Garden of Edun

Why did Bono and his wife, Ali Hewson , host a sunset cocktail party at their home in the South of France last night? "We're Irish," said Hewson. "It's what we do; we invite people into our homes."



Bellinis, frothy from fresh-pressed peach juice, were served up as the first of a three-act evening celebration in conjunction with MyTheresa, the online luxury retailer that has mastered the art of the feel-good fashion fete. The guests who gathered on the couple's terrace, set within a marvelously unpopulated strip of the Côte d'Azur, had come to toast Edun's entrance into the MyTheresa fold, where it will soon be found nestled between Eddie Borgo and Emilio Pucci. And because all parties need a guest of honor, that distinction was bestowed upon Edun's Danielle Sherman , who, in just two seasons, has steered Bono and Hewson's fashion brand toward an elusive sweet spot of African craft and contemporary currency.



The spectacular setting rendered Leonardo DiCaprio 's presence something just shy of a footnote. If his goal was to keep a low profile, it was only unsuccessful to the extent that the butt of his e-cigarette beamed a conspicuous green light as he puffed away through dinner (let this irony not go unnoticed by Fitzgerald fans). Dasha Zhukova , seated next to Bono and wearing a red dress from Vika Gazinskaya's & Other Stories collaboration, seemed sufficiently amused by the vapor stick to sneak one into her purse. Indeed, there was something undeniably toned down to what was, in fact, a rather tony gathering. Maybe it had something to do with Spike Jonze offering up lighthearted chitchat (specifically, a fictional parallel career as an engineer of 3-D-printed underwater bridges). Or that Edun's muses for the night—Marie-Josée Croze , Daisy Lowe , Hanneli Mustaparta , and Mimi Xu—doffed their heels to traverse the stony shoreline separating Casa Hewson from the casual seaside restaurant Anjuna. Here, T-shirts posing the question "Where's my fucking yacht?" decorated the entrance, and boxes stuffed with vegetable crudités adorned the group's extra-long table.



At some point between the family-style platters of salmon and beef carpaccio and the salt-crusted branzino, MyTheresa's Justin O'Shea and Bono had the 30 or so guests raising their Domaines Ott to bless the partnership. "The brands that succeed are the ones that are deliberate, and both of you have done such a fantastic job building something that will now go on forever," said O'Shea. Bono perceptively joked that O'Shea resembled Irish mixed martial artist Conor McGregor and then applied the imagery to Edun. "These baby brands, they get legs, get strong, get into the ring. I want to thank Ali; she sees the sensitivity and the pain of the journey, because it's tough to make clothes in Africa," he said. "But things got very interesting when Danielle arrived. She saw this modernity in the ancient materials and textiles of that continent. To see it finally take fight—as well as flight—because of the assembled team is really humbling for me. What a wonderful occasion, what a wonderful night."



Those with the endurance for Act III were invited for a nightcap at Jimmy'z in Monaco. DiCaprio made a Cinderella exit (presumably to rest up for his own charity party tonight in Saint-Tropez), but nearly all the others willingly obliged.

—Amy Verner