Vena Cava and Friends Celebrate New Line with Chateau Bash

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• Vena Cava's Sophie Buhai with St. Vincent singer Annie Clark (right)
• Malin Akerman
• Sophie and actress Sophia Bush
• Busy Philipps
• Natasha Lyonne (left)
• Taped to the wall, two Vena Cava band tees for St. Vincent

Last night, a bunch of fashion industry types, Hollywood starlets and indie singer Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) gathered at the Chateau Marmont to celebrate the triumphant return of Vena Cava and the label's fall line, which is available now at Barneys. The swank event, hosted by the staunch Vena Cava supporters at Gen Art, offered guests drinks, cupcakes, free tees and, the highlight of the evening, a poolside acoustic performance by Clark. We spoke with Vena Cava designer Sophie Buhai about what she and partner Lisa Mayock are cooking up and the inspiration for their latest looks.

This is the first collection since LF USA came into the picture. How did that change the process?
"It's only helped us. They have resources that we never had before as a really small fashion company. Before, we'd have certain design ideas or certain branding ideas and collaboration ideas but we could never do them because we didn't have the resources. So it's really amazing to be able to execute your vision completely with people behind you to support it."

What kind of collaborations?
"We're doing a movie with Red Bucket Films right now, which is awesome. It's a Vena Cava horror movie, which is going to be incredible. It will be short, like five or six minutes. Lisa and I are in it along with some Vena Cava muses. We've been filming it this week [in LA]. So that's cool. Also, we've started doing band T-shirts. We did our first one with St. Vincent. We want band T-shirts to be designed in a great way again like they were in the seventies and eighties."

How did you get hooked up with Gen Art?
"We did a fashion show with them really early on in our career and they were really supportive of us. They called us and said they wanted to do a party and we were like, that sounds amazing. And then they asked us if we would want to do it at the Chateau. And we were like, a party at the Chateau? Fantastic. So that's how it happened."

What can we expect from the fall line?
"The theme is neo-Noir so we were watching a lot of Noir movies from the seventies like Chinatown and some Brian De Palma movies. We were really inspired by strong female characters that kind of had a dark elegance to them."

You had mentioned that you were considering opening an LA store. Is that still a possibility?
"We really want to open a store at some point. It's been our dream. We have a lot of crazy ideas about what a Vena Cava store would be. We work so much with environments and objects and we're so inspired by interior design that it would be great. Right now we're so busy just working on the clothes but eventually, yes. We want it to happen."
· Vena Cava [Official Site]
· Shhh [Racked]