• Intelligencer
  • The Cut
  • Vulture
  • The Strategist
  • Curbed
  • Grub Street
  • Subscribe to the Magazine Give a Gift Subscription Buy Back Issues Current Issue Contents
    Subscribe to New York Magazine
  • Subscribe
  • Profile
    Sign Out
The Cut
  • Style
  • Self
  • Culture
  • Power
Style
  • Fashion
  • Beauty
  • Parties & Red Carpet
  • Fashion Shows
  • Cathy Horyn
  • The Cut Shop
Self
  • Health & Wellness
  • The State of the Uterus
  • Parenting
  • Advice
  • Sex & Relationships
  • Horoscopes
Culture
  • Books
  • Television
  • Movies
  • Music
  • Celebrity
Power
  • Politics
  • Work
  • Money
  • Rebecca Traister
More
  • Latest Stories
  • Video
  • About Us
  • nymag.com
  • New York Magazine
  • Intelligencer
  • Vulture
  • The Cut
  • The Strategist
  • Grub Street
  • Curbed
cannes do
May 21, 2015

In Praise of the Drunk Lady Who Upstaged Leo DiCaprio, Imagine Dragons at the amFAR Cannes Gala

By Jada Yuan

Share

  • Share
  • Tweet
Photo: Getty Images

How Altered Lady, a blonde woman in her 50s with a rocking body in a black sequined dress, wound up at our table, we never found out, though it was clear, as my colleague Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair points out, that she’d “enjoyed a glass or six of the free-flowing Moët champagne at the cocktail party.” Fabulous metal gloves covered her wrists, but a gray or black ribbon bracelet each amfAR guest gets upon entry was not visible. Other oddities emerged. She introduced herself as a producer, though everyone at the table was supposed to be press, and we were a chair short when a late-arriving reporter showed up to claim his seat. Altered Lady was unmoved by his plight, but did grab a waitress’s shirt, pull her in close, and demand more Champagne.

The night before Altered Lady’s arrival had been, dare I say, amfAR as usual: beautiful people in beautiful dresses floating along the beautiful grounds of the Hôtel du Cap at sunset. A brief rainstorm had forced Marchesa designer Georgina Chapman to huddle indoors in her embroidered maroon gown, not far from where Tom Bernard of Sony Pictures Classics — avowed and outspoken rival to Chapman’s husband, Harvey Weinstein — was grabbing a drink in khakis and a sweater; he’d been sealing up details with producer Brett Ratner for a movie about the Dan Rather scandal, starring Robert Redford and Cate Blanchett, but was skipping the gala in favor of any charity event that isn’t chaired by Weinstein. On the du Cap’s grand walkway that leads to the sea, a phalanx of photographers exhorted Kendall Jenner to twirl so her plum gown billowed in the wind, while Cannes Film Festival jury president Ethan Coen and jury member Jake Gyllenhaal appeared to be absorbed in a passionate discussion about cinema before funneling into a gargantuan tent on the grounds of the du Cap for an auction to benefit AIDS research, where one dare not raise one’s hand, or wind up a couple million dollars poorer.

The evening’s program opened with a performance by Charli XCX that left Altered Lady unmoved. But such was not the case moments later when Chris Tucker got onstage to auction off a private concert with Andrea Bocelli. “You will have dinner with him in Los Angeles or Florence with 11 of your best friends, and you name any song and he’ll sing it!” screamed auctioneer Simon de Pury, swiftly selling a pair of such concerts for 1 million euros a piece. Then Bocelli took the stage to sing “Con Te Partirò.” Altered Lady began to moan. Loudly. She may have even orgasmed on the spot. “I saw him when he wasn’t famous in Germany!” she gasped, trembling, her hand over her heart. “You’ll sing along with me?” Bocelli asked the crowd. “Yes!” screamed Altered Lady, her hands outstretched. Then she started weeping.

I lost track of Altered Lady for a while, during a Carine Roitfeld–curated black-and-white fashion show featuring 40 outfits designed by everyone from Tom Ford to Alexander McQueen. As the models walked the runway, Roitfeld danced on the side and gave each a high five. She’d spent six months picking the clothes, she said later. “It was amazing! The girls did so good. And they came from all over the world for this.” Alas, the auctioneering team of Eva Longoria and Tom Ford couldn’t get the bids for the entire collection to top 800,000 euros, even with Karlie Kloss, Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid, Lara Stone, Jourdan Dunn, and Joan Smalls storming the stage to beg the audience for more, even offering to throw in dinner with any model onstage to sweeten the pot. “Guys, dinner with me is worth at least $25,” Kloss joked, but the bids stayed where they were.

