| EVENT REPORT 06.08.05 12:00 AM |
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| House of Dom Has Baroque Bling, Bountiful Bubbly |
| With the luxury spirit purveyor as solicitous host, the champagne flowed like water (but the bathtub was dry). |
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| Here are some comments we overheard at Dom Perignon’s party hosted by Karl Lagerfeld to celebrate its Cuvee 1998 and Lagerfeld-shot ad campaign: “I feel like I’m in the movie Zoolander.” “This looks like the haunted mansion ride at Disneyland.” “I half expect to see Karl Lagerfeld’s head levitating above the bar on a silver platter.” “Is that Helena Christensen sitting in a bathtub?” |
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PHOTO GALLERY |
 | | Outside Skylight Studio for the Dom Perignon’s party celebrating its Cuvee 1998, a massive trompe l’oeil-style mural depicted an elegant chateau. |
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 | | When it came time to reveal the brand’s new bottle, a Dom magnum rose up from the center of a bar area amid multicolored spotlights. |
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 | | Decor included red candelabras dripping with crystals. |
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 | | One of the lounge areas featured light-up seating in silver and white. |
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The reason for all that offbeat chatter? Dom Perignon's global brand director Daniel Gaujac and international events head Olivia De Longueil—working with a vast committee including Paris-based DM Media and Reflex Event, and New York-based Geoff Howell Studio—created a hyper-baroque, slightly surreal environment at Skylight Studio for a chichi, black-clad, mostly French-speaking crowd. (An all-Dom bar might have contributed to the loose lips too.)
Behind the flotilla of headset-clad LaForce & Stevens check-in staff, a massive trompe l’oeil-style mural depicting an elegant chateau by Vision de Marques covered the building’s plain facade. Inside, ornate details transformed the usually raw space into an opulent setting with gilded mirrors, plush seating strewn with faux fur throws, light-up lounge furniture in silver and white, flowing fabrics, red candelabras dripping with crystals—and even an area designed to evoke a luxe powder room, complete with claw-foot bathtub.
For the event’s decor, DM Media took inspiration from the very notion of a house. Reflex Event’s Christophe Carrere, who helped execute the design, said the idea was to “discover through its different rooms—boudoir, bedroom, bathroom—the very glamorous and sensual atmosphere” the brand hopes to convey.
When it came time to reveal the brand’s new bottle, the scene was high drama: The music’s volume soared and Bentley Meeker shone light on an opaque black bar unit (designed by Reflex Event and fabricated by Geoff Howell), to make it transparent and reveal neat rows of bottles inside. A Dom magnum rose up from the center of another bar area, while a fog machine (or was that just all the cigarette smoke in the air?) diffused multicolored spotlights.
There was more theater too: While guests grazed on hors d’oeuvres from Tentation Potel & Chabot's unusual menu (which included “foie gras with spun sugar”—or liver cotton candy for the layperson), hordes of paparazzi followed a very Michael Jackson-looking pasty-faced and single-gloved Lagerfeld as closely as a school of fish, and Kimora Lee and Russell Simmons courted attention from their perch atop a raised V.I.P. area. We must admit, all the pomp did conjure images of Disneyland and Zoolander—or at least reruns of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
—Alesandra Dubin
Photo: Getty Images for Moet & Chandon (bottles)
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