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Eva Longoria, Sharon StonePhoto: Nisha Johny
On a breezy mid-week evening in Los Angeles, Falconeri made the case for a new kind of luxury. The Italian knitwear brand, founded in 2000 and beloved by cashmere devotees from Milan to Malibu, hosted an intimate dinner in the shadow of the Getty Center to celebrate its signature Ultrafine Cashmere collection—a lightweight, year-round take on the fabric that the brand has made its cornerstone.
The setting, a private hilltop home designed by Thomas Juul-Hansen using travertine from the same Italian quarry that supplied the Getty Center, was a deliberate choice; its clean, minimal architecture aligns with the brand’s own no-excess aesthetic, and the views across an infinity pool toward the ocean didn’t hurt either.
A stylish crowd including Eva Longoria, Leighton Meester, Matt Bomer, Sharon Stone, and ultra-photogenic couple Chace Crawford and Kelsey Merritt arrived to Negronis and prosecco on the terrace, many of them draped in pieces from the soft and versatile seasonless collection. There was also no shortage of Hollywood stylists in attendance too, such as Maeve Reilly, Mariel Haenn, Elizabeth Stewart, Jordan Johnson, and Petra Flannery.
At the rooftop table, rocks styled to resemble hunks of bread anchored a textured tablescape, and cashmere shawls were placed at each setting—appropriate, given how quickly Los Angeles evenings can turn cool. Dinner incorporated yellowtail Sicilian crudo, balsamic brown butter foulard pasta, and strawberry panna cotta; each course loosely inspired by stages of Falconeri’s production process and its seasonal color palette. As they tucked in, Longoria, Meester, and Crawford reminisced about their breakthrough roles on cult shows of yore(Gossip Girl and Desperate Housewives) while Matt Bomer—leaving for Budapest soonafter to begin shooting his next project—was deep in conversation debating the best things to do in the city on his days off, each guest offering up their own little black book.
A toast came from group CEO Matteo Veronesi, who tackled one of fashion’s most hotly debated questions head-on. “You may wonder, what is luxury nowadays,” he asked. “In Italy, you are surrounded by beauty everywhere you go—piazzas, ancient traditions, churches. Luxury is also what you feel, what you wear. My father built Falconeri on that idea: a conscious luxury, rooted in the authenticity of materials and the finest Italian manufacturing. Nothing more, nothing less.”
As the cars lined up to ferry attendees back home, Sharon Stone offered the evening’s final verdict, calling it the most beautiful dinner she’d ever attended in Los Angeles. Guests departed with cashmere shawls tucked into straw beach totes—fitting, given that in Southern California you will always need one or the other. Or sometimes both.
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