Dozens of staffers decamped to Paris to coordinate the third instalment of this June, held on Place Vendôme in the heart of the 1er arrondissement. Operation headquarters throughout: on Rue de Castiglione, whose south-facing rooms give out onto the Tuileries and the Seine beyond. Opened as The Hotel Continental in 1878 to coincide with the third World Fair, it quickly earned a reputation as one of the most luxurious addresses in Paris during the Second Empire.
It’s here that sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi dreamt up the Statue of Liberty with members of the Franco-American Union in 1880, with Empress Eugenie checking into the same 2nd-floor suite every year from 1889 to 1919. As for Victor Hugo? He frequently held banquets in the Imperial Salon, the same ballroom where Yves Saint Laurent would later stage some of his most revered collections, starting with his autumn/winter 1976 haute couture proposition inspired by the Ballets Russes. It’s the Concorde Salon that took over for the Vogue World fittings, filling the cavernous space with 683 looks .
Harry Lambert, meanwhile, turned a suite into a makeshift atelier for dressing red-carpet guests: , Symone in Robert Wun, ...
Elsewhere in the hotel, the rest of the team was busy mapping out 37,673 square feet of backstage space, orchestrating dress rehearsals with Parris Goebel’s muses, and reviewing livestream plans . And while much of their days (and nights) were spent reviewing seating charts and mapping out cov.
