Mejuri Took Over Sing Sing to Unveil New Short Film By Gia Coppola

If you were at the Mejuri bash at Alphabet City karaoke haunt Sing Sing last night, you may have thought you were finally gone loopy after fashion week. But no, you weren’t delirious; that really was a live quartet playing at a faux wedding (of Mej and Uri!) behind one door, and yes, that other vignette was a makeshift retirement party for someone called Chris. If you didn’t know where to look or turn to next, thankfully, you could take refuge momentarily in one of the booths, where the jewelry brand’s new cinematic short films were playing on a loop.

A New York Minute is a three-part mini-motion picture series that feels part authentic home video, part documentary, part unscripted reality show, and very much not like a commercial. And so to celebrate this unusual project, which will be officially rolled out from Monday, a rather different kind of celebration was on the cards.

On Thursday night, those involved, as well as downtown creatives and friends of the brand, got together for a nostalgic knees-up (one that went on ’til 2 a.m.). Hosted by Gia Coppola and her uncle Roman Coppola, founder of The Directors Bureau, the event downright insisted attendees get loose and put their vocal cords to the test, go down memory lane, binge on some sugary snacks, and let their hair down after a long week of fashion shows.

In the graffiti’d and black-walled Avenue A institution, there were healthy helpings of kitschy catering options lined up, stacks of candy, buckets of beer, as well as vintage-style cakes to give people the late-night sustenance they needed. Throughout the bar, bespoke rooms had been concocted to evoke memories, like prom, a romantic proposal set-up, or coming home from college for the holidays to find your parents had dumped your stuff into the basement.

From A New York Minute’s cast, Laura Love, Samantha Sussman, Natalie Vall-Freed, and Rozzi Crane (family friends of Gia’s) caught up and shared the mic in the balloon-filled ‘birthday party’ room. Elsewhere, artists and models channeled the innocent energy of sleepovers from their youths by jumping on beds and screaming along to Fleetwood Mac, Whitney Houston, and Jay Z. Down the end of Sing Sing’s narrow corridor, a string quartet was fielding requests (Lady Gaga? You got it! Coldplay? Sure!) in a scene intended to look like someone’s big white day. However, most weddings wouldn’t feature Binx Walton, Hanne Gaby Odiele, and Ethan James Green joyfully feeding each other cake just out of eyeshot.

“We had this idea—if we were to throw a party in New York, what would we want it to look like,” Jacob Jordan, Mejuri’s newly-minted chief brand officer and a fashion industry veteran, told Vogue. “We wanted to make it feel like we were young again; have those moments that you would go on to remember for the rest of your life. So that’s why there’s a campy scene in each room…thematically, it ties into what we’re trying to poke at with the campaign. It’s all about the in-between, organic moments in life which, at the time, you weren’t aware of how much meaning they would go on to have.”

Back in the current moment, memories were certainly being made. At the Under the Sea-themed prom, there was a mass sing-along to Savage Garden while shots were flowing, fortunes were told, laughs were shared, and numbers were exchanged. In short: An actual party…and an ‘only in New York’ minute.