Spike Jonze and Jonah Hill Put on a Fashion Show

There’s no question where Opening Ceremony co-founders Humberto Leon and Carol Lim stand on the idea of fashion shows as entertainment. They’re all for it. On Sunday night, the innovative designer duo presented their spring collection via a star-studded, one-night-only, one-act play, 100% Lost Cotton. Directed by Spike Jonze, who co-wrote the script with Jonah Hill, the production was put up at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, with the audience seated stadium-style on stage looking out on the actors and an empty house. The plot centered around catwalk-hopeful and sensitive bumpkin Julie, played by Elle Fanning, and “V Magazine’s Next Big Thing” Bella, played by Dree Hemingway, who meet at a fitting for OC’s spring show. “I also do musing,” says Bella. “It’s when designers look to you for ideas and their ideas come from the way you look.” The graphic, structured clothes on the actresses and model chorus including Xiao Wen, Kel Markey, and Tilda Lindstam were real in that they were actually the skirts, coats and tops that will be in stores in six months. The depictions of Leon, Lim and their coterie of tastemakers, however, were fictionalized—or at least one hopes given Catherine Keener’s over the top portrayal of Lim who at one point threatens to sue her nanny over the phone. John Cameron Mitchell was a hysterical, dramatic and thoroughly watchable Leon (“[This model’s] legs are making this skirt look really bad. Are these your normal legs?”) and Bobby Cannavale was superhero stylist Brian Malloy. Karlie Kloss had a cameo as herself—a seasoned pro—and Rashida Jones swanned in as Vogue’s West Coast editor Lisa Love. And because no good production is complete without a dance number, the cast closed the show with an impressive rendition of Drake’s “Hold On, We’re Going Home.” (Seriously, did you know Elle Fanning can sing?) After Jonze and Hill joined their actors for a curtain call, guests including Alexa Chung, Rosario Dawson, Samantha Ronson and Bruce Weber were invited to get a closer look at the collection—inspired by Lim and Leon’s summer of 1991 spent pool hopping in California—by exiting stage left, “through the models.”

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