Private Dinner to Celebrate Irene Neuwirth’s First Store

Fashion people love to say that chefs are the new rock stars. So when Irene Neuwirth was planning the opening of her first store, a beautiful and whimsical Melrose Place flagship, she decided to make good on this assertion and host four dinners for pals, cooked in the boutique’s open-plan kitchen by four of Los Angeles’s most innovative young chefs.

The third of these was held last night: The chef was Ari Taymor, the 29-year-old behind Alma, and his 15-year-old wunderkind sidekick Flynn McGarry. Oscar de la Renta clad Neuwirth and her friends including Alison Brie, Dave Franco, Chris Pratt, and Anna Faris washed down sunchoke soup and Wagyu beef with tequila while admiring the store’s brilliant mix of Tony Duquette sconces, dioramas of snakeskin birds and cashmere landscapes, stork-legged cabinetry, and, of course, dazzling colorful fine jewelry.