When we ran into Russell Simmons mingling with all the kids at Alexander Wang’s carnival-themed after-party, he could barely contain himself from raving about Charlotte Ronson’s collection, which he’d seen the night before. “It’s her and it’s honest and it’s commercial. Charlotte Ronson is her girl,” he said. (Loose translation: Charlotte Ronson makes clothes she’d want to wear, and indeed did wear when she took her bow at the end of the show.) “Charlotte Ronson is in style. It’s like the collection walks and the buyer sees it and goes, ‘Oh my God, that’s exactly what I want. It’s going to sell.’ I mean, I know that from all the things that are selling. It smells like it’s going to sell. She’s got to be one of the top three shows this year. She’s a little cooler than the rest of the country, but they’re all buying.”
Meanwhile, he also had raves for Wang’s party. He’s a big fan of amusement parks, having gone twice to DisneyWorld this year with his kids, and when we found him in the crowd, he was clutching a teddy bear, recently won by a friend of his who’d managed to “knock down three heads in a row” in one of those games you instantly recognize, but could never name. Simmons was thinking of trying his hand at a game himself. “What’s it called, the one with the balls? Skoozball? I’m very good at it. I win quite a bit. No money, but I do win toys.” Alexander Wang, the man of the hour, pranced by and seconded Simmon’s thumbs-up of the party, though he did have one complaint. “The bumper cars could have been about ten times faster. I’m very disappointed,” he said. “I didn’t get whiplash!”
