“We both like happy clothes,” said Peter Som, talking about his collaboration with Anthropologie — a debut capsule collection for spring with a fall collection to follow. “It was kind of one of those matches made in heaven,” he continued. The designer was being celebrated at a dinner hosted by the retailer for about 30 guests at the Beatrice Inn on Thursday night. The crowd of insider fashion folk made fast friends, frequently leaving their designated seatas to mingle at each other’s tables. Dinner took place in the restaurant’s elevated dining room — a space known to some as the former dance floor of the old Beatrice Inn nightclub, pre-Graydon Carter’s swanky revamp. Now decked out with a foliage-covered skylight, a fireplace and palm plants sprouting from every corner, the space felt more airy and less cavernous, retaining its mirrored walls and little else from its 2006 to 2009 heyday.
“This is like the mature Beatrice,” said Natalie Joos, donning a colorful headband she had fashioned out of a necklace. “It sort of almost grew with us. As we’ve gotten older, it’s also evolved. And the owners, they are growing older now too….It closed when it was at its peak.”
After dinner, guests cracked into their crème brûlées while conversation ranged from troubled starlet Amanda Bynes to the East Coast’s impending cicada invasion. Joe Zee was passing around his iPhone, which displayed photos of punked-out celebrities at the Met Gala, for open discussion. Som had been unable to attend the gala because he was out of town. “There’s always another,” he said. “It’s such an intense red carpet. It’s like social cardio.”