Glamorous Pairings

A woman wearing a sackcloth dress once told me that clothing is the architecture of the body. I repeated the phrase during some small talk at a sold-out event in the Diane von Furstenberg headquarters, as we waited for Madame Architect founder Julia Gamolina and WORKac’s Amale Andraos to take their places at the front of the studio’s showroom. Women (and some men) packed neatly into tight rows, a rippling sea of dangling earrings and bold prints among clusters of faceless mannequins.

DVF HQ is located on the corner of a cobblestone street in the Meatpacking District. In 2007, WORKac renovated the historical market building, making it usable offices and retail; the architects also built a private apartment for the company’s namesake that peers over the roofline like a rough diamond. A single staircase cuts diagonally from the ground floor to the penthouse. Sunlight spills down the staircase and is scattered throughout the building by 3,000 Swarovski crystals suspended from vertical steel cables that double as guardrails. (At night, LEDs keep the crystals sparkling.) S…