DosViolines
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nytimes.com
December 17, 2006
Come as You Are? Hardly
Elizabeth Lippman for The New York Times
APPROPRIATE DRESS REQUIRED Marc Jacobs dressed as a pigeon at his Venice-themed company holiday party. Others were poodles, the plague and courtiers.
By ERIC WILSON
NORMALLY, the lampshade-as-headgear bit is reserved for the end of the night, though if that ever happened at the Marc Jacobs company holiday party on Wednesday, it would have been lost amid such excesses that an entire court of drag queens looked like wallflowers.
A statuesque dancer wearing a full crystal chandelier balanced precariously on her head was followed into Gotham Hall, a former bank vault in Midtown, by 30 go-go dancers bearing exaggerated codpieces, four turbaned Ali Babas with droopy drawers, countless brocaded courtiers, two pastel French poodles, one monsignor trailed by a male p*rn star and then Mr. Jacobs, the designer, dressed as a pigeon (the cutting-edge fashion equivalent of a partridge).
As Mr. Jacobs has made an unusual tradition of framing the annual festivities in an increasingly complex theme of masquerades — employees are required to dress in costume, this year for a “Carnival in Venice” — the ordinarily outrageous has come to seem commonplace there. Masks, after all, were mandatory; pants were not.
“My employees all have glue guns at home,” Mr. Jacobs cooed through a face full of ombré feathers. “They love this, and I love to see how much effort they all make.”
Not surprisingly, word of Mr. Jacobs’s elaborate holiday parties has gotten around. Last year, at a Western theme party (the designer came as Wilbur the pig, Naomi Campbell as Pocahontas), so many attempted crashers arrived that the doors had to be bolted 15 minutes after they opened. Mr. Jacobs, whose pigeon suit was made by Martin Izquierdo (a designer whose credits include the angel’s wings in the play “Angels in America”), has also turned up dressed as a bottle of ketchup and once as a polar bear. Some employees spend months making their costumes, while others rent and some whip up a little something from the closet. Stephen Jones, the English milliner, had gotten hold of an authentic ensemble from Fellini’s “Casanova,” at Angels, the London theatrical costume company founded in 1840. But it was stuck in customs at Kennedy International Airport.
“They said I could pick it up at 10:30 p.m.,” he said, suggesting he was seriously considering a midparty wardrobe change. As it was, Mr. Jones, who is bald, had painted his head black and wore a black suit, shirt and gloves.
“This is Plan B,” he said. “I’m the plague. I’ve already bonded with the nuns. We often work together on things.”
In a floor-length black Chanel coat and a Napoleonic hat pinned with spangled eagle brooches (also Chanel), André Leon Talley, the editor at large of Vogue, arrived early with an entourage that included the hip-hop entrepreneur Damon Dash; his wife, the designer Rachel Roy; two muscular young men dressed as gondoliers (one in a Jean Paul Gaultier nautical striped sweater), and two who were a tad less seaworthy — in black suits with frilly blouses, they could have been backup singers for a band called the Yves Saint Laurents. “The shoes are the most important thing,” said Mr. Talley, in ivory Manolo Blahniks, before noting that his group’s inspiration could be traced to the 1951 ball of Carlos de Beistegui, one of the most glamorous of all the Venetian masquerades, photographed by Cecil Beaton.
Mr. Dash and Ms. Roy played supporting characters.
“Ask Damon who he is,” Mr. Talley said.
Mr. Dash, wearing a plain black suit, had clearly forgotten.
“Who am I, again?” he asked Ms. Roy, who was also wearing a black pantsuit, accessorized with a rhinestone bow tie and a beaded beret (Ralph Lauren). She was dressed as Greta Garbo (once a lover of Mr. Beaton) and her husband was supposed to be a famous pursuer of actresses.
“I’m Howard Hughes,” Mr. Dash finally said. “I’m a billionaire.”
At Marc Jacobs, those who are pretend billionaires are given treatment equal to those who made their costumes from adult diapers and painted cardboard, as the employees of the Marc Jacobs store in Los Angeles did. They came as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and won a contest for the best group costume, though the Venetian connection had to be explained: the cartoon characters were named after Italian artists.
“There’s four of us,” said Kyle Avila, the Michelangelo of the bunch, adorably holding up his three turtle fingers.
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif][SIZE=-1]APPROPRIATE DRESS REQUIRED Marc Jacobs, left, dressed as a pigeon at his Venice-themed company holiday party. [/SIZE][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif]Others were courtiers...[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif]chandeliers ...[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif]the plague ...[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif]an original Venetian gown and the Phantom of the Opera ...[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif]poodles...[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif]courtiers, true to the Venetian theme... [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif]and exotic birds.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, San Serif]The host Marc Jacobs.[/FONT]
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