Fashion’s fabulous and everyone else packed the chi chi National Arts Club last Monday to celebrate ‘Charles James: Beneath the Dress’. The legendary designer was known as “America’s First Couturier” and original creator of the first wrap dress.
Hosted by Cornelia Guest, Amanda Hearst, Anne Hearst McInerney, Patricia Hearst Shaw, Gillian Hearst Simonds and Kimberly Rockefeller, the exhibition showed 100 fashion and erotic drawings (some ingeniously made from shoe polish and ball point pens!) from the private collection of R. Couri Hay, photographs by Anton Perich and a screening of the Charles James documentary by Angela Bernhard Thomas.
The champagne was flowing as were the Charles James gowns worn by some of the guests including Cece Cord and Jean Shafiroff, as society bandleader, Alex Donner and his orchestra played music from the 1920’s through to the 1950’s – James’ peak design period.
PR czar R, Couri Hay happily greeted all including Harvey Weinstein, Georgina Chapman, Jay McInerney, Edward Chapman, Nicole Miller, Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia, Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas, Diandra Douglas, Audrey Gruss, William Ivey Long, Janna Bullock, Terrie Sultan, Sharon Bush Campion Platt, Morgan O’Connor, as well as “Housewives” Countess LuAnn de Lesseps, Ramona Singer and Sonja Morgan.
Pictured: R. Couri Hay, Sonja Morgan