“You’re all here, of course, to go to Save Venice,” said Lauren Levison from a VIP suite at The Peninsula early on Friday evening. “But really, it’s an excuse to celebrate the talent that’s in this room. There is nothing better than leaving something special.”
Levison was hosting a cocktail in celebration of five young CFDA designers ahead of the annual Save Venice Un Ballo in Maschera gala. In one corner of the room, Chloe Mendel Corgan was getting her tarot cards read by a psychic — in line with the gala’s “Celestial Serenissima” theme — as husband Billy Corgan listened on. On the opposite side of the suite, a selection of custom masks was laid out neatly on a bed, created by Gigi Burris for Levison’s guests and her fellow designers.
“I gave her a wild prompt,” said Andrew Curwen of his mask, which drew inspiration from Tim Burton’s “Catwoman.” “It should be a little feral,” he added, as Burris helped tie the lace-y creation around his head.
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“ Bach Mai did very ‘Ziegfeld Follies,’” added Burris, describing her other designs for the event. For Kate Barton, it was “very sharp lines, but soft fluidity. So she wanted crystals with a liquid drape,” she added. ”And then this is Andrew Kwon’s — he wanted beaded lightness,” she said of the pleated white tulle masks for the designer and his gala date, model Patricia Zajacova.
For Levison’s table, Burris created masks inspired by each guests’ star sign, again in line with the gala’s theme, with leather feathers and crystals representing the star pattern in the sky; Levison’s design was a crescent moon. “ Mask isn’t our normal practice, but millinery vocabulary works within the mask [category],” Burris added.
Cocktail guests including Gilles Mendel and Isaac Boots began making their way a few blocks north, masks on, to The Plaza hotel for the start of Save Venice cocktail hour.
“These are accurate to the moon’s craters,” Mai said of his “Follies” mask, a veiled headpiece which featured a 3D-printed light-up orb, as Burris helped adjust the color setting from bright white to a deep orange glow. He was hopeful that the creation — given the timeliness of the recent lunar space launch — would help him win one of the evening’s “best mask” awards, a hunch that paid off when the judges later announced him as the winner of Most En Theme Mask. (The prize: products from Tilt Beauty and afternoon tea and Champagne for four at The Plaza’s Palm Court.) Other mask winners included Zajacova and Lisa Chambers.
During cocktail hour, the Mendel team was joined by their gala date Kate Mara, while other guests including Amy Jackson, Claire O’Connor, Natalie De’Banco, Kate Bartlett and Yesly Dimate made their way up the hotel’s grand staircase and into the atmospheric red-hued room, where more psychic and tarot card reading opportunities awaited before dinner.
“ When we can’t be in Venice to celebrate and raise money for our restorations, The Plaza is sort of the next best moment,” said Save Venice executive director Amy S. Gross. “We love that this is a night that allows our patrons to come together in celebration of keeping Venice’s irreplaceable artistic heritage intact for future generations.”
