party report

The Perils of Fog Machines at Fashion Parties

Photo: Benjamin Lozovskynyc.com/BFA

The spooky nineteenth-century townhouse — with its crystal chandeliers, blood-red-velvet-flocked walls, and silver bowls of bubbling dry ice beside a decadent dessert table — felt appropriate to celebrate W’s October issue, as though Halloween came early. Sky Ferreira thought the reaper from Tales From the Crypt would have been a nice addition. When the smoke alarm started ringing, Ferreira wondered aloud whether we should evacuate, but as the party continued in blatant disregard, she surmised that a fog machine in the corner was to blame. “I tried to perform with a fog machine a week ago in L.A.,” she said. “Choked. It was sitting there, and they kept pressing it, and I choked on the fog. It was disgusting, really embarrassing. I coughed in the middle of a song.”

W editor Stefano Tonchi described the celebration as “a little more dreamy” than previous seasons. When The Cut compared the party to the frankly terrifying Steven Meisel shoot in W’s September issue, fashion director Edward Enninful, who styled the shoot, replied, “Oh, the girls in the woods! It’s really funny, but Meisel and I were obsessed with this computer game called The Path. It’s a really great game. It’s about six friends in the woods who kind of, you know, get lost in the woods. They have to survive in the woods and eventually they find this path to salvation. We started playing around and it took its own life, but it’s just based on a little computer game. We just had so much fun with it, and he Meisel-ed it and made it his own. This season was a very dark, romantic season. We followed the general mood. I wonder where we’re going to be going this season. It may be all poppies and sunlight.”

Indeed, Thakoon Panichgul, who had just shown a rather sunny collection filled with birds and butterflies, sipped a drink in the next room. “We live and breathe fashion,” he said, “but at some point you just want to escape from reality. I wanted to dream a little. So I was looking at this idea of living in a really beautiful birdcage.”

At 10:20 p.m., the lights suddenly flared brightly. Everyone yelled, and they dimmed again. “The party isn’t over yet,” a woman near the dessert table cried.

The Perils of Fog Machines at Fashion Parties