If the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute gala had lost some of its luster in its last few incarnations, the so-called “party of the year” seems to have regained its place as New York’s most talked-about benefit—primarily by reasserting itself as the city’s most exclusive event, with the most over-the-top stylish touches, like 7,000 gardenias flown in from California and Florida on a refrigerated jet.
After planning problems with potential sponsor Chanel hit the skids in 2000, the party moved from December to spring the next year, and its after-party ballooned to what was basically a large, not-so-exclusive bash with little in common with the dinner. But this year, with Chanel back on board to sponsor the event with Condé Nast, planners raised the price for the 700-person dinner from $3,500 to $5,000 a seat and trimmed the additional guests for the after-party to an invitation-only 400. Because dinner tables are usually picked up by corporate sponsors (for $150,000) and filled with celebrities, that meant a room that safely mixed uptown society with the fashion, art, and entertainment worlds. (Although there were some interesting choices: Carmen Electra? Marilyn Manson? Really?)
The behind-the-scenes machinations made the cover of New York magazine, which detailed Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour’s quiet, firm control over the work (and 8 AM meetings) of a committee including Vogue director of special events Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, Met president Emily Rafferty, and Costume Institute curator Harold Koda. And everything met the approval of Chanel’s Karl Lagerfeld, who served as a co-chairman, along with chairwomen Wintour and Nicole Kidman.
Among the maneuverings was David Monn’s “Gardenia Death Watch,” when the designer tested the exact lifespan of the flown-in gardenias (chosen because they were a favorite of Coco Chanel), determining that if they were picked on Saturday they’d just barely survive the Monday night dinner.
So how did it all go at the actual event? “Like clockwork,” he told us the next day. Monn—who took over design duties from longtime designer Robert Isabell—called the event “the most extraordinary experience.”
Monn’s design theme was a French garden, but he didn’t want the room to feel like a theme party—or a party at all. “I wanted it to feel like a real, accurate garden at this incredible chateau you were invited to,” Monn said. “There was nothing hanging from the ceiling that was partylike.”
Near the entrance to the museum’s Great Hall, Monn put 3,000 gardenias inside a giant wrought-iron garden basket. And after facing a throng of photographers on the museum’s tented steps, guests followed a red carpet from the Great Hall through an alley made of 12 25-foot white pear trees to get to the Chanel exhibit; past that, the Petrie Sculpture Court was decorated for cocktails as a garden with boxwood hedges, 12-foot-tall topiaries, and baskets of plants and gardenias.
Dinner was in the American Wing, where the bank façade on display was meant to suggest a French chateau, and Monn wrapped the room’s 24 concrete columns with cypress and juniper branches. Frost Lighting put the focus on the garden elements—including giant topiaries and eight-foot boxwood obelisks—lighting some elements from below and putting pinspots above the tables, which were surrounded by folding chairs borrowed from Bryant Park. Sage-colored burlap underclothes and Belgian linen overlays covered the tables, and the centerpieces had more gardenias and jasmine plants inside French wire baskets. The tables were set with silver chargers and all-white porcelain plates with a leaf pattern from Party Rental.
Glorious Food’s dinner menu—researched by co-owner Sean Driscoll at the Ritz in Paris, where Chanel herself lived for a time—started with roasted lobster with caviar on endive, white and green.phparagus, and lemon caviar mousseline. The entrée was lamb with a melange of vegetables and roasted new potatoes with fresh mint. And dessert was a chocolate ganache cake with a white chocolate camellia and spun sugar.
After dinner was a quickie performance from soprano Renée Fleming. And the riffraff-free after-party crowd arrived at 10 PM for dessert, dancing, and a Cirque du Soleil performance back in the Petrie Court—all according to the much-labored-over plan. “There’s not a moment of spontaneity in this,” Monn said.
—Chad Kaydo
Photos: Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
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