PARIS–I’ll be honest with you, I was just happy to be inside. Not because of the cold (and Paris WAS cold this week), and not because of the free vodka, supplied by our hosts the Burkman Bros., Billy Reid, and their rep, Megan Maguire Steele, (along with GrandLifeNYC), as well as Florsheim by Duckie Brown, but because I’d never been to Le Baron before, and, like many of us who exist inside and outside of fashion’s peripheries, I’d heard stories. (I’d written one, as well, which made me doubly excited.)
Since 2004, Le Baron has been the unofficial party destination for all that is fabulous during Fashion season (which, for some in Paris, as well as New York, is really all year long). ack during Bush’s first term, graffiti artist (he was a legend in Paris, with his Mr. Baron tag) and impresario André Saraiva took an abandoned brothel, partnered with its jailed owner, and made a nightclub for himself and his friends. It was a smash and reinvigorated Paris nightlife. Since then, he’s gone on to open several hotels and more clubs—like The Beatrice, in New York (RIP)—restaurants, and has teamed up with everyone from Louis Vuitton to Belvedere to The Rolling Stones.
But the sexy—fine, slutty—sweaty, druggy paradise that is Le Baron remains the soul of operation André, and even if he wasn’t there, his spirit of revelry matched those of us on the dance floor and in the booths, as people shook off the exhausting week that was men’s fashion.
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