Some... have too MUCH money.

Come as You Are? Hardly

A statuesque dancer wearing a full crystal chandelier balanced precariously on her head was followed into Gotham Hall, a former bank vault in Midtown, by 30 go-go dancers bearing exaggerated codpieces, four turbaned Ali Babas with droopy drawers, countless brocaded courtiers, two pastel French poodles, one monsignor trailed by a male porn star and then Mr. Jacobs, the designer, dressed as a pigeon (the cutting-edge fashion equivalent of a partridge).

As Mr. Jacobs has made an unusual tradition of framing the annual festivities in an increasingly complex theme of masquerades — employees are required to dress in costume, this year for a “Carnival in Venice” — the ordinarily outrageous has come to seem commonplace there. Masks, after all, were mandatory; pants were not.  Some employees spend months making their costumes, while others rent and some whip up a little something from the closet. Stephen Jones, the  English milliner, had gotten hold of an authentic ensemble from Fellini’s “Casanova,” at Angels, the London theatrical costume company founded in 1840. But it was stuck in customs at Kennedy International Airport.  “They said I could pick it up at 10:30 p.m.,” he said,
suggesting he was seriously considering a midparty wardrobe change. As it was, Mr. Jones, who is bald, had painted his head black and wore a black suit, shirt and gloves.

In a floor-length black Chanel coat and a Napoleonic hat pinned with spangled eagle brooches (also Chanel), André Leon Talley, the editor at large of Vogue, arrived early with an entourage that included the hip-hop entrepreneur Damon Dash; his wife, the designer Rachel Roy; two muscular young men dressed as gondoliers (one in a Jean Paul Gaultier nautical striped sweater), and two who were a tad less seaworthy — in black suits with frilly blouses, they could have been backup singers for a band called the Yves Saint Laurents. “The shoes are the most important thing,” said Mr. Talley, in ivory Manolo Blahniks, before noting that his group’s inspiration could be traced to the 1951 ball of Carlos de Beistegui, one of the most glamorous of all the Venetian masquerades, photographed by Cecil Beaton.