The young and the beautiful donned hats and veils and leather garb. They thrived in the smoky bowels of the smoking room at Dandy in Pigalle. And they danced together.
It was sartorially delicious to invade a space so full of fashion ingenues, throwing down their euros – for the first time during Fashion Week, the booze was pas gratuit, but they didn’t seem to care. Talk was fashion. But far from their lips was the buzz on designers. It was all about street style – a comfortable voyeurism within which the fashion set had learnt to enjoy each other. Cards were out, networks were forged over cognac shots. This was one trend we had all acquired from the Smalto show, where cognac paired with young Gatsbian men had made an irresistible style impression.
But what do the invitees of L’Insolent Magazine party do when they’re not romping about the Moulin Rouge quarter, fuelled by Fashion Week and endless cigarettes? The sister design team behind Iris de Saint-Germain appeared at the party straight out of the pin up era – the most beautiful advertisement for their collection. Writers and bloggers waxed lyrical about anything and everything, in loud tones, trumpetting their broad vocabularies. Photographers pulled out their phones, to showcase libraries filled with fashion shoots, nudes and broader art capture.
Perhaps the most fascinating were the “fashion performers”: the creatures that move fashion in bizarre and beautiful directions with their mere presence in the fashion space. The first was a student from Rheims with what could only be described as an arrow growing out of his head. He wore a hyper-groomed moustache and a black silk suit, and smoked black cigarettes. He enjoyed only vodka with grape juice and so he carried his grape juice in a flask to add to his vodka rocks. A Californian nurse was eager to talk. Painted in latex, adorned with a black tulle veil and a beaded bag from Amsterdam. Striking. Smoking away, he discussed his lung cancer patients and his studies and his parents back home, through big beautiful lips. And at times he would exclaim at somebody fabulous that passed by.
Dandy closed it’s doors at 2am. They begged us to get some sleep before the clock caught up to a new morning of couture. We stepped into cabs and into the Metro together, moving to various new destinations, where the kick on would mean more clothes, more spiralling smoke and no doubt a few more vodka grape-juices for some.
Written by: Symonne Torpy
Images courtesy of: L’Insolent
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