Hollywood stars and fashion legends were out in full force for Burberry’s fashion show and party at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles on Thursday night.
It’s a rare night in Hollywood when CAA honchos Kevin Huvane and Bryan Lourd are the faces people can’t place.
An arsenal of U.K. fashionistas and global pop culture stars filled a custom built tent at the Griffith Observatory for luxury fashion house Burberry’s “London in Los Angeles” event, a multi-million dollar fashion show, concert and visual spectacle that amounted to a “mountain top buyout.”
Burberry fans Victoria Beckham, David Beckham (with one grown child and three younger offspring clinging to them) David Furnish, Sir Elton John, Huvane, Lourd, Anna Wintour (London native and titled as an OBE), and new “Late Late Show” host James Corden, with wife Julia Carey were among the stylish guests sitting on the front row for the show.
“We’re 14 shows in,” Corden told a boisterous agent type on the way in, as Carey chatted to friends about just having given birth to a “chubby” baby.
Burberry rebuilt the iron gates of the Griffith Observatory to echo Buckingham Palace, and welcomed stars including Cara Delevigne, Kate Beckinsale, Mila Kunis, Rose Byrne and January Jones to pass through them.
There were moguls (Jeffrey Katzenberg, Ryan Seacrest), entrepreneurial creators (Chris Hardwick, Adrian Grenier), and Jamie King (above at left, pregnant and wearing a sheer dress revealing her underwear).
There is a reason why there are hardly any parties held at the Griffith Observatory — as it costs the crown jewels.
The security was as tight as for a presidential inauguration in Washington D.C. From Mercedes sprinters shuttling guests up the private mountain through billowing flags, to the personally monogrammed Burberry scarves awaiting each guest at their seats and even valets who could not accept tips, the luxury brand went for luxury production.
A drum corps of soldiers leading the final fashion parade were actual British soldiers flown over for the event. They led a cast of models imported from eight time zones, as Naomi Campbell brought up the rear on a one-way walk towards the end of the tent that suddenly broke away.
When the far end of the fashion show tent disappeared to reveal the night sky, the soldiers and models led a parade down an extra 100 yards of a runway to where the theme of “London in Los Angeles” came to a visual crescendo projected across the observatory building itself as a helicopter shoot aerials.
Cue the slow clap for CEO Christopher Bailey (also in from London).
Fashion media captains who attended the glamorous event included Wintour, fellow Vogue staffer Lisa Love, Stefano Tonchi (W Magazine), Joe Zee (Editor in Chief, Yahoo Style), Krista Smith (Vanity Fair’s ambassador to Hollywood) and Janice Min (THR/Billboard) and photographer Mario Testino, he of the non-stop royal family commissions, with a point-and-shoot camera dangling from his wrist.
In the face of L.A.’s various vapid and belittled “fashion weeks,” this is the second major one-off in L.A. this year. Over Oscar Weekend, Tom Ford’s show at Milk Studios realigned the celebrity orbit, news cycle, and tilted the Oscar weekend template.
Andy Gelb and his Slate PR team coordinated that event as well, carving out a new beachhead far west of Lincoln Center.
Besides top shelf fashion, the other new kid on the block Thursday night was Periscope. Beyond Burberry promoting several of their own feeds from inside, the most frequent reaction to the show was to go hunting for “hearts.”
