Mert Alas Toasts Paris Fashion Week With Secret Late-Night Party

It’s no easy feat to keep a star-studded Fashion Week party under wraps, but Mert Alas managed to do just that with a secret, late-night gathering of some of his closest friends, well after Sunday night’s runway shows had wrapped up.

The private affair took place at Paris hotspot Raspoutine, the former Russian cabaret known for its red velvet alcoves and carefully guarded doors. VIP tables were stacked with Alas’s luxury gin brand Seventy One, the raison d’être for the fashionable outing. Over at the bar, guests could order Seventy One cocktails like “La Boscono,” “Red Martinez,” and “La Nuit D’Or.” Many just took theirs on the rocks (how it’s best enjoyed, as the brand suggests). Alas just launched a 200ml version of the perfume-shaped gin bottle a few days earlier.

The photographer’s starry friends slowly made their way in toward the 11:30pm mark, including Jared Leto, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Kelela, Isamaya Ffrench, and plenty of designers like Burberry’s Daniel Lee, Christian Louboutin, and Giambattista Valli.

Many of the famous models he’s shot over the years came out, too, including Amber Valletta, Irina Shayk, and Mariacarla Boscono. FKA twigs, who just hours earlier performed at the Valentino show, took the stage around 1:30am for a surprise performance with a cover of the cult classic “Fever” and her 2019 hit “Cellophane.”’

Alas, who shot all six covers of W’s Fall Fashion Issue, was thrilled to be amongst so many of his peers again and watch as his two worlds collided. “It’s been very exciting to come out of my comfort zone and start experiencing and learning something new,” he tells W of the time since he first launched Seventy One in 2021. “The whole thing was from scratch, from building the gin, the branding of it … it’s been a crazy journey but I’m having a good time with it. Since the start, it was always about bringing people together and expressing ourselves in every form, from music to fashion to lighting to acting and so on. Seventy One is almost like my homage to the night.”

As the night went on, the dancing didn’t stop, even after the clock struck past 4am, with another day of Fashion Week creeping up in a few hours.