Robyn! Solange! Lil’ Kim! A Look Back at Opening Ceremony’s Most Iconic Parties of the Last Two Decades

Tonight, Opening Ceremony will be celebrating its 20th anniversary with a giant party in Brooklyn. Since the beginning, OC parties have always been events not to miss — you’d be hard-pressed to find a fashion person that has lived in New York in the past two decades that doesn’t have stories from a party or two. To commemorate the milestone, we spoke to the two people that remember it all the best — OC founders Carol Lim and Humberto Leon. Here, they take us down memory lane with a selection of their favorite parties from the last two decades. No small feat!

Humberto Leon: I think when we started Opening Ceremony, Carol and I really envisioned a space that could bring people together. You know, a lot of people referred to it as a clubhouse. When we first opened, all our friends would come and get their scripts printed in the back office, and it was really just a place that would welcome everybody.

Carol Lim: I mean, if you imagine in 2002, you know, there were friends of ours that didn’t have cell phone, right? So calling the landline, actually calling the store was the beginning point of the party every night. Like, you would ride your bike and we would all meet out in the front, chances are that even if you hadn’t talked to someone, you’d know that they would be there.

HL: I mean, I think when the store first opened, it basically was a party inside while people were shopping around. We had two turntables on top of the staircase and we had a karaoke machine up there, and there would literally be moments when a customer would be just about to leave, and we’d run upstairs and break out the mic and go crazy. And then somebody would walk in and sometimes we’d continue it and we’d welcome the guests to karaoke with us.

Carol and I are super interested in film and music and art and all these other things, so what you really see at these parties is this collision of different cultures. It just so happens that we are in the business of fashion, but at the end of the day I feel it’s… just culture coming together.