Escaping the Glass Cage

Inside glitterati and grifters search for drinks. Caterers weave through the crowds but seem to only be carrying empty champagne flutes. It’s disorienting being at these parties, especially straight off an 11-hour flight from LA and worse, stone-cold sober. I keep looking for a bar and as if to sharpen the evening’s uncanny atmosphere, Chloë Sevigny steps out from the shadow of the building’s central hemicycle staircase.

Miu Miu models mingle with the crowd, part performance art, part hype crew. Some wander around streaming videos on iPhones and others lounge atop screens. One is locked inside a metal cage, another stands on a stage, singing into a microphone. It’s all part of Tales & Tellers, performances mixed with video installations culled from Miu Miu’s prestigious, bi-annual film commission Women’s Tales, which features works about vanity and femininity by directors such as Mati Diop, Miranda July and Alice Rohrwacher. It’s unclear who all the performers represent. Are they visions? Fashion models? The press release says they’re characters from the different movies, but alive and roaming about they take on an enigmatic meaning. I spot filmmaker Janizca Bravo and introduce myself. Bravo’s ebullient and glowing, in town for Art Basel and because one of her films is in the installation.

Like all LA people the conversation veers to traffic, gyms and juices. It’s grounding to talk LA. That I haven’t managed to find a drink somehow seems fitting. I hear myself telling Bravo’s beau that once he moves to California we’ll rinse the British right out of him, find him a trainer, get him into Erehwon and it goes without saying, drinking less.

The dozens of Miu Miu performers gather at the back of the hall. They start clapping and chanting, the chorus of voices echoing across the cavernous, concrete 1937 masterpiece. Everyone circles around the action.

“I have no idea what’s happening,” says Juju Amoré, a model who lives and works in Paris. “I’ve never seen anything like this before."

While clapping, the Miu Miu models parade down the center of the exhibition, past the installations, past the now empty cage, past the silent karaoke stand. They file into an attached theater.

“It’s so beautiful,” says Amoré’s bestie, Samia Larouiche, when I ask her thoughts. “Besides, there’s hot straight people and hot queer people here, what’s not to like?”

On the other side of the staircase drinks finally appear, but the energy shifts. Sevigny and Bravo have vanished. I try to find my PR handler, but even they’ve left to “seek nourishment.”

Newspapers hang like pressed shirts on a garment conveyor at the dry cleaners, circling around and around on a track. There’s a stand and I grab a copy of The Truthless Times, “Envisaged by Goshka Macuga” and dated “Friday, October 20, 2034.” Macuga is the interdisciplinary artist behind the entire night and the paper, which has headlines like “Famous Philosopher Found in Athletic Attire” and “Tourists Reach Terminus at Last Resort.” Rather than articles, there are QR codes that lead to short stories disguised as articles on Miu Miu’s website. As someone who curates a reading series and is launching a print tabloid, I can’t help but adore that one of the world’s chicest fashion houses is bankrolling a project that blends fact and fiction. The paper echoes the characters from the video installations, strolling among us and yet not quite real.

The crowds thin out, but the booze starts flowing. Caterers pour champagne and trays of flamingo pink cocktails float past. Maybe it’s the jet lag the fake newspapers or the eerie performances, but the mood turns contemplative. What to make of these art parties? What’s the point of art in a world on fire? Miu Miu’s opening night responds to the complicated moment in maybe the only way an art party can: with style, poise, and charm.

As one Parisian I met described the night: “It’s cute.”