Twenty-five blocks south of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, at the waning end of another long first Monday in May, a lively offshoot of the 2023 Met Gala is just getting started. The setting is Mr. Chow, the swank Chinese restaurant that Michael Chow opened on 57th Street in 1979—two years after nearby Studio 54, and four years before Karl Lagerfeld’s debut collection for Chanel. As for the guests, trickling in from the Upper East Side, they are the definition of glamour itself. Hairstylist Sam McKnight, in town from London, has just teased Kate Moss’s blonde lengths. Erykah Badu’s sublime energy is still radiating through Jawara, who styled hair for the musician and her daughter, Puma Curry. Angela Levin, responsible for Nicole Kidman’s makeup, watched the actress slip effortlessly into the same dress she wore for her 2004 Chanel No. 5 campaign. The two talents behind Gisele’s bombshell look—David von Cannon on hair, Georgi Sandev on that incandescent face—are here too, along with a sizable contingent of the beauty industry’s top tier. In lieu of a bustling coat check, suitcase-size kits are tucked into a quiet corner of the bar.
The occasion is the Met artists dinner, a tradition set in motion nearly a decade ago by makeup artist Troy Surratt. “The idea was born out of the fact that this is really one of the most glamorous events to happen annually in New York City, and it put a lot of our friends and colleagues all in the same place at the same time,” says Surratt, soft-spoken and silver-haired in a white button-down and Chanel necklace—a nod to the Costume Institute’s Karl Lagerfeld exhibition. It’s rare to have a quorum in this business, when beauty teams usually consist of a single makeup artist and hairstylist, like two oppositely charged ends of a battery. By contrast, the crowd at Mr. Chow feels like a cross-generational yearbook come to life. “It’s the greatest people ever—past, present, and future, everybody in one room,” says Sarah Brown, executive director of Violet Grey’s Violet Lab, who brought the beauty platform onboard as a co-sponsor in 2022. Augustinus Bader, the industry’s skin care darling, is supporting this year’s dinner as well. “What I love about the evening is these are real working people,” says Brown, a former Vogue beauty director with a deep appreciation for behind-the-scenes legends. She paints a Mission: Impossible kind of picture: “They are literally in a van outside the Met, waiting to see if fill-in-the-blank Oscar winner needs her ponytail fluffed up before the after-party.”
Mr. Chow marks the intermission between red-carpet prep and after-party touchups: a refueling for gossip and Champagne and chicken satay. Makeup artist Sam Visser (who looked after Balenciaga’s Demna) and Raoúl Alejandre (behind Nicola Peltz Beckham’s crisp cat eye) catch up on the upstairs balcony. Colorist Jenna Perry recaps her handiwork (Maude Apatow’s copper; rich brown on Karlie Kloss) and shouts out Florence Pugh’s fresh buzz cut by the “amazing” Peter Lux. “That woman is striking,” Violet Grey founder Cassandra Grey agrees, nodding in her shearling Chanel jacket: “You have to have the right head shape.” Facialist Lord Gavin McLeod-Valentine, who bookended his day with Kim Petras and Olivier Rousteing, clinks glasses with Milk cofounder Mazdack Rassi, sending out a splash of Mexican martini. “I’m just excited for King Charles’s coronation, okay?” he quips—and in fact he’ll be a Today show commentator for this weekend’s occasion, beaming in bright and early from LA. Zanna Roberts Rassi, recovering from three-and-a-half hours of live coverage for E!, scrolls through her phone, filled with dress sketches and archival images—weeks’ worth of prep for red-carpet commentary. “I actually wish I had been in this room before I went on air,” she exhales, “because my gossip would have been so much better!” Hairstylist Mara Roszak spent the day with Olivia Wilde (“a goddess through and through”), while Adir Abergel perfected the shag on Lagerfeld muse Kristen Stewart, a regular in his chair since the first Twilight movie. Fara Homidi, whose handsome new makeup line is a topic of conversation, describes the glam for her friend Paloma Elsesser—“a dirty cat eye, with antique Swarovskis that I placed in random spots”—as an all-day affair. “It was like, makeup, hair, makeup, hair, eat some food, hang out, laugh a lot,” she says. “Then we took her to the red carpet, and then we came here!”
Laura Regensdorf
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