Peter Pilotto’s Only Happy When It Rains

The British Fashion Council imported a truckload of London-based designers to hang out in NYC for the week, and more than a few of them turned up at the Jane Hotel outpost of Cafe Gitane last night for a dinner in honor of Peter Pilotto. Pilotto and partner Christopher De Vos got the wine ‘n’ dine treatment courtesy of hosts Humberto Leon and Carol Lim, and the guest list was suitably transatlantic: Team U.K. included Nicholas Kirkwood, Louise Gray, and Linda Farrow’s Simon Jablon, while Team U.S.A. was capably represented by Spike Jonze, Jen Brill, actress Greta Gerwig, and Fiery Furnaces frontwoman Eleanor Friedberger, among others. Naturally, talk turned-—as it will—to static cling. “Every other minute, it was ‘zap, zap,’” recalled De Vos (pictured, center, with Pilotto), unspooling an anecdote about the “epic” staticky-ness of the studio he and Pilotto moved into last summer. Long story short, the unusually hot and dry weather had combined with the studio’s layout and engineering to produce a superconductive atmosphere. “All the fabric was sticking,” De Vos continued. “People were telling us, spray hair spray on the models. I mean, it was impossible to drape.” Ultimately, the situation was redressed courtesy of about a dozen humidifiers, but De Vos and Pilotto admit that their Spring ‘10 collection came this close to being ultra-body con, because it began to seem easier to go with the cling than to fight it. “You almost never hear this in London,” De Vos said, “but I have to tell you, we were happy to have some rain.”

—Maya Singer