Berluti has been scooting. Under the direction of LVMH scion Antoine Arnault, the 119-year-old marque has moved beyond handmade shoes and leather accoutrements and toward a domain of sumptuous, precision-tailored men's vestments that it no doubt hopes to occupy all on its own.

But mere luxury goods are not enough, the brand's artistic director, Alessandro Sartori, explained at last night's opening of the new Madison Avenue store. "The customer profile told us a story, which is that we need to complete the Berluti world with a full environment." What others might call a flagship, Sartori and co. call a maison—a house, and the new one on Madison (fifteen blocks south of the old boutique and definitely a step up) is fit for an old-world prince: Louis XV chairs, Art Nouveau porcelain, prints by photographers Elliott Erwitt and Rodney Smith. There's leather on the floors, walls, and furniture, and—last night—waiters in leather aprons serving champagne.

"Six to eight customers at a time is a good number," Sartori said of the new shop's size. No such quietude at the opening, which drew the likes of Joshua Jackson and André Saraiva and a small army of editors. Arnault, one of the hosts, headed before too long to one of the bespoke rooms upstairs, where his pregnant partner, Natalia Vodianova, sat and received well-wishers from a gilded desk. "I feel very important," she admitted.

One room over, a last-maker who'd been flown over from France for the opening stood at his bench. Berluti, he explained, is one of the few interests buying and restoring traditional shoemaking tools like this one, as the craftsmen that have used them for decades retire. Meanwhile, the novelty factor is with the clothes. "I'm telling Alessandro that I want suits," Alexia Niedzielski said. "Look at the colors, the materials, the cut—come on, it's not fair that they're only for men!"

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Some naysayers doubted that a London-based label would have the same stateside name recognition as Target's previous designer partners—Jason Wu, Prabal Gurung, and Phillip Lim, to name a few—but the Peter Pilotto for Target launch party last night drew no shortage of fans. Diane Kruger, Taylor Schilling, and Alexa Chung were inside, and a line of excited shoppers stretched down the entire block outside Gotham Hall.

"We wanted to make sure to bring the Pilotto energy to Target," said codesigner Christopher De Vos. A massive, mirrored mobile sculpture in the middle of the rotunda doubled as a catwalk for models wearing the clothes, and the space was covered nearly wall-to-wall with the collaboration's prints—"about 10 percent archive, 90 percent just for Target," said Peter Pilotto.

To reach a more global, fashion-conscious crowd, Target has wholesaled part of the collection to Net-a-Porter this time around. Net-a-Porter president Alison Loehnis said that the e-tailer has been waiting for about two years for the right moment to partner with Target, and when she heard about the Pilotto collaboration, it was a no-brainer. "I remember my first encounter with Peter Pilotto," she told Style.com. "It was a zeitgeist dress—at every party in the Net-a-Porter office there would be a string of our girls wearing it. Since then it's been great to see how Peter Pilotto has grown, not just in a commercial sense, but in terms of resonating with customers from Dallas to Dubai."

About twenty blocks north, MoMA kept its doors open late for a private viewing of Henri Rousseau's The Dream. The famous painting was the inspiration for Alexandre Birman's Spring collection, and the Brazilian shoe designer mingled with cohosts Ambra Medda, Charlotte Kidd, Laura de Gunzburg, Lily Kwong, and Zani Gugelmann while Alexandra Richards deejayed. A good time was had by all—so good that the museum had to turn on the lights and kick out the revelers a half-hour past the party's official end time.

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"Welcome to the 2014 amfAR gala, brought to you by Hunter boots!" Jane Krakowski joked during her opening remarks. The actual sponsors of the evening were Bulgari and Wells Fargo, but the slushy weather outside meant you couldn't help but laugh. Knee-deep puddles at the curb or not, the annual party drew the likes of Ethan Hawke and Chelsea Clinton to Cipriani Wall Street.

The evening's honorees included mother-daughter duo Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson, and Peter Lindbergh, whose photographs have helped raise more than a million dollars at auction for amfAR. A portrait of Helena Christensen earned the organization another $50,000 last night. Models Chanel Iman, Karlie Kloss, and Coco Rocha came out to support Lindbergh. "I remember the first time we shot together," Rocha told Style.com. "We were on location, and it was so hot that my nail polish wouldn't dry."

The amfAR gala is a mainstay of the New York social calendar, but there was particular cause to celebrate: Since 2008, two patients have been clinically cured of HIV, with one of the cases documented by amfAR-funded researchers just last year. After announcing the ambitious Countdown to a Cure for HIV/AIDS initiative, which aims to find a cure for HIV by 2020, chairman Kenneth Cole wondered for how much longer he would be able to make his familiar joke: "We have come a long way, but am-fAR from a cure."

Out in Red Hook, Brooklyn, designer Rachel Comey held her second show at Dustin Yellin's Pioneer Works. There wasn't the promise of a September sunset this time around, but that didn't stop artists Cindy Sherman and Laurie Simmons or either Gyllenhaal from making the trek. During dinner, Nath Ann Carrera and Amber Martin, who perform under the name Witch Camp, sang Led Zeppelin and Vangelis tunes while models circled between the tables. Parker Posey and Gaby Hoffmann whooped it up the whole time. Afterward, Posey said she wanted the washed denim overalls and jacket in look six. Hoffmann, for her part, liked the shoes best.

