Last night, on a spring evening as fine as New York City can offer, a mixed crowd of up and coming designers and fashion industry veterans converged on the Jane Hotel to sip cucumber mojitos and celebrate the 75th anniversary of Converse's favorite son: the Jack Purcell. In the hotel's recently opened Café Gitane (the status of the Jane's Ballroom remains up in the air), guests ate and drank at the leisure of servers dressed in retro tennis getups worthy of Ritchie Tenenbaum, inspiring a few young partygoers to appropriate the decoratively placed badminton shuttlecocks as hats. Though hardly the life of the party, the sneakers on display made for an effective centerpiece. Each pair bore the signature Jack Purcell "toe smile," and the addition of several high tops gave a forward look to the shoe while the brouged leather model referenced the classic wingtips that were so ubiquitous when the Jack Purcell was introduced in 1935.—Alexander Howard