At 8 p.m. on Wednesday, the penthouse at Chateau Marmont was buzzing, filling quickly with bodies and flashbulb energy as guests poured in for Staud’s Frieze Los Angeles kickoff cocktail.
Hosted by Sarah Staudinger and her husband, Endeavor chief executive officer Ariel Emanuel, on the eve of Frieze, the gathering stood out as the week’s most starry affair, blending the worlds of film, fashion and art.
Young Hollywood names like Rachel Sennott of “I Love LA” and “Tell Me Lies” actors Branden Cook, Sonia Mena and Katherine Hughes mingled alongside Orlando Bloom, Lauren Sánchez Bezos (who shied away from cameras), Veronica and Brian Grazer, Winnie Harlow, Dree Hemingway, Bill Maher, Nick Kroll, Scout Willis, Devendra Banhart, Meredith Mickelson and Supriya Ganesh. Art-world leaders and artists included Jeffrey Deitch, Essence Harden, Christine Messineo, Casey Fremont, Jay Ezra Nayssan and Nikolai Haas.
They stepped off the elevator on the sixth floor and into a corridor lined with servers balancing trays of Champagne, where works by Ethiopian artist Merikokeb Berhanu hung along the walls. The evening’s collaborator, she partnered with Staud on a limited-edition release of its signature Tommy bag.
The project — inspired by Berhanu’s painting “Untitled CII (2025)” — reimagined the handbag in four designs, each rendered in intricate beadwork with abstract, painterly motifs in saturated greens, blues, golds and black. Produced in editions of 10 and priced at $1,300, the limited pieces were available for purchase on-site.
An hour into the night, it was elbow-to-elbow throughout the suite, spilling onto the balcony overlooking Sunset Boulevard, where martinis clinked and skinny cigarettes burned as music pulsed beneath the hum of conversation.