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Just when you start to tire of Awards Season, along comes the Grammys. The music industry's biggest night tends to be a whole lot looser than the Globes or the Oscars, and that’s why we love it. Remember when Lady Gaga incubated her way down the red carpet in a giant plastic egg back in 2011? That was good TV! This year, if the antics seemed more muted, there were still some moments worth mentioning. Katy Perry played it relatively low-key—for her, at least—in a straight-from-couture number by Valentino embroidered in musical notes (La Traviata, in case you were wondering). Taylor Swift looked every inch the grown-up in glittering Gucci, even if she lost to country upstart Kacey Musgraves. And Beyoncé made the little-known designer Michael Costello a household name overnight with her white lace gown. Not like a virgin at all. But the best-dressed prize goes to Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, who won Album and Record of the Year. Their tuxes? Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane. And though their collaborator Pharrell Williams took some knocks on social media for his Vivienne Westwood buffalo hat, we applaud the fact that he took a risk. After all, if we wanted to see celebrities play it safe, we'd watch the Oscars.

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The Sidaction gala has become the most eclectic red-carpet event of the Paris social calendar, drawing luminaries from fashion, showbiz, the arts, and public life. Last night's roundup of 600 or so guests was no exception: Among the attendees were Isabel Marant, Christian Louboutin, Bouchra Jarrar, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, Chloë Sevigny, Catherine Deneuve, and Betty Catroux—and that's just a sampling.

"This is pretty much the only place where you can mix with friends in the business in a low-key way," noted Marant. "It's so much bigger [than fashion alone]." Added Catroux, "I don't even follow fashion. To me there is fashion and then there is Yves Saint Laurent. Thanks to Pierre [Bergé] , this [event] occupies a whole different level." The raffle prizes, too, hit new heights: Exclamations ricocheted around the room over loot from Chanel (Farida Khelfa won one bag), Dior, and Roger Vivier. But whomever scored this year's biggest prize—jewelry by Marie-Hélène de Taillac worth several thousand euros—kept it quiet. In all, the fete raised 659,000 euros—more than $900,000—for AIDS research and assistance programs.

There was also a strong showing by art world heavyweights, including top gallerist Kamel Mennour, leading French contemporary artist Fabrice Hyber, and artists Pierre et Gilles, who joined a table hosted by their friend Zahia Dehar. The budding haute lingerie designer, they revealed, is about to do a turn in front of their camera as Marie Antoinette. "It's like a little girl's dream," confirmed the shapely muse, who will appear in a specially created corset, among other finery. "I'm doing a lot of research. We're taking inspiration from Marie Antoinette's love of nature—back then, she was really ahead of her time." The result will decorate a Pierre et Gilles installation at an upcoming show of 18th-century furniture—including pieces that once belonged to the doomed French queen—at the national furniture and textile conservatory at Les Gobelins.

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There were several reasons to celebrate at Gucci's screening of The Director tonight. Co-hostess Emmanuelle Alt was celebrating her new arrival, a Jack Russell puppy named Vic (after a Sophie Marceau character). Daniel de la Falaise, wearing a black leather coat that his brother-in-law Marlon Richards' father, Keith, once sported onstage, was celebrating his first page as food editor of Paris Vogue and, beyond that, the arrival of his first book with Rizzoli—which, for anyone who has ever eaten his food or tasted his olive oils, will be a red-letter day. I was celebrating the fact that the screening was right downstairs in my hotel. No need to go out into the rain and bluster.

Christina Voros' film about two years in the life of Frida Giannini was screened to a crowd coming down from couture. Producer James Franco wasn't on hand; Voros said that, in addition to writing, teaching, directing, art-ing, and whatever else he's usually up to, he sometimes has to act, and this he was duly doing for director Werner Herzog in Morocco. But before the screening, she clarified how responsible he was for the film. They became friends when they were both studying film at New York University, and it was Franco who, four years ago, suggested Giannini as a documentary subject to Voros.

It wasn't an easy assignment. "Fashion and documentary film are antithetical," Voros claimed. But the project was well in keeping with the other ideas that have absorbed her as a documentary maker, exposing closed worlds to encourage understanding of them. One such was a company making pornographic films in San Francisco. "Leather and horse bits, that was my preparation for Gucci," Voros said, laughing. So what did I learn from The Director? I now know how Frida Giannini makes spaghetti alle vongole. I also know where she makes it, in her home at the seaside, which once belonged to Pier Paolo Pasolini. Now there's a summer séance to conjure with.

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Giorgio Armani touched down at the Palais de Tokyo last night with a triple-header. First there was the Armani Privé show as usual. Then, as the Paris counterpart to One Night Only, his couture retrospective that hit New York in October, he installed his exhibition Eccentrico—eighty or so archival Privé outfits and accessories dating from 2006 onward—in the museum. Finally, a gala dinner on the museum's lower level.

"For me, he is just one of those awe-inspiring talents," said Kristin Scott Thomas as she headed for her seat. "On a personal level, I don't know that I would call him eccentric, but I will say that he's really fun to have dinner with!"

Chiara Mastroianni, making an appearance after wrapping her new film, Trois Coeurs with Charlotte Gainsbourg, saw things a little differently. "I think that, these days, creating beautiful classics with a twist and resisting the temptation to go completely over-the-top is a form of eccentricity," she said of the runway finale. "It was really poetic, like a constellation or the Milky Way."

Stylist Elizabeth Stewart, on the other hand, had work on the mind. She had just dressed Golden Globe winner Cate Blanchett in Armani Privé for the awards last week, but the season is just ramping up. "I so loved that dress, so basically I came to Paris to see if we could top that," she said. She declined to elaborate, offering only, "I feel like we've found a brilliant idea to work with for the Oscars."

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