ON the first Monday in May 2015, a party to open the exhibition “China: Through the Looking Glass”, highlighting the Chinese influence on contemporary haute couture, raised $12.5 million for New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The garments on exhibition are beautiful. They look fabulously expensive. They look more for show than for go. Those beautiful rich women at the party who aren’t wearing garments from the collection, display wide areas of upper body skin. Some of them have to be sewn into their gowns, which raises interesting questions about getting out of them later wherever and for whatever purpose.

Preparing a bash like that one takes much hard work. Main organiser Anna Wintour, who hates broccoli, appears in public only when professionally made-up and coifed, arranges parties (at which she reportedly stays no longer than 10 minutes) that have raised millions for charity and whose placement at the top table was between two of Hollywood’s handsomest men, is a force to be reckoned with in an industry of which most women might yearn to be a customer but few can afford.

To gather all the strings together was the task of Englishman Andrew Bolton who later got a hefty Museum appointment to reward his work despite attending the black-tie party in trousers that stopped short of his ankles exposing white socks.

Eight months previously, Andrew Rossi began making this visually spectacular documentary about the exhibition, later seen by 800,000 people, and the accompanying social hullabaloo attended by fewer than 600. I found it highly agreeable without feeling miffed at not having been at either.

At Palace Electric