Horsing Around
Alexa Chung, Pixie Geldof, and More Make Merry With Mulberry
London's Claridge's hotel has seen some action in its nearly two centuries of operation, including one occasion in 1945, when a room was ceded to Yugoslavia for a single day so that an exiled king and queen could birth their heir in their own territory. But even that doesn't seem strange compared to what happened on Sunday night, when Mulberry turned the hotel's ballroom into a carnival wonderland, with thousands of balloons, real-life merry-go-rounds, fun house mirrors, cotton candy, and spiked lemonade.
"Right, I'm going straight for the face paint," Alexa Chung said when she entered the hall, though she probably wasn't expecting that her name would be one of the temporary tattoo designs on offer. (Mulberry has a thing for Chung: They also named a bag after her this season.) The festival feeling was perhaps too real for some partygoers. "I've lost all my mates, which is what would always happen when I was a kid," the model-turned-designer Ben Grimes joked in front of a photo booth where revelers could have their pictures taken on a giant horse. "This is bringing back some rough childhood memories." Around midnight, the band Friendly Fires took the stage, which turned out to be too much for the hotel guests. One came down to complain about the noise. Grumpy hotel guests: something that will never change.


