NEW YORK — It was Fashion Week's eve last night in New York, which meant the stylish international set had probably just touched down at JFK. What better timing then, for a party! Jet-setting playboy, art dealer, and curator Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, whose longstanding fashion week goals have been to make art openings more accessible to a broader audience, and of course “a lot more fun,” invited the well-dressed and smartly coiffed to toast the opening of "Ouattara Watts: Vertigo."

The setting was an industrial space (so industrial, the potties were portable) on the very edge of Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, which guests entered through a side entrance resembling a loading dock. After passing through an eerily soundproofed dark tunnel, we emerged into a bright gallery space, packed to the gills with model types sipping glasses of white wine.

We found the artist mingling in the periphery of the room, standing in the shadow of his large-scale works in paint and collaged fabrics, pigments, and papier-mâché he’s found shopping in flea markets and during his travels.

"The material’s got to speak to me first,” he told ARTINFO. And what was his thought process putting them together? "People got to be healed.”   

In high spirits, he entertained an endless line of well-wishers, which included quite a few fashionable French women (not the least of whom was former French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld), and a pair of excited ladies who rushed to give him two simultaneous kisses on each cheek. Fashion Week fixtures Diane von Furstenburg, Jen Brill, Richie Rich, and Waris Ahluwalia were among those present, as were the less fashionable Salman Rushdie, and oddly, at least two children. After snapping a photo with Watts, Rushdie left quite early in the evening. Is this the year he becomes a Fashion Week fixture, too? We'll make sure to keep an eye out for him at the next party. 

To see pictures of the partygoers at the opening of "Ouattara Watts: Vertigo," click on the slide show, or click here for more of ARTINFO's fashion coverage.