Charli XCX, Big Freedia Ring In New York Fashion Week With Caviar Bumps at the (Jazz) Club

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It’s become custom for Saks to ring in each New York Fashion Week with a bar-setting bash featuring some of music’s hottest stars — this cycle was no different. Charli XCX and Big Freedia took the stage while members of New York’s most panache looked on, danced, and pregamed a week of shows, parties, and more.

A considerably more intimate setting than the brand’s usual féte at L’Avenue, the Jazz Club at Aman New York saw a couple hundred celebrate the start of, somehow, another NYFW (doesn’t the last one feel like just weeks ago?)

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Charli came out, celebratory drink in hand wearing Ludovic de Saint Sernin, and revved the crowd up. With a smirk, the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter matter-of-factly asked: “Are you ready for fuckin’ fashion? For a whole fuckin’ week?” before setting her drink down and launching into a rendition of “Boys” dedicated to “The Gays.”

Reminding the crowd gathered at the foot of the stage that they’re all icons, Charli then performed “Beg For You” and “Good Ones,” a couple of cuts from her fifth studio album Crash. At one point, the singer went over to dance with Alice Longyu Gao who DJed before the performances.

Lauded as one of last year’s best albums by Rolling Stone, Crash is Charli’s highest-charting project, with the album’s era coming to a head with a performance at Coachella later this year. The singer’s no stranger to the fashion calendar, having served some iconic looks from New York to Milan’s fashion weeks and everywhere in between, following in the footsteps of the icons she admires.

“I enjoy that early-2000s era of celebrity where Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are just being iconic and being these otherworldly figures,” Charli XCX told Rolling Stone UK in a 2022 cover story. “It’s the same with musicians, to be honest. I want my favorite musicians to shock and surprise me and annoy me and completely flip my brain.”

Later in the night, Big Freedia (who you probably know from her collaborations with Beyoncé and Lizzo) took the stage to deliver a high-energy performance and implored people to let loose: “I know it’s a Saks party but I’m gonna need to see some ass shaking in here.”

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Elsewhere, Julia Fox hit a photobooth with Princess Nokia, Isaac Likes dapped up some friends on the dance floor, Ashley Park had a late-night snack and the face of Saks’ Spring 2023 campaign Emma Roberts oversaw proceedings as the evening’s host. Not to leave party goers hungry, when the performances were over, waiters brought around pizza and caviar bumps. Elevated, but still, New York as hell. How fitting.

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