McCartney’s Tale of Two Parties

Take a cue from Stella McCartney: why have one fête when you can have two? McCartney’s cozy store opened just a few months ago in Paris’s Palais Royale arcade, next door to Rick Owens, and she made a point to celebrate the fact at the close of Paris couture week yesterday not once, but twice. Wednesday is the day French school children have the afternoon off, so hip mom McCartney began the festivities at her Palais Royale HQ with a proper French “Goutée” (after-school snack) for the youth of the premier quartier: hot dogs, waffles, face painting, a caricaturist, and the Jardin de Luxembourg’s famous puppet show set up in front of the store for the afternoon. Meanwhile, press checked out the slightly frightening robot head “mother” mannequins in the windows, Stella’s popular “Days of the Week” knickers, and Cherry sandals for Spring.

“You know, I have mixed emotions about Paris,” said McCartney, describing her Chunnel-crossing identity crisis. “It’s a place I associate with great architecture and history, but I also worked here. Now that I have a store, it feels almost like a home away from home.” As soon as the kids, moms, and nannies headed home, Stella and co. changed for the evening  to host an intimate store cocktail and souper at Palais Royale’s Le Grand Véfour for 50 or so of her nearest and dearest, including dad Sir Paul, her boss François-Henri Pinault, Catherine Deneuve, Marianne Faithful, Azzedine Alaïa, Arielle Dombasle,  fellow Pinault group designer YSL’s Stefano Pilati, Daphne Guinness, Nan Goldin, glamorous Russian art vixen Dasha Zhukova and those lovely legs for hire: Heidi Mount, Lara Stone, and Lily Donaldson.

Photo by Stephen Feugere.