“Can you believe this is … temporary?” squealed the gorgeously vampiric socialite Jill Kargman — a person with fashionista bona fides: Her father ran Chanel for years — the first person I ran into at the grand-opening party for the new Louis Vuitton store on 57th Street just off Fifth Avenue last night. “It’s batshit!”
It was November 14, nine days after the election with its truly batshit implications now coming to light (Matt Gaetz, etc.), and we’re around the corner from Trump Tower, reveling in the delights of retail exuberance. And why not? There were columns of Louis Vuitton trunks stacked up to the ceiling like sculptures. The guests showed up, tight-faced and fur-swaddled, having headed off any threat of lifestyle-crimping Democratic tax policies. The glass showcases of sunglasses and handbags were gleaming — where to put one’s Belvedere martini down for a second? — and they were serving absurdly upscale takes of classic New York grub: lobster hot dogs, pizzas topped with caviar, and fried pastrami, which, I was informed by one of the many svelte bar boys on hand, was made with Wagyu beef.
Across the street is what my friend called Trunk Tower — the under-construction permanent home of Louis Vuitton, disguised as a big suitcase. What we’re in is a former Niketown that will house the brand for seven years in the meantime. (Tiffany’s, another LVMH brand, also used this as its swing space while its flagship was being redone.)
But leave the world’s intractable troubles behind; it’s time to shop, shop, shop your cares away. And there are plenty of opportunities for those with the money to do so: There are private rooms for fine jewelry and an assortment of home goods, including Louis Vuitton pool tables, poker sets, and china. “Wow!” I heard some guests squawking, while gathering around a $60,000 Louis Vuitton dog house. Wuff! “My brain is still trying to process it,” observed one woman, who’d been standing in front of it, drooling like a mastiff. I did not have the opportunity to ask the owner of a bichon frise, wearing a beige sweater, I spotted if she could afford it.
There was even a chocolatier. “A chocolate is always worth a try, right?” the editor Amy Fine Collins, rocking a fascinator, chirped to me, before picking up a bonbon and delicately dropping it into her mouth. Scrumpdiddlyumptious.
“We’re gonna call it ‘Club Louis’!” squealed another well-maintained guest ascending up one of the many escalators. The music was in fact loud and clubby; the brand had hired the downtown DJ duo of the moment, Fcukers, who were blasting their song “Bon Bon” over the speakers (“Go to da streets and I getcha bon bon … Go to the crib yea I getcha fit on”). Eventually, the Beastie Boys’ Mike D took over.
From a guest, I learned that certain women of means in this town are “re-virginizing.” Meaning, they go to a med spa to have their vaginas tightened; from what I can understand, the operation involves laughing gas, something called a “kegel throne,” and injecting blood from your arms into your clitoris.
As is usual for this sort of soirée, there were plenty of celebrities and influencers and celbrinfluencers on hand to strike a pose for the BFA photographers. Cynthia Erivo was there, in yet another emerald-green Elphaba look, and so was Bradley Cooper, looking somehow younger than ever. Also Ana de Armas, the new face of the brand’s jewelry line; Jennifer Connelly; Annabelle Dexter-Jones; and the stylist Law Roach. Shortly after 8 o’clock the whispers began, announcing, “Martha’s here.” Meaning, Martha Stewart, presently in the midst of her shit-stirring press tour, taking knocks at Ina Garten and the creators of the new documentary about her on Netflix. She took a photograph leaning on one of the trunk towers. Then she was out the door followed by a leopard-printed Candace Bushnell …
The party was totally shoppable. In fact, the most interesting people in the room were all the actual shoppers — many who no doubt qualified as “VICs,” or Very Important Clients. They’re not famous but get treated that way because they spend so much so they get invited to stuff like this. “We’re grandparents now, so we’ve just been traveling, and spending,” one woman, with big hair and big eyelashes, who’d traveled all the way from Texas just for this party, told me. Do they actually use those Louis Vuitton trunks when they travel, like on their recent trips to Barcelona and Australia? No, but, as she shows me on her phone, she has created an “art installation” in her house with some of her trunks, and also underneath the Christmas tree she just put up. “It’s sexy, right?”
On the first floor, I met an anesthesiologist who, owing to the fact that she is between apartments right now, and she left all of her Louis at her “country house,” started to feel a little self-conscious about being decked out in Hermès and Dolce, so she dropped several hundred dollars on a scarf to signal her brand allegiance. She got invited by a friend, who she says is an executive at the brand. They met in Mustique — “it’s a private island,” she explained. Perfect! She bought her first handbag from the brand when she graduated from medical school, and she admires the fact that her “kick-around sack” is still in good shape. Still, she prefers Hermès. “I love Hermès because I’m an equestrian.”
Eventually, I latch on to two smoke-show sisters, decked out in blue Louis Vuitton fur — the real stuff — who are perched on a couch drinking margaritas and trying on diamonds. “I love looking at pretty things and pretty people, everything pretty,” one of tells me, while her sister checks out a necklace she’s considering buying in a full-length mirror. They both grew up in Brooklyn but live on Long Island now. “Unfortunately, New York hasn’t been so exciting. After Covid, everyone’s mind-set is different.” I don’t quite understand what she means. She forgot to eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, so the margaritas are hitting her sort of hard. “The city is what I really, really love, but I don’t love it so much these days. Not as much. Only because what’s going on. It’s unfortunate. Know what I’m saying?” Is she talking about the election? “I can’t do anything about it, so who cares?”
What she does care about, she says, is shopping. But there’s a reason her sister is the one trying on the jewels. “I’ve been there and done that. I didn’t want to pay for therapy, so I was a shopaholic. It made me happy. I like making people happy. Do you like making people happy?”
What were the men at the party doing? Besides holding their wives’ shopping bags?
“I’m just trying to find some girls,” said a glowering male model, named Taras Romanov (“My name is Russian and Ukrainian,” he explained, also sharing his thoughts on the war: “It’s almost all out of confusion”). “I haven’t seen anything that catches the eye.” He thinks the problem is he showed up too late — though I wonder if maybe the women here are a little too grown-up for his tastes.
Down on the second floor, the women’s department (Louis Vuitton calls it the “women’s universe”), I met a gay couple who are each carrying their man bags (from the fall/winter collection, they inform me). They’re L.V. über-fans and tell me that after they watched the Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton documentary during the pandemic, they bought stock in the company. “They’re not afraid to push boundaries, specifically in more recent times around gender. You look at the latest Pharrell shows and see that there’s a lot of crisscrossing, a blurring,” says one. “This is a men’s piece. But does it matter?” For all of their dreams of a post-gender future, though, he admits he’s not comfortable lugging it to his hedge-fund job. He implores me to feel the bag. “Enjoy it! It’s luxurious.” Again, for better or worse, talk turns toward the election. “The world is fucking burning around us, and here we are at Louis Vuitton!”
On my way out the door, I ran into a fashion editor who’d just arrived, who panned, “Welcome to Trump’s America,” with an eye roll. Come to find out, Puck recently reported that one of the rumored successors to be the LVMH CEO, 32-year-old Alexandre Arnault, was spotted at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. Not to mention: The former and future president is Louis Vuitton’s new landlord.
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