Presented by Estée Lauder
“I am so excited to be in a room full of Austen heads,” said Chloe Malle, speaking to a buzzing crowd at Metrograph on Wednesday night. Designers, editors, writers, models, and Vogue readers—including Stella Hanan, Batsheva Hay, Coco Mellors, and Zoe Dubno—gathered for a special Vogue Book Club screening of the new Georgia Oakley adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, followed by a live interview with Daisy Edgar-Jones for The Run-Through With Vogue.
At cocktail hour before the screening, guests snacked on sliders and sipped signature cocktails—the Dashwood Sisters Spritz and the Barton Cottage Brew—plus the appropriately named mocktail, Margaret’s Sensible Sip. They wore embroidered dresses and velvet blouses, silky skirts and bosom-bearing corset tops, doing their best approximation of the Jane Austen novel’s late Georgian/Regency era setting (though no one was brave enough to wear a bonnet). Like the Dashwood sisters in the film, many wore their hair down in flowing tresses, though the attendees’ looks were more polished, thanks to beauty touch-ups by Estée Lauder, who co-hosted the event.
“I am wearing a nightgown under my dress, which feels appropriate,” said Leigh Batnick Plessner, creative director of the jewelry brand Catbird, which is known for its collaborations with the likes of Phoebe Bridgers, Jenny Slate, and Sofia Coppola. Batnick Plessner, who is a big Austen fan, also wore some of the brand’s Georgian-inspired jewelry for the evening.
After the film, Malle and Edgar-Jones spoke about the chemistry between the Dashwood sisters (the director had the actors do activities together, like drawing and ring-making, plus sleepovers to help cultivate a real sisterly intimacy); the no phones and no makeup rule on set; and Edgar-Jones’s early experiences with Jane Austen.
