Dua Lipa Shuts Down the Lower East Side With a Star-Studded, Smoky Met Gala After-Party

Dua Lipa and Rihanna.German Larkin

The night of the Met Gala included like, “11 parties” according to one PR outside of Dua Lipa’s own freaky fête at the Lower East Side club, Virgo. (Fun fact: Karl Lagerfeld was a Virgo). Though, the number of official after-parties was actually 10 and the majority were in classic New York City after-party locations (The Boom Boom Room) or simply uptown (The Mark itself). But Dua Lipa, a Met Gala co-chair, decided to gather the most megawatt of guests into Virgo’s cavernous basement club; a downtown underworld filled with smoke machines and Dom Perignon.

A Met after-party is always an exciting existential crisis; a bizarre juxtaposition of celebrity and everyday life, and there was no better way to do it than at Virgo. The non-descript location, which was next to a for-lease building, was flanked by a crew of kids and fans who had been waiting for arrivals for hours. They had one early-on sighting: Billie Eilish, who shuffled in wearing a zip-up jacket from Lu u Dan and a backward baseball cap. But they’d have to wait a few more hours until Met Gala attendees arrived.

Though, the wait may have just been worth it: soon after, Dua Lipa arrived in an old-school Chanel look composed of a bra top and a pair of knit shorts along with layers of Chanel necklaces, including a strand of gumball-sized pearls. Throughout the night, with throbbing sets by The Martinez Brothers, Skepta, Jammer, and Mia Moretti, more familiar faces trickled in, like a vape-chugging Brooklyn Beckham and his wife Nicola Peltz-Beckham (in a short red dress and a head ornament), model Cara Delevingne and gal pal actors Margot Robbie and Vanessa Hudgens, a beaming Emma Chamberlain, a handsome Trevor Noah, and the angelic Penelope Cruz who seemed to quickly disappear among the throngs of people.

Among dancing designers like Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli and a buff Simon Porte Jacquemus, there was Willie Norris, who was wearing a long, tailored black insulated coat that she made herself under Willie Norris for Outlier. “I like any excuse to look very, very good,” she said, jokingly adding. “I feel like I’m having a Sex and the City moment.” Also in the mix was Succession’s Pierce princess Annabelle Dexter-Jones, girl-about-town-turned-actor. (It’s worth noting that her pixie-mullet brings out her incredible cheekbones). “It feels kind of weird, like it’s going to get weird!” she said of the space, wearing her mother’s strapless black 1993 Karl Lagerfeld-era Chloé dress. “I feel like you can do things here without anyone seeing or watching or filming it. It’s dark, in a good way.” Ominous!

Towards the end of the night, as in the very end of the night around 4 AM, two long-awaited special guests arrived: A$AP Rocky and Rihanna, who wore a custom white Chrome Hearts look that included an itty-bitty bump-revealing jacket and a long skirt with a buttoned-slit that went up to the top of the thigh. A glittering treat to the Lower East Side, courtesy of Ms. Lipa.