Real-Life Sugar Plum Fairy Keira Knightley Kicks Off Fashion Week With Chanel

Bergdorf Goodman had quite the Tuesday. It was the night before New York Fashion Week, and Rihanna had departed just hours earlier, after launching her Fenty Puma collection at the department store with a few of her closest friends and biggest fans — she’d be back the next day for round two. Now, it was nearly 8 p.m., and all the Chanel favorites — save for Kristen Stewart — braved the darkening skies and brisk breeze that had descended on midtown Manhattan to party with Keira Knightley. It was sort of like a chic version of Night at the Museum: Bags and jewels peered down from their perches in the empty department store, as guests sipped champagne and cocktails while awaiting dinner and a surprise performance by Andra Day later that night.

As the face of Chanel Fine Jewelry, Knightley was in town for just one night to debut the brand’s new Coco Crush collection at the ‘Jewel Box’ pop-up (“ephemeral boutique,” as Chanel put it — open from 11 to 7, it lasts just through Sunday) at Bergdorf Goodman. Though she’s foregoing fashion week festivities, the actress has a full slate of films on the horizon: this year’s Christmastime release Collateral Beauty and the 2017 period piece The Aftermath with Alexander Skarsgard, culminating in a turn as the Sugar Plum Fairy in an upcoming adaptation of The Nutcracker, slated for a 2018 release.

“I actually always wanted to be the mice,” Knightley said. “I always fancied that big mouse head.” But when the Sugar Plum Fairy offer came her way, she couldn’t resist. At Tuesday night’s party, clad in a metallic blue and silver Chanel couture coat-dress, Knightley mused that similar looks might be coming her way as part of her ethereal new role. “A lot of glitter,” she said of the costumes. “Maybe in pink, or purple, or something plum-ish.”

The party felt like an unofficial kick-off to New York Fashion Week, with attendees like Ellie Bamber, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Alexa Chung, and Soo Joo Park.

“I want to take it easy,” said model Hari Nef, wearing a leather Chanel coat over a silk slip dress. “I just want to have fun and get sleep and drink water and support my friends.” But then, running down the roster of shows she planned to attend — Proenza Schouler, Hood By Air, Eckhaus Latta, Sies Marjan — she added, “See, I said that I was going to take it easy, and yet I’m going to all these shows.”

Fresh off his star turn in Baz Luhrmann’s The Get Down, Justice Smith planned to stick around for fashion week to support his girlfriend, musician Raffaella Meloni. She was scheduled to perform at a party celebrating the documentary on Italian Vogue editor Franca Sozzani, Franca: Chaos and Creation — in which, coming full circle, Lurhmann also makes a brief appearance.

Actress, model and artist India Menuez, for her part, had just emerged from the Vogue Hillary Clinton benefit runway show, the only one she’d walk this season. She ran down her list of shows — Vaquera, more Eckhaus Latta — and then noted she also wanted to make an appearance at an upcoming rally for Standing Rock, against a planned pipeline construction near the Sioux tribe’s reservation that could threaten its water supply.

“That’ll be a fun, anti-fashion week thing to do during fashion week,” Menuez said.

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