Manhattan Partied Late for Louis Vuitton, Pharrell and Sarah Staudinger
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After a curated tour around the globe, with stops in Paris, Singapore and Los Angeles, the Louis Vuitton “200 Trunks, 200 Visionaries: The Exhibition” made its way to New York last week. Taking over the space formerly home to Barneys New York, the exhibition arrived with a splash on Thursday, with a VIP dinner held on the ninth floor in a revival of famed Barneys’ restaurant Freds and a massive party (where seemingly all of New York was present), with a performance by Future and Lil Uzi Vert.
But before the night turned into a concert, celebrities, artists and editors made their way through the multifloor exhibition during a private preview hour, before arriving for dinner at Freds x Louis, a familiar space for many of the fashion crowd.
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A leather-clad Justin Theroux took advantage of the quiet in the exhibition and was scanning the QR codes on the trunks with enthusiasm (we love a celeb who engages with the case!). Once upstairs he hugged it out with Victor Cruz, who’d been an early dinner arrival.
Nina Dobrev and Shaun White were deep in conversation with Pat McGrath, while Jaden Smith happily obliged photographers who saw the photographic potential in Smith’s golden foil trenchcoat look.
Other VIP dinner guests included Karlie Kloss, Danai Gurira, Aurora James, Jacqueline Jablonski, Athena Calderone and Nigel Sylvester.
As the dinner wrapped up, guests started to make their way down to the party. Smoke (we’ll let you guess what kind) wafted up from the escalator and once down on the eighth floor, the vibe shifted hard. Future and Lil Uzi Vert were onstage in a haze of red stage lights and, yes, more smoke, and the room was wall-to-wall with people.
As Future rapped to the crowd about percocets and molly, waiters offered grilled cheeses and tuna tartare bites, cigarettes were lit and any semblance of the former department store felt very far away.
Pharrell Williams could have been at the Vuitton party, too, but he had a more important engagement: selling his stuff. It was a little bit like archaeology.
“You’re around all these items that are holding all this history,” he said Thursday night, his eyes obscured behind a pair of jewel-rimmed sunglasses. A museum-worthy collection of Williams’ collectible wares were on display inside a room in SoHo ahead of being sold at auction. “You know like in archeology, they go digging into the earth and they see the different layers and you can see when it rained? For me, all of these items have all this information, all this symbolism and all these stories attached to it. So it’s crazy to walk in here and feel it all at the same time.”
None of the usual options to sell the lot felt like the right choice. So he decided to launch Joopiter, a new auction platform rooted in storytelling and honoring upscale items with cultural significance. Each product listing is accompanied by a note of its significance.
The musician and entrepreneur was onsite for the VIP preview of “Son of a Pharaoh,” Joopiter’s inaugural auction. Items included sneakers — some bedazzled, others limited-edition — plenty of diamond jewelry and accessories, watches, luggage, and even a Princess Anne High School drumline letterman jacket. These aren’t PR cast-offs: these are pieces of music history. But he wasn’t going to miss any of it.
“Honestly, at the end of the day they’re all just molecules,” said Williams, asked if he’d reconsidered letting go of any sentimental items after seeing them in the room. “You don’t even take your skin and your bones with you when you go. You only take your memories. So the memories I’ll always have,” he added. “This room is filled with stories, and the person or the people that decide to invest in something, they’ll be buying into these stories.”
The crowd was packed with successful friends and creative peers of the musician, including Slick Rick, Tyler the Creator, Pusha T, Kaws, Futura, Snoh Aalegra and more. Wendy Deng, Dao-Yi Chow, Larry Warsh and the New Museum’s Karen Wong also dropped by.
Pusha T, a childhood friend of Williams’, was busy hyping up the glitzy collection on Instagram. “Y’all got to see what’s going on over here,” he enthused, standing next to the letterman jacket. “I’m talking about all the archival, curated, fly s–t Williams’ ever owned: it’s right here. If you want it, come get it.”
Sarah Staudinger was celebrating a milestone of her own Thursday night: her brand Staud’s New York flagship. “It’s very surreal,” said Staudinger, cocktail in hand as she entered the store, which was buzzing with a crowd of supporters including Dylana Suarez, Natalie Suarez, Brianna Lance, Leyna Bloom, Remi Bader, Adam Mrlik, Tinx, Melissa Roxburgh and, of course, Staudinger’s husband, uber agent Ari Emanuel.
“I just walked in, so actually seeing people in here — I mean, there’ve been customers throughout the week — it’s exactly what I envisioned and wanted. It feels cozy. I almost love that it’s raining right now because it’s so warm, and that was really the vibe I wanted when we were designing the space,” said Staudinger.
“I just noticed the ice cubes — which I had no part in,” she said, glancing down at the “Staud” branded ice cubes inside her mezcal cocktail.
