Stylish New Yorkers Came Out to Celebrate Alice + Olivia’s Latest Jean-Michel Basquiat Inspired Collection

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Jean-Michel Basquiat, as one of the most influential American artists of the 20th century, was a rock star of the early ’80s New York art scene. (After all, the 1980s was a time when artists, especially successful artists, were stars in demand, and nowhere was this more obvious than in Manhattan nightclubs.) He painted and partied in the same clothes. Famously, he wore not artist smocks but Giorgio Armani suits with paint splattered at the hems. A person could spend years trying to recreate his wardrobe—just ask Alice + Olivia creative director Stacey Bendet.

This season, Bendet found inspiration in Basquiat s stylish nonchalance for her second collaboration with the Basquiat estate. And to celebrate, the designer hosted a wall-to-wall blow-out party covered with the same graffiti flair that Basquiat spray-painted on subway cars, streets, and art shows.

Fittingly, the vibe at the party had a decidedly south-of-14th-Street feel with raw concrete floors, lofty ceilings, and a host of cool girls and guys dressed in the collection emblazoned with Jean-Michel iconography—and some fresh ink, too. In attendance were A+O s Stacey Bendet, Natalia Dyer, Nicky Hilton, Victoria Justice, Huma Abedin, Jenny Mollen Biggs, Audrey Hilfiger, and Brooks Nader.

Complimentary Basquiat-inspired tattoos were on offer; motifs ranged from a single paintbrush to a three-prong coronet to a thunderbolt. The boombox tattoo would have felt right at home in his studio, where a cacophony of music and television played while he worked. All were an apt nod to the Neo-expressionist and his love of language and desire to get a message across. As for the message at Alicia + Olivia? Make your clothes your canvas.