After a hectic day of Corturing, myself and Rianna Murray – in true Paris fashion week style – arrived almost two hours late to the De Beers soiree (retardées, oui — fautives, non).
Cigaret-less, we roamed the streets trying to find an open Tabac, to no avail. My internal party-o-meter began screaming, begging, pleading for a cocktail. We gave up and sped to Place Vendome, which by night cradles an orb of Parisian magic . The HQ’s of fashion houses like Schiaparelli and Comme des Garcons live there. The moon blasted through misty clouds, illuminating the three-pronged streetlamps that litter the square.
On entering, we bumped into stylist and journalist Tania Tuka, who informed us that Lily Allen was performing upstairs. Before she even finished her sentence I had zoomed up the grand staircase and threaded through the crowd to catch the end of a Lily Allen’s set – an acoustic cover of Pussy Palace. (It turns out my party-o-meter wasn’t pleading for a drink, but knew British icon and superstar Lily Allen was firmly in the building).
Now it was time for drinking… I made a beeline to the bar and ordered a dirty martini and glass of champagne (mumma was thirsty!) and reappeared triumphantly dual-wielding both. The party sprawled across a maze of grand rooms, each with its own personality: a disco room, where a Christine and the Queens doppelganger pumped 90s dance hits across the parquet floor; a second bar full of palm trees and chandeliers; a piano room and… the VIP room, hidden behind enormous, sliding French doors, flanked by security (how the hell do we get in there?).
There were endless canapes.One man was individually skewering chunks of raw salmon, aioli and baked potato onto sticks. There were micro truffle croque monsieurs, arancini balls, vegan sushi and slabs of cold mushrooms on crackers. Some were better than others… and so we carried a portable spitting bin AKA a De Beers–branded napkin. I befriended a bartender in the palm tree bar who made me a series of drop-dead delicious experimental cocktails, gently encouraging my descent into the night.
In one corridor was a (possibly 17th century) portrait of a woman which, every time we past, the same guest was trying to take a photo with. We spent half the night staring at a room behind the DJ decks, from which cocktails and canapés were periodically removed. We knew Lily Allen was in there. It was where she disappeared after her set and never re-emerged. We sat on a sofa, meticulously observing the movements of the security guards, plotting our break-in like a bank heist. When I finally shoved Rianna behind the curtain and through the door, we discovered it was just the AV control room.
I spilt my entire peach drink over myself after reading a message from a hot boy saying, “you look handsome,” and ran to clean myself up. On the way, I accidentally bumped into a man, spilling a single droplet of champagne onto his wrist. Furious, he demanded napkins but I had already taken the last one. Despite me being soaked through in vomit-coloured alcohol, he made me hand it over so he could dab the droplets from his Cartier wristband.
We spent the remainder of the evening oscillating between the piano room – where the pianist was playing beautiful, self composed scores with one hand while holding a glass of wine in the other – and the disco room, where we pounded the dancefloor with the Christine and the Queen’s lookalike.
The party reached a teetering point, and instead of watching the couture elite descend into drunken chaos, we called it. We went home on the metro, shovelling fizzy sweets into our mouths all the way back to Pigalle.
