Edited by Adrien Field
Let me start out by stating that I am not normally a superstitious person: I don’t throw salt over my shoulder when I spill some, I don’t think twice about walking under ladders and my only chagrin about breaking a mirror is that I have one less surface in which to admire myself. After this week though, I must say that I absolutely believe in omens, especially when delivered in the form of clothing.
Fashion is my religion so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that it was a pair of pants that decided the fate of my uneventful week. It was with great excitement that I broke my recession shopping rule and purchased a pair of Cheap Monday dark navy pants with bright red polka dots (size 25 inch waist!) from Inven.tory. In anticipation for the Topshop opening party, I knew that I needed something funky and fun as I would be competing with some major celebrity wattage for my Patrick McMullan photo credit.
When Tuesday night came around, I could no longer contain my enthusiasm for the pants and decided to give them a test run at Nylon Magazine’s 10th Birthday Party. Held at the Shang Restaurant in the “it” hotel of the moment, the Thompson LES, I thought they would be the perfect statement for a downtown, hipster party.
Alexandra and I had somehow confused the time, arriving half an hour before the party was scheduled to start so after making friends with the publicists at the door, we went across the street to a little French bistro to kill time. As fifteen minutes turned into an hour, a veritable throng of bodies in furs, leather jackets and high heeled pumps had formed a line around the block.
Finally refusing to wait any longer, we pushed our way to the front and immediately entered thanks to our earlier brown nosing. Thinking we’d walk upstairs to a nearly empty room as we still hadn’t seen anyone else coming through the door, we were shocked when the entire restaurant was packed with the who’s who of the downtown scene.
I was disappointed to see that there was only one photographer in front of a meager step and repeat. “I brought out the polka dot pants for this?” I whispered to Alexandra incredulously as we posed for pictures. After pushing to get a drink at the besieged bar, we moved into the back room where we ran into Richie Rich hanging on the arm of singer Kat DeLuna.
We were quickly tiring of the pushing and shoving around us so as soon as we overheard that there was a VIP gifting suite on the 7th floor, we ditched the frenetic main room and made our way to the promise land (so we thought). It turned out that the joke was on us as the alcohol had run dry upstairs and the most ‘famous’ person was a castmate from The Real World: Brooklyn.
Slightly befuddled, we made our way back downstairs where things had started improving. The crowd had thinned out but the ratio of celebrities to commoners had increased. I ran into my friend, America’s Next Top Model Winner Jaslene Gonzalez, who was hanging out with club impresario Matt Levine.
In the other room was a dour-looking Taylor Momson, party hopping from the private Topshop dinner at Balthazar. Inexplicably, Alexis Bledel (Gilmore Girls) was hanging out and looking rather out of place among the slightly grungy hipster set. Definitely non-hipster, though, was Lydia Hearst, back from her charity work in Africa and wearing a custom silver corset by The Blondes—the same one Britney wore in her Circus album.
There was something slightly unfulfilling about the night and lack of press so Alexandra and I were out of commission for the next evening, vowing to come back strong for the Topshop party on Thursday.
When Thursday arrived, I once again donned the polka dot pants, determined to get them the press they deserved. Our intel had told us that the Topshop party was in the store at 7PM. I thought this was rather strange as the store had opened for business that day and it seemed unlikely that the place would be cleared and cleaned up for such an early party.
My suspicions were confirmed when the line snaking outside the store was filled with shoppers instead of socials. After some urgent texting, we discovered that the party was actually at 9PM at The Box. Already dressed to impress, we decided we’d do a “filler” event before Topshop to kill time and get a buzz rolling. This was to be our downfall.
We bounced around from no-list to no-list event, the worst of which was the Marc Ecko store ‘party’ where a massive man straight out of a Suge Knight video was actually walking around with a pimp cane and hat. The last time I felt that out of place was on 2nd grade picture day when all the boys and girls were in their Sunday best and my mother had irreverently put me in a LA Laker’s jersey because she didn’t want to buy the photos anyway.
After forty miserable minutes, we left to attend the Complex Magazine party at Anchor Bar celebrating the Kanye West cover. Once again, we had arrived early and were told to wait, something for which I have no patience. When fifteen minutes passed and we were still on the wrong side of the velvet rope, I had had enough. The last straw was when the flack outside told me they weren’t letting anyone inside as he opened the rope for a group of five to come inside.
I had such a bad taste in my mouth from the night that I refused to prolong my pain by going over to The Box. Such was my week. If you disapprove of the dearth of excitement, don’t blame me—blame the pants.
Adrien Field
Adrien@AdrienField.com
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