Marc Jacobs Takes Over Bergdorf Goodman for an After-Dark Experience

There’s a classic Twilight Zone episode where a shopper becomes locked in a department store after hours and finds all the mannequins come to life. Here’s the twist: She is actually a mannequin herself. Hmm… After a spooky and surreal dinner at Bergdorf Goodman, I’m thinking I would definitely give it all up to become a Marc Jacobs mannequin. They wear black and white striped cocoon-like puffer coats like those of Qui Êtes-Vous Polly Maggoo? They have radically elegant khaki skirts over pants. Their platform mary-janes are at least 10 inches tall. Oh yeah, and they’re great dancers. Just before dinner, the “mannequins” we had been admiring and taking selfies with revealed themselves to be actual people by flowing and spinning around the table. 

That was just one of the dozens of surprises up Jacobs’s pristinely tailored sleeve Thursday night. The event, to mark the launch of Jacobs’s exclusive-to-Bergdorf Goodman fall 2021 collection, began with a sales associate handing me a flashlight on the pitch-black handbag floor and encouraging me to “snoop around.” (Desires aside, I did not steal even a keyfob!) Several guests used theirs to find secret envelopes, which, about two floors and ten audible gasps later, were revealed to be tarot cards read by an eclectic woman in a great black dress and even greater body glitter. (My card, the two of pentacles, encourages knowing one’s worth in the financial realms.) Scarlett Envy emceed the evening in a, well, scarlet sequin number she made that very day while West Dakota delivered two monumental performances, one on the shoe floor and one after dinner. Jacobs’s friends Chloë Sevigny, Debi Mazar, Anna Sui, Kim Petras, Ella Emhoff, Helena Christensen, and Amelia Gray Hamlin took it all in as the evening transitioned from mysterious happening to a straight-up fashion banger. 

Bergdorf’s Linda Fargo addressed diners to affirm that Marc had perfectly captured the late-night, Night at the Museum feeling of BG after dark, “Nobody before has ever captured that essence and turned it into a happening. Leave it to Marc, who gives us so many firsts; there are so many seminal moments in the arc of fashion where Marc changed the narrative of style and moved us forward in some unexpected new way.” Oh, and one more thing! “I really want that striped puffer!” Fargo cheered after her toast. Maybe Linda wants to be a Marc mannequin too? It’s a select, incredibly well attired, and pretty fun bunch.