The Night Belonged To New York For Jacques Marie Mage’s SoHo Gallery Opening

Reported by Vogue.

SoHo has always had a talent for reinventing itself, and this summer it's doing so at full volume. On Thursday night, Wooster Street became the center of New York's cultural universe when Jacques Marie Mage opened the doors to its long-awaited three-story gallery — a space that defies easy categorization and is better for it. Chrome cabinetry, zebra-print lounge chairs, and an oversized wolf skull sculpture by Quentin Garel share real estate without apology, which is exactly the point.

Founder Jérôme Mage built the evening around an ethos he articulated plainly, according to Vogue: "Beauty is robust and individualistic, and it's a rebellious act to push away from the norm." Guests — among them Mark Ronson, Grace Gummer, Nan Goldin, Steven Klein, Lou Doillon, Emma Emhoff, and Antoni Porowski — moved through the floors testing eyewear frames, handling leather goods, ceramics, and jewelry, and fueling themselves on Krug, caviar blinis, and Hibiki whisky served by waiters who were, themselves, wearing the brand's sunglasses. Mage gathered the crowd around a bison skull on the lower level to speak about his decade-long partnership with Yellowstone National Park and the duality the sculptures represent: "The wolf and the bison have been friends and foes for millions of years — and I think New York City is a bit like that." Wildlife biologist Doug Smith, who led the reintroduction of the gray wolf into Yellowstone in 1995, followed with a charge to the room to think beyond the human gaze — closing with a stanza from poet Robert Service.

Then Patti Smith Took the Room

Nothing quite prepares you for a Patti Smith performance in a SoHo gallery at golden hour. Accompanied by guitarist Tony Shanahan, Smith played People Have the Power, Ghost Dance, and Because the Night — swaying, raising her hands, pulling the entire room into the current with her. The crowd clapped and sang every word back. When she closed with "the night belongs to New York," the applause was the kind that feels earned rather than polite. "My collaboration with Jacques Marie Mage has always been about friendship," Smith said afterward, "and everyone here offered that to me tonight."

The night dissolved slowly — people lingering over final pours of Hibiki, humming Smith's melodies, eventually spilling onto Wooster Street with Champagne glasses in hand. Every guest left with a goodie bag containing a coffee table book by Quentin Garel: a piece of the gallery to take home, a small insistence that the beauty inside doesn't have to stay there.

In a city that can make spectacle feel hollow, Jacques Marie Mage built something that actually meant something — and that's the harder trick.

Read the original at Vogue.