Stirling Barrett, Ji Oh, Area’s Beckett Fogg and Piotrek Panszczyk, Morgan Curtis of Morgan Lane, Chloe Gosselin, NewbarK’s Maryam and Marjan Malakpour, and Rochambeau’s Laurence Chandler and Joshua Cooper – descended on Le 1728 restaurant, a very pre-American Revolution venue.
They were joined by CVFF and Americans in Paris alums Chris Gelinas, Jonathan Simkhai, Ryan Roche, Aurora James, Becca McCharen-Tran, and Public Schools’ Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow, along with Anna Wintour, Hailey Baldwin, Emily Ratajkowski, Carolyn Murphy, Winnie Harlow, Trish Goff, Mara Hoffman, and Christian Siriano. Guests indulged on Parisian delights such as smoked salmon, caviar, to-die-for canapes, and, of course, plenty of champagne.
Hadid, who arrived on the arm of her beau Zayn Malik, thanked her “fashion fairy godmothers” such as Diane von Furstenberg. The California native fondly recalled the CVFF Vogue shoot with a different song for each designer to “make it their own mood.” After celebrating her fellow Americans, she planned to call it a night because “the sleep schedule is key” to surviving the pace of shows.
Gigi may be the photographer favorite, but Selman called CFDA Chairwoman von Furstenberg “the most popular girl in the room” — although he was pretty popular himself. Hadid, Drummond and model Anja Rubik all wore his designs on this occasion. “I love the fact he is so playful with clothes,” Rubik said. “He doesn’t take it that seriously.” Her floral-print shirt dress featuring motifs of naked women hidden between the flowers perfectly made that point.
This season, the Americans in Paris showcase is staged in an apartment at 29 Rue Du Faubourg Saint-Honoree, once the home of Coco Chanel. NewbarK’s Maryam and Marjan Malakpour were giddy about showing at the fabled apartment where, according to Chloe Gosselin, “even the bathrooms are nice.” Donna Karan, who attended this party for the first time, likened her own interior to that of Chanel – “a Great Dane statute, a Coromandel screen and a Vicuna suede sofa and I thought ‘this is weird’.” Impressed with the energy of the room and crowd, Karan told longtime design partner Jane Chung that she would kick the weekend off with a trip to the famed space – and, more importantly, to check out Americans in Paris.
