“Talk to your friends about what they want,” joked Chloe Malle to a room of guests gathered in SoHo for a first look at the Vogue Vintage Market, the night before it opened. “It’s going to get some sort of heated rivalry tonight.” She added with a laugh.
As it turned out, Malle and the night’s honoree, Doja Cat—who was there to celebrate both her April cover and her role as host of the sale—both had their sights set on a particularly covetable piece: Khaite’s interlocking hands belt from the spring 2024 collection.
And just like that, the tone was set. At the party, which was co-hosted by Malle, Alex Consani, and Paloma Elsesser, Guests may have found themselves mid-conversation with someone whose eyes had already drifted elsewhere—past a shoulder, across the room, toward something better. Only here, the distraction wasn’t another guest, but a rail of pristine Chanel couture at eyebrow-raising prices.
Set across three floors of vintage and archival fashion, the evening unfolded among the racks and brought together the full Vogue ecosystem: contributors to the sale like Paloma Elsesser and Emma Chamberlain; April issue stars including Doja Cat and members of the cast of Broadway’s new The Rocky Horror Show production—Harvey Guillén, Stephanie Hsu, Sam Pinkleton, and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez—who graced the pages of Vogue in a Norman Jean Roy-photographed feature; plus designers, editors, and the usual well-dressed regulars. And most came to shop!
Doja Cat, for her part, was more than ready. “I personally love vintage. I was up at like 5:00 a.m. last night… looking at sunglasses—Christian Dior, particularly,” she said. Of shooting her first Vogue cover, she added, “it’s a really big deal to me,” noting that wearing her own hair—rather than one of her many wigs—felt “very, very liberating and I’m very, very, very satisfied.” She arrived in a ruched dress, fastened with a brooch that lent an Old Hollywood feeling, paired with towering leopard-print platforms, and carried a pair of vintage Fendi glasses like a trophy. At one point, she paused over a pair of Alexander McQueen platform boots with an armadillo-esque heel—dramatic, sculptural, and entirely her—before discovering they were a size 39. (She’s a 37. Alas.)
Nearby, Elsesser embodied the spirit of the night in more ways than one. “I have such a passion for vintage and circular fashion,” she said. “eBay has long been my favorite resource to spend time finding things that I love.” She wore an iconic black crinkled Prada dress and bolero from spring 2009 and stood beside her rack—pieces pulled directly from her own closet—which quickly became one of the most trafficked corners of the room.
It didn’t take long for it to draw a crowd. Alex Consani, in a sculptural Sacai look with a skirt that jutted outward, zeroed in on a ponyhair, beaded Marni cropped jacket and proceeded to swan through the party in it as though it were already hers.
Elsewhere, designer Jonathan Cohen made a swift and decisive choice, leaving with a houndstooth Hermès tie in hand. Chamberlain, meanwhile—fresh off a red-eye from Los Angeles—was already scanning for her next addition, lingering over a handful of floaty skirts and easy spring pieces. “I’m trying to build out my skirt collection,” she said. “I don’t have a lot of skirts.”
By the end of the night, Malle’s prediction had proven accurate. The rivalry wasn’t hypothetical—it was already underway. And it was only just a preview of what would unfold when the sale officially opened its doors the next morning.
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