Lane Crawford 160th Anniversary Party

Last night Lane Crawford,  HK's high end department store chain celebrated their 160th anniversary with a big party at their flagship store at IFC.    As part of their celebration AnD was invited to contribute to a project with over a dozen local artists and art groups.

You may have seen the spotlight of Li Zan's blog about the piece we submitted to the celebration.  He painted two giant canvases with a depiction of HK mixed with traditional Chinese scenery painting.  They're on display at the front entrance of the store above.

Actually you could only see the left one tonight, they had a sign board for the party covering the other one (which I think is the cooler one).  click here to see both.

rEpReSeNtInG!

The party itself was quite huge.  They really took out all the stops with an over the top event:

It says 'Lane Crawford Dai Pai Dong' (the name for an outdoor food stall in HK)

The signboard, says 'Lane Crawford 160' in Chinese graffiti style. :-P

This is my favorite piece contributed by another of the artists involved in the campaign.  Its some sort of giant tram that's getting blown away....  strange!

Many familiar faces in the house! 

The entire floor was actually taken over the event:

It was a little strange to see people milling about with cocktails in the make-up aisle... but I guess they don't mind showcasing the products either way.

They also had tons of activities all over the store -

I actually managed to win on my second try... except all I won was a 10% off coupon for my next purchase at Lane Crawford.  doh! 

A pool table!  What could possibly top that?

... the only thing that could top a pool table in the store... is a ping pong table with a giant piece of suggestive artwork on top of it. :-P

In addition to bars, they had a couple food and snack stands:

XTC Gelato for all!  (the mint was good!)

btw, I did not ask her to do that.... 

I didn't even know there was a balcony connected to the store, but it was quite packed the whole night (because everyone smokes here?)

enjoying the cool december nights...

And the live Caribbean music.

Oh wait, now I know why everyone's lining up out here...  it was quite good. I ate 6 or 7 myself. :-D

One last shot:

Good to see my pal the Director!  he's been busy working on his movie projects so I haven't seen him in a few months!

Anyway,  the event was quite impressive in scale and I'm happy that AnD was able to participate in a small way.   I have to say that for me, this would be the best of these type of corporate 'super parties' that I've been to this year I think... the last big one on this scale that I have been to was probably the adidas 60th anniversary party last last spring.  (and the Diesel store opening party the year before that...)   And including non-commercial,  Simon B's exhibition opening. 

Congrats to the Lane Crawford team!