COLUMNISTS The party ain’t over ’til the red-haired lady bows – such was the message last week at Sonia Rykiel’s 40th anniversary show/dinner/interpretive retrospective, where, in honour of the French legend, 40 colleagues from Giorgio Armani to Karl Lagerfeld and Rodarte created their version of an iconic Rykiel style (the Mulleavy sisters, for example, came up with an “Obama” knit). The event went on until long past the scheduled hour of 9pm – hell, it started long past the scheduled hour. Hank Paulson might be on his knees, commodity prices may be falling, but in Paris, though fashion might feel a bit like the Titanic, the violins have resolved to play all night.
There were parties for books, courtesy of the American ambassador, who threw open his doors to celebrate retail supremo Marvin Traub’s memoir, Like No Other Career, and Roger Vivier’s Diego Della Valle, who opened the store’s private salon for Michael Robert’s Fashion Victims: The Catty Catalogue of Stylish Casualties from A-Z.
