For the opening party of Moncler’s biggest flagship, the brand packed the place with an appropriately stacked guest list.
VIP guests arrived one after the next over the course of the evening on Thursday, including Julia Roberts, Cher, Anne Hathaway, Serena Williams, Jessica Chastain, Adrien Brody, Spike Lee, François Arnaud, Maria Sharapova, Colin Kaepernick, Adriana Lima, Pete Davidson, Sam Nivola, Helena Christensen, Penn Badgley, Gus Kenworthy, Future, Gavin Casalegno, Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie, Odell Beckham Jr., Ilia Malinin, Mark Ronson, Shaun White, Jordan Clarkson and more.
The two-floor store had the AC on full blast, allowing for celebrities to wear their Moncler finest despite the September heat.
“On a film set in the winter everybody’s in a puffer, so it’s nice that there’s a chic version of it and it’s not just a big square,” Roberts said shortly after her arrival, with a puffer draped over her shoulders.
The actress is set to return to Broadway this fall, in “Small Mouth Sounds,” 20 years after she was last on stage.
“I think just having a whole new experience,” she said of what she was most looking forward to about doing the play. “When I did it before I had little teeny tiny kids. So I was working a 24-hour day. And to have an experience, 1789154895 they’re adults…I think I’m looking forward to that. And it’s also great to be back with Paul [Rudd] and Joe [Mantello]. It’s like a dream come true.”
Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain
Gilbert Flores/WWD
Lucas Pinheiro Braathen, the gold medal-winning alpine skier, had landed in New York earlier that day from Chile, where he has been training in the Andes.
“I arrived at 9 a.m. and came basically straight to the hotel, got some makeup, threw some clothes on, and now we’re celebrating this,” Braathen said, from a quiet private room on the store’s lower level.
The skier won Brazil’s first Winter Olympic medal this past February, and has been living in Rio de Janeiro before he’ll head to Austria soon for the season.
“I never thought that I’d be able to live there before I ended my career,” he said of being in Rio following his victory. “It’s been emotional. I’ve been learning a lot about myself as well because when your reality kind of flips on its head overnight like that, it’s a lot to take in at once. And especially a country like Brazil where you’re looking at well over 200 million people. So it’s just been a lot of gratitude, but also a lot to handle, I would say. It’s been new. But I’ve learned so much and I’m just trying to bring the high frequency and the love and the good energy with me to the next season.”
After several hours of exploring the store, select guests made their way over to Gotham Hall, where a private dinner was held to continue the celebrations. Roberts, Cher, Chastain, Brody and White mingled over cocktails before heading into a larger room decked out like an alpine forest — complete with scores of real pine trees that filled the room with their calming scent, which was perhaps needed by some since the evening didn’t wind down until well after midnight.
François Arnaud
Gilbert Flores/WWD