Marcel Winatschek

The Room Where Everyone Is Already Known

V Magazine throws a party and New York fills a room with professionally beautiful people, and Troye Sivan performs, and everyone gets photographed, and it’s fine. That’s the form. The interest is in the details around the edges—who showed up, what they wore, whether anyone looked like they actually wanted to be there.

The November 2016 party had a decent lineup: Hari Nef, Georgia Fowler, Daphne Groeneveld, Gigi Hadid, Kacy Hill, Caroline Vreeland, a handful of others. Models and musicians and people who occupy that indefinite space between the two. The kind of guest list that photographs well regardless of whether the room felt alive.

Troye Sivan performing at a fashion party in 2016 made sense in a way I mean neutrally—he was exactly where the cultural currents were running, which is itself a form of skill. The V Magazine orbit has always been good at catching people at that precise moment before they tip into full ubiquity. Sometimes that’s cynical. Sometimes it just means the magazine has a good eye.