EDUN’S AFTER PARTY WITH RYAN MCGINLEY AT THE JANE HOTEL

It is a truth universally acknowledged that wherever the most famous people are at a party, that is where everyone else wants to go, too. This was proved for the umpteenth time Sunday night at the after party for Edun at The Jane hotel. 

The Jane Hotel has been on a bit of a de facto hiatus from the party scene of late. That is, until Edun, Jefferson Hack and Ryan McGinley took it over Sunday night for a party celebrating the fashion label’s first ad campaign. McGinley photographed the ads, using six species of African butterflies on his models’ bodies, so the space was appropriately outfitted with live butterflies, who flitted throughout the ballroom. Ali Hewson hung with her daughter Eve, while Helena Christensen, Jeff Koons, Courtney Love and Stephen Dorff chatted on the venue’s well-worn sofas.

Initial entry showed a bar seemingly devoid of partygoers, save a few tired members of the press. The main ballroom, with its velvet couches rubbed to a comfortable sheen and its stuffed animal heads and half-ruined disco ball, had been taken over by small screens playing the label’s spring video portraits, where models released butterflies from their gathered silk shorts and vests. Around the screens were roughly 25 people, who sat and talked in lowered voices. Ryan McGinley, who shot the advertisements, overlooked the scene from halfway up the stairs. “I think it’s beautiful,” McGinley said of the images. “There are butterflies over there, too. In those cages.”

If there were butterflies on the mezzanine level, they were either impossible to see because of the crush of people, or they had died from the exhaled smoke of cigarettes. The cages sat relatively unmolested, surrounded by discarded liquor glasses. There was no movement within. Marilyn Minter, Stephen Dorff, Joséphine de la Baume, Helena Christensen and Alexander Skarsgård were all packed together in the space, as were Johan Lindeberg, Waris Ahluwalia, Marco Brambilla and Theodora Richards. Richards wore a tight floral bodysuit from the line with a shaggy black fur coat over it and a scarf over her head, shimmying and posing with Edun’s designer, Ali Hewson. “It’s kind of funny, this line being environmentally friendly and everyone sitting around smoking,” one partygoer said. Richards laughed, “It is fashion week.”

Courtney Love arrived a little after midnight and progressed straight through the near-empty bar and relaxed ballroom before coming to an abrupt stop on the staircase, where she briefly sat. Rose McGowan attempted to navigate around her without much luck. “Who is that?” Love asked. Someone told her. “Oh, yeah.” Love said. It was Grammys night, wasn’t it? “You bet your ass,” Love said, before launching into a harried analysis of the recent passing of Whitney Houston. Jefferson Hack peered around the corner at the top of the stairs. “Oh!” Love said and hurried up the stairs to join the crush.

Back in the abandoned bar, a trio of McGinley’s male models were arguing over what to order at the open bar. “Who cares,” one of them said loudly, “I just don’t want to go back up there. I think some chick from a WB show just burned me with her cigarette."