Party Girl, Party Girl...

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I love dressing up for a night out. So much so that I’ve started to engineer evenings on the town that are 100% impossible to dress for, purely as a challenge for myself. Attending a Ska Dance night and then stopping by a Canadian-themed bar to catch the end of a hockey game. Following up a DIY house show with a few drinks at a Tiki bar. Going straight from kayaking to a themed costume birthday party. I’m a sick individual! To test my muscle for this week’s STAR⟡MAIL, I’ve put together some hypothetical outfits that I would wear to a few fictional parties!

The allure of a really great party is slightly ephemeral and, in my experience, sometimes more appealing in fantasy than reality. As fun as a raucous night on the town is, sometimes true joy looks more like curling up on the couch with a friend, watching Sex and the City, and loudly proclaiming that “we’re gonna throw so many parties just like that this summer!” So here is my tried and true list of things to watch when you briefly feel the urge to go out but ultimately decide that you’d prefer to watch a good stylish party scene, as well as some hypothetical outfits for said parties:

The Daytrippers (1996) dir. Greg Mottola

Parker Posey’s role in Party Girl is a seminal work on the art of the 90s downtown club kid party. But I think Greg Mottola’s The Daytrippers (1996), starring Parker Posey, Hope Davis, Liev Schreiber, and Stanley Tucci alongside Pat McNamara and Anne Meara, also deserves a place in the pantheon of great 90s New York party movies. The film presents a few low key party scenes as the characters drift between a book launch in a loft and a holiday party in an apartment on Spring St, where Marcia Gay Harden claims that the “health conscious contingent” has already filled the tub with hummus. The emotional climax of the film sees Tucci smoking a cigarette as he tangos between blurry string lights on a rooftop in Manhattan, a move I have been trying to recreate since my first watch. 

What I’d wear to a friends-and-colleagues 90s loft party:

Nowhere (1997) dir. Gregg Araki

The high school party scene is an institution. From 10 Things I Hate About You to Can't Hardly Wait, many classics of the Hughes-ian genre hinge completely on how much FOMO the central rager could give a teenage audience. I find the party scene in Gregg Araki’s 1997 black comedy Nowhere so fun because it is totally unrecognizable to me. The location looks more like a music video set than a suburban house party. The characters, a phenomenal ensemble cast featuring James Duval, Christina Applegate, Rachel True, and Debi Mazar just to name a few, behave more like sexy depressed androids than high schoolers. The costumes are incredibly absurd in the most stylish way. Plus, they keep getting abducted by aliens, which is fun.

What I’d wear to a nihilistic apocalyptic absurdist LA high school rager:

Much Ado About Nothing (1993) dir. Kenneth Branagh

A pitfall of many historical costume dramas is how many fail to make the parties look fun, all stuffy teas and choreographed dances. Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing really strives in this regard. The picnics look relaxed and gorgeous. The feasts feel lively and romantic. And everyone looks amazing!

What I’d wear to a Shakespearean bacchanal:

Kids in the Hall Season 4 Intro (1993)

On a Friday evening a few months ago, when it was still too cold to go out without a contingency plan for my bulky leather jacket in a crowded Brooklyn bar, my fiance and I were still in our work clothes eating pizza and watching Kids in the Hall while we debated whether either of us had been invited to anything that night worth leaving the warm embrace of our apartment. As we took turns shooting down the other’s proposed evening plans, we slowly came to the realization that the only prospect that could drag us off the couch was a 1993 warehouse party with the perfect ratio of drag queens to sketch comedians, as is depicted in the KitH Season 4 intro sequence. The black and white clips of party-goers dancing and chatting on ratty old sofas should be the theme for my next birthday. 

What I’d wear to this ideal Friday night:

Need to recreate the looks from this “Club Night Out” fashion spread in the July 1995 issue of Sassy:

If you’re into this Nylon article, you should read Marlowe Granados’ Happy Hour:

Brendon Holder writes beautifully about party-girl-pain like the blood pooling in a ballerina’s pointe shoes:

Major party foul chic from Cheryl Tiegs in Hawaii in a Tori Richard dress, shot by Helmut Newton in 1973:

Emily Sundberg is a genius and her response to the NYT's treatise on partying is so good:

Love the Big Soy Naturals podcast and their plea for young adults to act young and PARTY: