BLOG #20: LOVE THE PARTY AND IT WILL LOVE YOU BACK.

C/O BFA; credit: Jason Lowrie

The evening started in Canada which, I don’t know if you guys know, is actually on 9^th avenue. Eating poutine with Harry. Talking about movies. The delicate balance between plot and story, which are two different things that a lot of people cannot tell the difference between. We both have advanced degrees in film which makes us qualified to make this distinction so we do and we eat the congealed fries and peppery gravy and cheese curds at The Canuck (a fine establishment). We’re both wearing suits and I am attending the 2026 Whitney Art Party with my boyfriend, with exposed tits in my balconette bra whose shade of pink matches my lipstick. It is 8 Fahrenheit outside and probably significantly less factoring in windchill. Fuck ice and ICE. 

 

Harry and me by Harry; Nicolaia and me by Harry

The story kind of begins five and some change years ago during the “unprecedented times.” I was a bottle blonde and had early 20s sciatic nerve pain from not moving around enough, and I was doing odd jobs, getting my MA (figures), and writing for a little publication known as The Drunken Canal. Things went on like this through a series of unfortunate events also known as the ages between cusp-22 and 23, and all the best positives are marked by new friends. October 2020, Claire Banse, actress, co-founder, and one of the first people I met in college introduced me to Gutes at The Drunken Canal launch party and she told me she remembered me from when I used to work at Totokaelo (RIP). At an associated Valentine’s Day prom-like-event in 2021, I met fellow TDC writer Sasha Mutchnik (as a brunette, woah) and we became friends via a conversation about mid-century B-movies and fashion shows we hated. Summer of 2021, I met Nicolaia Rips at a friend’s birthday party, and the next day ran into her at another friend’s dinner party, both of us in slightly-restyled versions of last night’s day two re-wear, and that was that. 

 

While everyone in this city has stories like that, the last six-ish years of my outside-party-writer life were effectively reduced into a sizzle reel. I ran into my friend, brilliant critical thinker, Art News columnist, and PhD-er Shanti Escalante-De Mattei walking in the door of the shindig. Waiting for coat check, Nicolaia and her date—her mom, artist Sheila Berger—glide down the stairs and give hugs; she’s on the hosting committee for the event, hence…she’s got vibe-officiating to do. After exploring the art with Harry because, I mean, who doesn’t want to drink in the Whitney after dark and look at the work, I ran into Gutes and Ali Royals, man-on-the-street interviewer extraordinaire outside the elevator while they were strategizing the least invasive, highest impact “content capture” (air quotes because we’re Zillennials and don’t like the terminology). I asked Gutes to show me who she’s wearing and then we got to talking fashion week for Byline, a new publication she started in 2023 with co-founder and editor Megan O’Sullivan to which I serve as Managing Editor. We agreed to stop talking about work and keep drinking. And then, at the Whitney open bar, I ran into none other than Sasha, sporting her now signature shadow-root platinum blonde, GQ mic tucked away safely (she is now their Senior Socials Director). Now that she’d finished her social duties for the evening, it was time for a little sip of something. We bemoaned Jonathan Anderson’s Dior men’s FW26, just like it was 2021. 

Everyone on planet Earth has these moments, and what I think is particularly special and hilarious and kismet is that this happened, in all of our busy lives, at The Whitney Museum of all places. It wasn’t a formal reunion, or any of the million other industry things where I could’ve run into all these people consecutively in the same night for the sole purpose of having a drink and dancing a bit; it was The Whitney Art Party of all events! And I think that speaks to what the party actually is, what it’s meant to do, and what purpose it’s supposed to serve.                 

                        

      

Artist Tasneem Sarkez tearingggg this dress ; This couple was cutting an mf RUG on the dancefloor I loved it

Sasha + Ali having a great timeeee

ABOVE 4 PHOTOS: C/O BFA; credit: Jason Lowrie

Straight, no chaser: you don’t go to the Whitney Art Party in the same way you go to another society event, like an invite-only party or afters or after-afters for a fashion show, gallery opening, art fair, etc. You go because you can, and (typically) because you were invited—I know tickets were on sale but I don’t personally know the type of person who bought/would buy them, but hey; glad to have shared a room with ya. The point is; it’s frivolity. It’s glamour. It’s adornment, it’s artifice. It’s fun and it’s silly. It’s accidentally making eye contact with Martha Stewart at the BFA photo wall. It’s avoiding being caught in the background of various concurrent social media videos but, like, having a secret fantasy that you do get caught, only on your good side, in a perfectly candid moment, and then you get discovered as a rare talent that serves as the perfect platform for your future career as a high powered fashion news editor (I genuinely thought this would happen to me when I was 17). With the added aural component of some disco, and then whatever genres The Dare decided to blend with electroclash. With the added scent of Aesop fragrances, one of a handful of sponsors for the evening. There doesn’t need to be a draw to throw a party at the Whitney other than for there to be a few Real Housewives, some people you know, want to know, and haven’t seen since undergrad, and an open bar. It’s objectively a definition of fun in New York City, one pure enough to shake people out of jaded doomscrolls and even drag them waterside to Chelsea on one of the city’s coldest nights. For the purpose of art. Fun. Because every time you say “Oh, it’s just this party I have to go to,” you know your ass loves going to the party. Love the party and it will love you back.