Jeremy Scott and Longchamp celebrate a decade of creative collaboration
Friends and fans of L.A.-based designer Jeremy Scott and Paris-based luxury brand Longchamp gathered in the Hollywood Hills on Thursday night to celebrate a decade of collaboration.
The Longchamp label, founded by Jean Cassegrain as a small leathergoods business in 1948, is still owned and operated by members of the Cassegrain family. It has expanded over the years to include a full women’s ready-to-wear collection, shoes and luggage, but it is best known for its assortment of sturdy handbags, totes and satchels.
The most instantly recognizable bag style is Le Pliage (French for “the folding”), a versatile and, yes, foldable, tote offered in a range of different sizes and fabrics (including leather, nylon and canvas), all accented with signature leather straps and a logo-embossed leather oval that snaps soundly over the bag’s zipper closure.
Le Pliage is at the center of the label’s nearly 10-year collaborative effort with Scott, who was introduced to the Cassegrain family by publicist Kelly Cutrone, who was repping both brands.
That introduction resulted in designs plucked from Scott’s ready-to-wear collections adorning a Pliage travel bag sold each season. Over the years the brightly colored bags have been emblazoned with piles of pills, candy-colored keyboards, melting monster faces, credit cards and retro-style postcard graphics. (In a shrewd marketing move, each season one of the new co-branded bags is folded crisply and placed at each front-row seat at Scott’s New York Fashion Week show.)
Images of past bag designs could be seen scrolling across the 2,000-inch-plus video wall at Thursday night’s party held at Club James, the private concrete and stainless steel party palace James Goldstein constructed next to his home in the hills of Beverly Hills.
Goldstein, who often rents out the house for fashion-related events and photos shoots, was in the house Thursday night, decked out in colorful Moschino threads to honor Jeremy Scott (who in addition to designing his own line also serves as the creative director of Moschino). Model Amber Rose was also on Moschino overload, the Italian luxury brand’s name was festooned on her hat, the straps of her pink backpack and, when she put her clenched fists together, the knuckles of both hands.
Other notable attendees on hand included Kirsten Dunst, Freida Pinto, China Chow, Liz Goldwyn, stylists Johnny Wujek, Jen Rade and George Kotsiopoulos, and members of the Cassegrain family, including U.S. Business Director Olivier Cassegrain, Creative Director Sophie Delafontaine and Chief Executive Officer Jean Cassegrain.
At one point in the evening, the latter two joined Scott in blowing out the candles on a 10th anniversary cake decorated to resemble the TV test pattern from a recent bag design.
In honor of the milestone, Scott created a limited-edition version of Le Pliage called “Greetings from Hollywood.” Designed to resemble a postcard, one side of the $370 bag (available only online at www.longchamp.com) depicts a colorful, cartoonish jumble of Hollywood highlights including the Capital Records Building, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and Marilyn Monroe. The other side bears a postmark and the scrawled words: “Wish you were here! Love, Jeremy.”
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