Fashion Indie spoke with Anat Peri, Director of PR and Marketing for Belegenza Extraordinary Hair Care. Check out the interview for some great tips on hair care.

In New York, as in The Beatles’ song, you get by with a little help from your friends. So, when you find yourself not invited to any fun events, you reach out to those around you and do everything short of begging to be their plus one.

When on Sunday at the DKNY fragrance launch my publicist/friend Meghan invited me to the GenArt party that Tuesday night, I jumped at the opportunity. The GenArt film festival had already been in full swing since last week and I had yet to attend an event. It seemed fitting the party was hosted at BLVD on the Bowery as this year’s main sponsor was a car company.

Exiting the cab, I had high hopes when I saw paparazzi circling outside like hungry vultures—furtively glancing over in a vain hope one might take my picture. When that inevitably did not occur, I at least expected a celebrity-packed room inside. While there were a few bold-face names including Moby, Jennifer Love-Hewitt and that minx of a teacher from Gossip Girl who seduces Dan Humphrey, they were hidden away as GenArt separated the famous from the ticket-buying fans.

Even though I wasn’t one of the people forking over cash to go and gawk at B-list celebrities, I still couldn’t help but feel a little unfabulous after the event. So attending a party for “Beautiful People” was exactly what I needed to get my spirits and ego back where they belong: in a deluded fairytale world of red carpets and photographers.

You know a party’s exclusive when an editor can’t get into his own magazine’s event. On Thursday night, the stretch of sidewalk around Ninth Avenue and W 16th street was packed shoulder to shoulder with hipsters and downtown nightlife fixtures all vying to get inside Hiro ballroom for Paper Magazine’s “Beautiful People” party, celebrating the latest issue.

Word on the street was the event had received over 4,000 RSVPs and so the door was tighter than Joan River’s face. Thanks to my photo in the last issue and blatant disregard for the two-block-long line, I was lucky enough to make it inside, briefly making an appearance on the step and repeat before heading downstairs to partake in the revelry and company of the evening’s beautiful people.

Guests who made it in before the fire marshals put Hiro in lockdown included Kat DeLuna, Erin Fetherston, The Blonds, and Richie Rich while among those stuck outside were recording artist Estelle, Lydia Hearst, Paper Editor-at-Large Peter Davis and countless others.

While hundreds were left simultaneously fuming and freezing outside, inside DJ Cassidy—who also appeared in the issue—warmed up the party with a set of mostly 80’s dance hits. By 9:30, everyone seemed to be feverishly awaiting cover girl Katy Perry’s performance. Camera flashes exploded as Katy came on stage in a shimmery sequin mini-dress and launched into Hot N’ Cold. She rounded out her four-song set with a spirited rendition of “I Kissed A Girl,” all the while wielding a giant inflatable tube of chapstick.

After a night like that, I would have normally cashed out and ended the week on a high note, but when I heard from a much cooler friend there was a secret “Free Beatrice” party being held to rally support for the recently shuttered haughty hipster haven, I knew I couldn’t miss it—if only for indulging my ego by getting into yet another ultra-exclusive fête.

It was with some nervous excitement that on Friday night I made my way to the chic and newly opened Cooper Square Hotel where an elevator took us up to a giant penthouse with soaring city views on all sides. The picturesque location was probably the furthest thing from the darkened and dungeon-like basement of Beatrice, but the skinny hipsters were very much the same. There was smoking, Mary-Kate Olson and guys relieving themselves off the balcony and in the showers—all proving that you can the hipsters out of The Beatrice, but you can’t take The Beatrice out of the Hipsters.

Adrien Field

www.AdrienField.com

Adrien@AdrienField.com

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 10^th 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 7^th 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 2^nd 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