As social calendars go, Punch Hutton’s is full to bursting. The deputy editor at Vanity Fair, where, among other duties, she oversees the social “Fanfair” section, is that rare thing: a true professional partygoer. It begs the question: What’s a girl to wear?
Not long ago, Hutton found herself struggling to find enough summer dresses fit to go from fête to fête on the cocktail party to polo match to summer gala circuit. “You need something that is appropriate without looking like you are trying too hard—it’s not easy to find,” she says. So last year, she decided to create her own solution: an all-occasion shift dress. Hutton put together mood boards for inspiration and enlisted designer Vee Lapnarongchai, formerly of Derek Lam, to create a collection of eight shifts—one for each day of the week, and an extra, dressier number for evening. “Everyone loves a shift,” she explains.
Hutton put Punch Shifts to the test in April, when she hosted a cocktail party at New York’s Mark Hotel (and again in L.A. at the Sunset Tower Hotel) with friends and colleagues. She won rave reviews from colleagues, friends, and VF regulars alike; “Vanities” subjects, the young actresses Jennifer Morrison and Abigail Pruett, put in orders, as did Entourage’s Perrey Reeves, Dreamworks Studios CEO Stacey Snider, and stylist Jessica Diehl. “I had no idea if anyone would really like them until that point,” Hutton confesses.
On Friday, the collection gets its official coming-out party with a trunk show at Edit’s Southampton boutique. Hutton, however, is already hard at work on the next set of dresses, all of which will be named after certain posh friends, including one for Graydon Carter’s wife, Anna. “It’s very Anna,” Hutton says. “Clean and classic, no frills—she loved it.”
—Kristin Studeman
Photo: Hannah Thomson
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