Book Party, But Make It Chanel—An Exclusive Look Inside the Tweed-Filled Dinner for Sofia Coppola’s Latest Tome

Although fashion week had yet to begin (officially), last night felt like the true start. Uptown was buzzing with events, but the most fashionable crowd could be found beneath the Sherry-Netherland at the legendary Doubles Club, where velvet banquettes, mirrored walls, and bouquets of pink and red roses set the tone for a night in honor of Sofia Coppola. The occasion celebrated her new 450-page volume on Chanel’s Haute Couture—conceived with the House and designed by Anamaria Morris for Joseph Logan Design, and co-published by Éditions 7L and Important Flowers—in which Coppola uses her signature collage-and-assemblage eye to chart the story of Chanel through unseen sketches, photographs of clients in their looks, runway images, and archival ephemera spanning the eras of Gabrielle Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld, and Virginie Viard. It’s a relationship that began when Coppola was just fifteen, interning one summer in Chanel’s Paris studio.

Guests, including Jon Hamm—in a sharp navy suit—arrived with his wife, Anna Osceola; Kirsten Dunst, luminous in black satin, greeted old friends across the dance floor. Coppola welcomed everyone in a gold Chanel lace dress, flanked by her daughters, Cosima and Romy, and her husband, musician Thomas Mars. As Dunst sat down to dinner with Coppola and Bill Murray—appetizers were shrimp cocktail and chips with caviar; the mains, Dover sole or steak—they didn’t stay seated for long: Murray took Coppola’s hand and pulled her onto the dance floor before entrées had even arrived.

Chanel transformed the club for the evening, draping it in pink and red roses that echoed Doubles’s storied wallpaper. Even the napkins were tied with velvet ribbon—a perfect Coppola-esque flourish. During dinner, Coppola toasted the friends who had gathered to celebrate her, calling out Veronica Webb—whom she first met as an “awkward teenager interning at Chanel.” “I’ll never forget seeing Veronica Webb in jeans and a T-shirt with a Chanel jacket—she was the coolest woman I’d ever seen.”

As dessert arrived—tiny, jewel-like cakes topped with whipped cream—DJ Jean d’Armes took the booth. One disco cue later, dinner gave way to the dance floor.