Gorgeous parties are thrown nightly in New York City, but Friday’s Louis Vuitton Celebrates Monogram launch event was one of the most extravagant we’ve ever seen. The label took over the Museum of Modern Art on 53rd Street to celebrate its 160th anniversary capsule—a collection of six monogrammed LV pieces interpreted by six iconoclast collaborators—by custom-building a glass cube structure right inside the MoMA garden that featured the marquee monograms of each collaborator who took part in the project.
Only 160 guests were invited to the dinner, one for every year LV has been in existence, and so the list of invitees was filled with the most famous Vuitton fans on the planet, like Jennifer Connelly, Ashley Olsen, and Michelle Williams , as well as five of the six artists who took part in the collaboration: Frank Gehry, Cindy Sherman, Karl Lagerfeld, Christian Louboutin, and Mark Newson. Before heading inside, each guest made one tiny detour: To get their photo taken by famed photographer Patrick Demarchelier, who had set up a pop-up studio right by the bar. We spotted Lagerfeld, Karlie Kloss, Miranda Kerr and more all waiting to take their snaps—and each one was posted immediately on @LouisVuitton’s Instagram.
“We don’t go to a lot of really glamorous parties and this is the most glamorous of them all,” Nicole Kidman told InStyle before taking her seat at one of the four long tables. Each guest had a monogrammed napkin waiting for them at their chairs, and the hundreds of candles on the tables did more than light the room—they were in the shapes of L.V.’s monogram letters as well. “When [husband Keith Urban and I] throw a party it’s always very small and usually it’s a kids party. We don’t have adult parties very often!”
Kidman, like many of the guests, was there to pay her respects to Vuitton’s creative director Nicolas Ghesquière. “He did my wedding dress, which is probably the most favorite dress I own,” Kidman said. “It’s all boxed now and being kept for one of my daughters. I think whoever designs your wedding dress you feel eternally grateful to. So whatever he asks me to do, I’ll do.”
Connelly also couldn’t wait to say hi to the designer. “He’s my fashion hero,” she told us. “I feel very much at home in his designs. He’s always very creative and at the same time, so precise. The tension between those between those two qualities is what I’m so drawn to.”
After a meal of roasted beef with parsnips accompanied by a side of parmesan, parsley and sweet potato gnocchi with shaved white truffle, guests finally wrapped up with a mille-feuille of crème madame and apple tatin well after eleven o’clock. But the party wasn’t over for Ghesquière. After everyone left “the cube,” he urged friends to join him for a nightcap at a nearby uptown hotel.
For all of its impressive party tricks, we couldn’t help but think the night earned its own monogram: W.D. Well done.
Scroll down to see a few of the photos Patrick Demarchelier snapped in his pop-up portrait studio for @LouisVuitton’s Instagram.
Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban
Michelle Williams
Ashley Olsen and Christian Louboutin
Karl Lagerfeld
Miranda Kerr
Karlie Kloss
Liya Kebede
Haley Bennett
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