Yes, the Rashomon-style coverage continues. This is how big of a deal bestselling ‘I Was Told There’d Be Cake’ author and “most popular” Vintage publicist Sloane Crosley is: there are contextual Google advertisements on her behalf.
So really, it’s no surprise that the crowd at her (second!) book party last night at the Helmut Lang store in New York’s glamorous/reviled Meatpacking district was very, very fancy. Just check out how many “socialites” — at least, per WireImage’s definition of that term — were in attendance! Okay, so the only “famous” people there — Kristian Laliberte! Julia Allison! Laurel Touby! — will only seem famous to you if you spend way too much time on the Internet. But were there any literary celebrities in attendance — besides the Helmut Lang-clad Crosley herself, of course?
Indeed there were! Well-known book world people in attendance included Riverhead editor Sean McDonald, Sterling Lord agent Ira Silverberg, Jonathan Ames (pictured) and pre-hype Riverhead debut novelist Elizabeth Spiers, who co-hosted the party with Ames, Nick Stern and A.M. Homes.
One was struck by how many of Crosley’s buddies are once and former writers of gossip and/or internet randomness — people like Paula Froelich, Chris Wilson, George Gurley, Alex Balk, Doree Shafrir, Ben Widdicombe, Jeff Bercovici, Spencer Morgan, Jessica Coen and Chris Tennant. None of these people, to our knowledge, have ever given Crosley a pony or pooped on her bathroom floor.
There were also a lot of fashion people there for some reason.
It was weird and fun to go to a party in a store. A lot of people made jokes about how easy it would have been to shoplift some of the Helmut Lang clothes on display by just walking out in them, a la Jenny Humphrey on Gossip Girl. There didn’t seem to be any security to speak of. The one concession the store made to protecting the clothes was that all of the liquids available for consumption were clearish — mojitos and white wine — and that there weren’t nearly enough of them. Vanity Fair contributing editor Andrew Hearst broke a wineglass, sending shards skittering under the clothesracks, and nobody really noticed or cared.
These days even book parties for books that don’t have the word “cake” in the title are apt to have cupcakes on offer, so the stakes were high for Crosley’s party’s offering. Coupons for the petit-four type confections were doled out at the door, to be redeemed at a truck — which was not the Dessert Truck, but some other dessert-dispensing truck! — parked outside. The cakes were dry and crumbly, difficult to eat while standing up and talking, more party favor than party snack. Some guests were less than thrilled. FishbowlNY blogger Glynnis MacNicol felt that she’d been misled by a friend who’d hinted that there’d be more substantial appetizers: “I was told there’d be cheese,” she griped.
To be fair, there were a few platters of biscotti by the door.