"It's Part of the Game"

Sure, Thursday saw the first round of shows, but the fashion week floodgates didn't really open until just after eight last night in Soho, when Karl Lagerfeld and Sarah Jessica Parker arrived and parted the crowds at the unveiling of Chanel's newly renovated Spring Street store. Jessica Stam, Erin Wasson, and an awestruck group of lesser mortals stepped aside to let the headliners wade through; then, after them, le déluge. Diane Kruger, Claire Danes, Blake Lively, and Leighton Meester—they were all there.

Luckily, there was more to do than gawk at stars: The store's entrance was decorated with a digital graffiti wall that guests were invited to 'tag' with infrared spray cans, in keeping with Peter Marino's arty revamp of the boutique. Had she not had to hustle inside to take her place at the turntables, Alexa Chung mentioned that she would have stopped for a scribble. "Drawing on walls is one of my favorite pastimes," she said. Marino, of course, had put his stamp on the place, too—in pure black and white, and he'd done his spray-painting the old-fashioned way. "This one over here, we sprayed in the office," he explained, indicating a vinyl cutout installed between panes of Plexiglas. "That was great—we all got high after two hours of Krylon."

Speaking of high, Izia, the 19-year-old French singer and second coming of Robert Plant that Chanel booked for dinnertime entertainment, had the pretty young things—boys and girls—begging for more. Everybody except a nonplussed-looking Courtney Love looked thoroughly entertained.

Amid the excitement, Lagerfeld remained as cool as the 265-ton iceberg he brought in for the Chanel show in March. His thoughts on the hullabaloo? 'It's part of the game, you know.'

—Darrell Hartman