Vinyl Factory, Soho

London parties are hit or miss. This Hunter thing at Vinyl Factory in Soho was better than most. Festival kickoff supposedly, but really just an excuse to get beautiful people in a room with cocktails and music. Everyone was in good spirits without being obnoxious—a real accomplishment for that crowd.

The usual suspects showed up: designers, musicians, actors, models, the rotation you see at these things. Kit Harington looking content. Courtney Love being herself. Stella McCartney somewhere networking. Tom Daley. The kind of room where you recognize most faces and everyone’s aware of it, but polite enough not to perform the awareness too obviously.

The Rabbit Hole DJ crew kept it loose with surprise guests coming through. Hunter apparently wanted it to feel like a festival. It didn’t, not really—festivals have a rawness you can’t fake in a Soho club—but I got the instinct. People talked, held their cocktails, gradually migrated to the dance floor. Nothing revolutionary, but it worked.

What stayed with me was how it managed not to feel entirely hollow. Everyone knows they’re there because some brand decided to throw a party, that this is advertising, and yet it still worked. London’s nightlife still has the ability to make that feel almost inevitable, or at least acceptable. Maybe after enough cycles of this, soullessness and genuine fun start to look the same.