Lila Moss Celebrates 22nd Birthday at Late Night Paris Fashion Week Party

On the Paris Fashion Week nightlife circuit, there are tough doors, and then there’s frequent W contributor, photographer, and gin maker Mert Alas’s annual Seventy One after-party. This season the ultra-exclusive soirée was held on Sunday evening under the shimmering disco balls at Le Bar du Bristol, a jewel box of a watering hole tucked away off the lobby of the stately hotel Le Bristol on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. It doubled as a 22nd birthday party for Lila Moss, and a bevy of models, including the guest of honor’s mom, Kate Moss, as well as Irina Shayk, Lourdes Leon, Barbara Palvin, and Carla Bruni who came out to dance the night away.

The invitation suggested a thoroughly Parisian start time of 11pm, meaning that the room actually got full well after midnight. Kate held court on a banquette in one corner, and Lila in another. Just before 1am, the flashbulbs popped as fashion icon-turned-multihyphenate Daphne Guinness slipped in dressed in gold from her molded breastplate to her signature gravity-defying Noritaka Tatehana heel-less platforms and went straight to the stage to perform her single “No Joke” off her new album, Sleep. The pulsing electronic beat and perversely motivational lyrics (“Time to love / No time to cry / You won’t be here for long / One day you’re going to die”) got the crowd moving.

A little later on, attendants in white dinner jackets wheeled in an enormous Victorian crimson two-tier cake on a glass trolley. Guests sang happy birthday to Lila, who blew out her 22 golden candles with pouty-faced panache. Then, this being Paris, where only a rare few actually eat at parties, the cake was wheeled back out, seemingly never to be plated. Until closing time when Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” played and hotel staff reminded exiting guests plotting their next moves at a New York decibel level to keep their voices down s’il vous plaît, the dance floor was hopping. Credit is due to great sets by Ines Supa and Luka Sabbat that mixed Madonna, the Backstreet Boys, and Édith Piaf. The glistening bottles of Seventy One Gin on the VIP tables and flowing Golden Martinis probably didn’t hurt either. Here, a look inside the starry affair.