Janet Jackson dancing to brother Michael's "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough"? Now that would have been a po-mo moment. Sadly for pop ironists, by the time the DJ spun the track, Janet had left Valentino's post-show party at the Ritz Club in Paris on Wednesday night. Still, the evening—which drew Astrid Muñoz, Marisa Berenson, Diane von Furstenberg, and a private planeload of Val's gals from New York—had plenty of flash-footed replacements, including DVF's best bud, Christian Louboutin. The cobbler was later spotted twirling Olympia Scarry, in hot-off-the-catwalk Christopher Kane, at Camilla Al Fayed's party one flight up. "How did she get it so quickly?" wondered Sara Buys of Scarry's outfit. "I'm green!"

Across the pond at another old-school institution, New York's Waldorf-Astoria, Elton John hosted "An Enduring Vision," a fundraiser for his AIDS Foundation (and bagged a cool $2.5 million for the charity). Reed Krakoff, Rose Marie Bravo, Ivana Trump, Kenneth Cole, Moby, and John Demsey enjoyed an impromptu performance by Elvis Costello and a seven-song set by Neil Young. But it was the host himself, playing piano on "Your Song" and Young's "Harvest Moon," who really put a spell on the audience. "Look at this crowd, they don't know what to do with themselves," said Barneys New York's Simon Doonan. "These are the type of people who can't wait to go home and take their girdles off, and they're positively speechless."

— Tim Blanks (Paris) and Sarah Cristobal (New York)