Luckily, Mary J. Blige came on next to liven up the room. AmfAR “is about saving lives, and that’s what I’m all about,” she said, tearing down the house with “Family Affair,” and then walking offstage. “More Mary!” shouted Robin Thicke, who’d rushed to the front of the crowd. John C. Reilly was in the thick of things, too. “One song! One!” he said, shaking his head. “That’s gangsta. One and done.” (Reilly himself was the one A-lister we spotted dancing not in the VIP area, but among those of us with undesirable gray wristbands at the Mark Ronson–DJ’d after-party on the seaside deck of the du Cap. We raised our hands, and he raised his back in acknowledgment, even opening his dance circle so we could join in. Very gangsta, indeed.)

We learned so much in the next hour or so.

• Chris Tucker and Petra Nemcova are fantastic dancers. Tucker also knows his private jets; he joked that he’d hitched a ride home in a rich friend’s G-V jet, though, he said, “I shoulda asked for a 650. More room.”

• If you accidentally wave in the middle of an auction, Adrien Brody will hold you to it. “That cost 300,000 euros,” he said to a woman who was trying to get his attention.

• Andrea Bocelli is more popular than Bradley Cooper. A photo session by Cooper only went for 220,000 euros. Despite Simon de Pury promising, “You’re all alone with him, no assistants,” and Karolina Kurkova adding, “You’ll get to hug him and kiss him.”

• Bocelli is also more popular than Picasso: An original drawing from 1968 sold for 700,000 euros.

• Leonardo DiCaprio is, according to de Pury, “an amazing art collector who is building one of the best collections,” as well as “a formidable art lover [who] has a very great eye.” A Banksy from his personal collection sold for 1 million euros.

• But Leo himself is less popular than his art; a ticket to the annual benefit for his environmental foundation, followed by a dinner the next night with Leo on his yacht, went for 250,000 euros.

• Someone, somewhere had 12 million euros to burn on what may be the ugliest sculpture Jeff Koons has ever made.

• Eva Longoria, too, knows her art. She spent 550,000 euros for an Andy Warhol portrait of Liz Taylor.

It was all starting to get a little gaudy, and a bit far away from amfAR’s message of finding a cure for AIDS, and only Frances McDormand was willing to point that out. “I’m going to offer you something we haven’t seen tonight: a little bit of subtlety,” she said, auctioning off a work by Alexander Calder. She was followed by actress Alicia Vikander, who sold a weeklong retreat at a resort in the Maldives with these words: “We all need a little vacation after a week in Cannes.” Welcome to the one percent.

Altered Lady, who had been in and out all evening, seemed to have become more altered over the course of the night. She frequently leaned across my lap to speak to my colleague from Vanity Fair, as if I wasn’t there, while smoking a cigarette. She also called me disgusting for not engaging with her more in conversation. Though when I did turn her way during a lull in activity, she was asleep at the table. Whatever she was doing, however, was often way more entertaining than anything else happening in the room.

Around midnight, as the auction reached its fifth hour, Altered Lady disappeared once again. The official proceedings were almost done. Some 40 million euros had been raised for amfAR. Imagine Dragons, led by cute lead singer Dan Reynolds, with his hair in a man-bun and hot-pink leggings paired with black shorts and black knee-high socks, took the stage to say how honored they were to be there, how the worthiness of the cause made this mean so much more than just another show.

As he began to introduce his second song, though, he stopped and began to laugh. A giggling woman in a black sequined dress crept toward the microphone. Who was it? One guess. “I wanna see your fucking hands!” Altered Lady told the crowd. Reynolds gave her a warm hug and concurred: “I think you’d better clap your hands for this wonderful lady.” Altered Lady got even more excited. “Clap your hands!” she crowed. Reynolds gave her another hug and told her she had a beautiful dress. She collapsed into a fit of giggles. She’d come full circle from belligerence and unconsciousness to recognition and hugs. Everyone at our table couldn’t have been more proud.

View
1 / 39 Photos
Marion Cotillard Dress by Jean Paul Gaultier. Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Michelle Rodriguez  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Charli XCX  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Sienna Miller Dress by Ralph Lauren, jewels by Atelier Swarvoski. Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Karolina Kurkova  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Eva Longoria Dress by Georges Hobeika. Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Dita Von Teese Dress by Ulyana Sergeenko. Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Diane Kruger  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Zoe Kravitz Dress by Vionnet. Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Paris Hilton  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Mary J. Blige  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Nicole Kempel, Antonio Banderas  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Jake Gyllenhaal  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Rita Ora  Photo: 2015 Mike Marsland
Gigi Hadid Jewels by Vita Fede. Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Aishwarya Rai  Photo: 2015 Dominique Charriau
Adriana Lima Dress by Alexandre Vauthier. Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Kendall Jenner  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Karlie Kloss Shoes by Jimmy Choo. Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Joan Smalls  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Chiara Ferragni  Photo: 2015 Dominique Charriau
Hanne Gaby Odiele  Photo: 2015 Dominique Charriau
Nina Agdal  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Chanel Iman  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Josephine de La Baume, Mark Ronson  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Lindsey Wixson  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Jourdan Dunn  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Barbara Meier  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Eniko Mihalik  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Lara Stone Shoes by Jimmy Choo. Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Irina Shayk  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Melissa Bolona  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Toni Garrn  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Melissa George Dress Schiaparelli Haute Couture. Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Lily Donaldson  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Emma Miller  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Isabeli Fontana  Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Doutzen Kroes Dress by Maison Margiela. Photo: 2015 Getty Images
Alicia Vikander Ensemble by Louis Vuitton. Photo: Ian Gavan/2015 Getty Images
1 / 39

