Maya Jama was among the names at the Victoria and Albert Museum's summer party on Wednesday night, when the V&A Summer Party marked its 10th anniversary in London. Mick Jagger and Rishi Sunak also attended the gathering in the John Madejski Garden.
John Madejski Garden in London
The guest list reached across music, television, politics and fashion, with Akshata Murty, Jessie Ware, Ellie Goulding, Edie Campbell, Isabella Wei, Anais Gallagher, Munroe Bergdorf and Olly Alexander also in attendance. That spread is the point of the event: it is built to pull together people who can turn a museum fundraiser into a working-room for introductions, not just a dress-up calendar stop.
Harris Reed sat on this year's summer party committee alongside David Furnish, Grayson Perry, Sandy Powell and Yinka Ilori. Reed said his role was to curate emerging talent from different backgrounds to the party and link them with patrons who may potentially support their creative visions. In practice, that makes the night less about passive attendance than about placing designers and backers in the same room.
Harris Reed at Mandarin Oriental
Reed also said, “As I develop the brand, I am also starting to pivot my shows and showcase to the spaces in which my clientele inhabits”. He added that he was doubling down on made-to-measure demi-couture and a new fluid bridal offering, and said his September show will experiment with a new format at the Mandarin Oriental by Hyde Park. For a designer trying to widen the business around the runway, that shift puts the room itself to work.
The complication is obvious: the party is presented as a celebration, but Reed is using it as a practical networking venue for emerging talent and patrons. That is why the clothing details mattered too — Mia Regan wore a look from Matteo Dunkley, Yana Peel wore a red fringe skirt from Matthieu Blazy’s Métiers d’Art debut collection, Akshata Murty wore a sculptural yellow dress, and Ava Kalitowski wore a black dress with a swan motif from Mithridate designed by Daniel Fletcher. Huishan Zhang dressed Grace Dent and Jessica Brown Findlay, while Jessie Ware performed live and Huishan Zhang said, “London is alive again,”.
The 10th-anniversary turnout put Maya Jama in the center of a night that was part social calendar, part fashion marketplace. What made her appearance especially notable is not explained, but the setting made the message plain: at this level, the guest list is itself the product.
