Oooh-la-la, it was one of those sur­real expe­ri­ences at the VCA party on Tues­day night. A crush of peo­ple, a glam­orous atmos­phere, a hand­ful celebri­ties, and a lot French flair went on through­out the evening. I only wish there had been more jew­elry, although there was one women wear­ing what looked like least ten dif­fer­ent neck­laces. She had arranged them beau­ti­fully, each one draped per­fectly from the dog col­lar on down­ward. I wasn’t close enough to see if they were fine jew­elry or faux, but I thought the look was cre­atively achieved and cer­tainly more enter­tain­ing than any­thing else I saw around the room. She cer­tainly out­shone Ash­ley Olsen who was stand­ing to my left in a rather fune­real black lace dress, look­ing more dazed than daz­zling. I also saw a demure and nicely put together Eve, who was wear­ing a snappy LBD, and I must say that in per­son, she is quite lovely. Misha Bar­ton was doing a photo op as I skipped out the door. She had on roman­tic, perfect-for– late sum­mer, soft per­sim­mon col­ored dress and a few key baubles from VCA: the Alham­bra bracelet (which actu­ally might have been a neck­lace that she adapted—interesting idea) and a Fleur dia­mond ring which was just great.

Up on stage was a dif­fer­ent mat­ter alto­gether, dur­ing the “run­way” por­tion of the show, the mod­els were wear­ing some incred­i­ble looks but the jew­elry, at least in my opin­ion, stole the show. I was up in the bal­cony sec­tion of the Ham­mer­stein Ball­room and you could see those dia­monds with­out binoc­u­lars! The neck­laces, bracelets and ear­rings were lush, majes­tic and absolutely production-worthy. I would have loved to see have got­ten a bet­ter look at them up close but I did arrive after the pieces were removed from their dis­play cases. And while VCA pro­jected images of their amaz­ing wares up onto the walls, there is noth­ing like see­ing it before your eyes. Here’s my excuse: my chil­dren needed din­ner before Mom could fly out the door, so I was a bit late for the cocktails-and-chatter part of the evening. Even the per­form­ers were wear­ing VCA and the bare-breasted Lido ladies appar­ently don’t need Fash­ion Week to strut their stuff (I know VCA was going for A day in Paris yet it is an ironic choice for 7^th Avenue, no?).

My feel­ing was that VCA was cel­e­brat­ing their cen­ten­nial anniver­say and found an appro­pri­ate venue and time to give a party, which was fun, friv­o­lous, costly, and gra­cious. The mod­els wear­ing the jew­elry with those gor­geous gar­ments was noth­ing short of won­der­ful. Still I yearned for more, and VCA has been the medi­a­tor between metal, pre­cious stones, and party dresses for a cen­tury. I hope they don’t make us wait another hun­dred years to show us how jew­elry always been an inte­gral part of the fash­ion scene.