Tags:

  • amfar
  • amfar gala
  • gigi hadid
  • lara stone
  • fashions
  • fame
  • rita ora
  • sienna miller
  • diane kruger
  • marion cotillard
  • cannes do
  • cannes film festival
  • kendall jenner
  • lindsey wixson
  • eniko mihalik
  • adriana lima
  • isabeli fontana
  • slideshow
  • georgina capman
  • tom bernard
  • More

More Galleries

oscars 2023 Mar. 12, 2023
Oscars Red Carpet 2023: Every Look  Rihanna! Florence Pugh! Michelle Yeoh! They’re all here. 
celebrity Feb. 19, 2023
All the Best Looks From the 2023 BAFTAs Red Carpet  Florence Pugh, Barry Keoghan, and Angela Bassett brought color to the red carpet. 
grammys 2023 Feb. 5, 2023
Every Look From the 2023 Grammys Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Lizzo, Bad Bunny, Adele, Doja Cat, Jack Harlow, Mary J. Blige, Sam Smith, and more.
By Brooke LaMantia
Jan. 10, 2023
All the Looks From the 2023 Golden Globes  Sheryl Lee Ralph, Jenna Ortega, Jessica Chastain, Julia Garner, Jeremy Allen White, Angela Bassett, and more. 
parties! Sept. 23, 2022
Katie Holmes, Chloë Sevigny, and More of the Bestest Party Pics This Week  Chanel, Mejuri, and more celebrate. 
parties! Sept. 16, 2022
Doja Cat, Lil Nas X, and More of the Bestest Party Pics This Week  Fendi, Frame, and Coach all celebrated NYFW. 
emmys 2022 Sept. 12, 2022
Emmys 2022: All the Red Carpet Looks  Updating: What Hollywood is wearing to the 2022 Primetime Emmy Awards. 
By Olivia Luppino
nyfw spring 2023 Sept. 9, 2022
Gigi Hadid, Chlöe Bailey, and More of the Bestest Party Pics of the Week  Saks Fifth Avenue, Longchamp, and more celebrate the beginning of NYFW. 
rip Sept. 9, 2022
The Queen Sure Did Love to Color-Coordinate  Monochrome for decades. 
red carpet Sept. 6, 2022
The Venice Film Festival Is a Major Fashion Event  Valentino and Gucci and Armani, oh my. 
red carpet June 5, 2022
All the Best Looks at the 2022 MTV Movie and TV Awards  Sydney Sweeney, Vanessa Hudgens, Jay Ellis, and more! 
parties! May 20, 2022
The Bestest Party Looks of the Week  Harry Styles > everyone! 
parties! May 13, 2022
The Bestest Party Looks of the Week  Bury me in Dove Cameron’s Saint Sintra skirt. 
parties! May 6, 2022
The Bestest Party Looks of the Week  Cue the Met Gala after-party FOMO. 
met gala 2022 May 2, 2022
Met Gala 2022: All the Looks [Photos]  Billie Eilish, Kim Kardashian, Michelle Yeoh, Hailey Bieber, Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B, Blake Lively, and more. 
parties! Apr. 29, 2022
The Bestest Party Looks of the Week  This one goes to Olivia Rodrigo and her sweater vest. 
parties! Apr. 22, 2022
The Bestest Party Looks of the Week  “Fuck those Zoom tops.” 
celebrity style Apr. 18, 2022
The Best Looks From Coachella 2022  From Harry Styles’s sparkling Gucci set to Megan Thee Stallion’s metallic bodysuit. 
style Apr. 13, 2022
A Look Inside the New Museum’s Spring Gala  Featuring all the best looks. 
grammys 2022 Apr. 3, 2022
Grammy Awards 2022 Red Carpet: All the Looks  Lady Gaga, Olivia Rodrigo, Lenny Kravitz, Lil Nas X, Billie Eilish, and more. 
  • Style
  • Self
  • Culture
  • Power
  • About The Cut
  • About New York Magazine
  • Newsletters
  • Help
  • Contact
  • Press
  • Media Kit
  • We’re Hiring
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Ad Choices
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
  • Accessibility
The Cut is a Vox Media Network. © 2023 Vox Media, LLC. All rights reserved.