Screengrab. From left: Andrew Warren, Serena Marron, Peter Brant II, and Nick Gruber.

Friday, opening night at pop-up club Chez André at The Standard, East Village, found teenage dandy Peter Brant II and ex-porn star Nick Gruber, who was apparently taking a night off from writing a book and developing a TV show about his two-year relationship with Calvin Klein, on stage. The duo, joined at the mic by Andrew Warren and model Serena Marron, sang and mumbled their way through a live-band karaoke rendition of "Born to Be Wild." We have the video evidence. Arguably, it is the best version of the song ever performed. Arguably!

Sandro Boutique West Village: Dree Hemingway for Sandro Launch Party

• Equipped with enough Belvedere vodka to wipe out a Russian platoon, Sandro decided that this night was theirs.
• Wait, who are all these people? Is that Mickey Boardman? Why is he the only person we recognize?
• Hello beef carpaccio!
• We overhear this gem of an exchange: "Ok hang on, so you're telling me both of you are named Johanna?" Both of the girls named Johanna nod. "And you're telling me you are both from Germany?" Again, synchronized nodding. "And neither of you have any real idea why you're at this party?" This last round of nodding sends the leather clad inquirer into a state of deep reflection.
• Borrowing the surprisingly lovely Ms. Hemingway for a moment, she revealed just how much she likes ready-to-wear. A lot. Further prodding revealed that she used "a vehicle" to get to where she is today. She declined to reveal which kind.

A quick colleague dinner in the West Village and we were off to Le Baron for the Sandro after party.

• "Another round of Belvedere lemonade things!" The masterminds behind the previous open bar had worked some magic to replicate the endless flow of sweet-tooth vodka drinks to Andre Saraiva's latest iteration of his Parisian nightclub.
• Saddled up, we start to watch the guest list from the launch party filter in...there are the Johannas!
• Waris Ahluwalia saunters in, Ms. Hemingway in tow.
• As the party gained momentum, we were losing it. This is going to be some week. We powered down for the evening in preparation.

He's Andre Saraiva. Who the hell are you?

The huddled masses on the corner of Mulberry and Mosco had waited for a long time. They had waited through 700 days of planning, they had waited outside several hours on this first night, and then they had waited to get the nod from a doorman. They had waited for the opening of Le Baron, the Chinatown outpost of Andre Saraiva’s famous Paris club.

“Stand in a straight line!” a bouncer yelled.

Police cars were circling the block and a few officers took their positions at checkpoints down the street. We were standing outside the club’s entrance late last Friday, where a line had formed behind us longer than we could see.

“When are they going to kick out this guy?” a friend whispered.

He was pointing at a man in a bunny rabbit costume and head.

“That guy,” said another, “he’s the guy who lets you in. Or, in reality, doesn’t let you in.”

Then two men from across the street came up toward the front.

“Hey, fuck you, get to the back!” someone yelled at them.

“Don’t you fucking cut!” said another.

“No, but really,” the man said, brandishing a set of keys. “I live here.”

He walked up to the door to his apartment building, which would never have a quiet night again.

“This is my home,” he said.

Then, a few minutes later, we were let into Le Baron.

There is a jet set that drifts on the art-party trade winds—a crew that moves down that silk road from Basel to Paris to Cannes to Nolita—and at its center is Andre Saraiva. At first glance he seems more of a mascot than a macher. He’s small and uppity, with slicked-back greaser hair, impeccable jeans and a leather jacket in all seasons.

He seems to genuinely like everyone who makes it into his clubs. (“Oh! Lover! I love you! So wonderful to see you!”) How can anyone be so Gallic, so chic, but also so happy all the time? He’s like an orphan kid scooped from the set of from Les Quatre Cents Coups and then given enough money and pretty girls to be giddy forever.

Unrelenting charm and the ability to throw a good party hide the fact that, when it comes to the worldwide diaspora of the fashionable, Mr. Saraiva is pulling many of the strings. The sun never sets on his Le Baron empire—he’s planted his flag in Paris, London, Tokyo and New York, with pop-ups in Moscow and Miami. He’s been a fixture in this tiny but powerful world for decades, ever since his “Mr. A” stamp began appearing all over Paris.

Graffiti art became gallery art, and Mr. Saraiva went along with it. He can’t seem to ever miss a Fashion Week, too. He’s designed eyewear and clothing for Louis Vuitton and Saint James. Not to mention the short films with former Kids pinup Leo Fitzpatrick, and his role as creative director of L’Officiel Hommes. (He put himself on the cover of the first issue.)

As a proprietor, he accepts paintings for bar tabs—très Gertrude Stein!—hires abstract artists for bouncers and describes his ideal clientele as “poets.” Le Baron Paris was such a hit that pushy Americans began clamoring for an edition of their own. In February 2010, it was announced that Mr. Saraiva would be bringing his globetrotting party to New York City.

“Oh, it will open very soon!” Mr. Saraiva told The Observer in February 2011, at the after party for Charlotte Ronson’s new fashion line.

“I don’t know when Le Baron will open!” Mr. Saraiva told The Observer in June 2011, at the after party for his film The Shoe. “Maybe it will never open!”

“It’s going well, it will be open in the next month!” Mr. Saraiva told The Observer in July 2011, at the after-party for Le Bain’s Bastille Day celebration.

At long last, it has.

It turns out, Le Baron is more French Indochina than magical Shangri-La. It is not New York’s greatest nightclub of all time; not yet, at least. But it’s probably the best thing the city has going right now. It’s a sweeping, pulsating place to drink, immaculately designed and just a tad darker than is comfortable.

There’s a rush of glowing bordello red with flickered little absinthe-hue specks hovering in the nebula of the fog machine. Mirrors jut into the walls, side by side in a box, intimating an empty aquarium that goes on forever. Two rows of status banquettes border the main room, and up a gold-lined staircase there’s cafe-style seating, where waiters bring bottles and fancy cocktails. No one bats an eye when large groups go into the private bathrooms together.

We walked in around 11:15 on Friday to find it scarcely populated, despite the throng outside. Inside were investors, mostly, a few of whom had taken it upon themselves to offer Scarlett Johannson a tour. “This looks great!” the actress exclaimed as the group walked into the basement.

This downstairs dance lounge is darker, redder and foggier, with more lights and bigger music. An unlocked door marked “NOT AN EXIT” seems to be a surrealist joke à la Magritte: this door leads to a packed appliance-laden kitchen where the smoke you see comes not from any machine.

Alexander Wang, flanked by a few of his models, bounced around until he gasped, “It’s great, but soooooo crowded!” and headed out. James Murphy danced in a corner, the elder statesman in regal white stubble. Lily Donaldson, the Victoria’s Secret model, glided through the back room chatting with Annabelle Dexter-Jones, Mr. Saraiva’s effervescent better half. They had come together in a place we assumed would never actually exist.

And if the brass has its way, it’ll stay an elusive locale, visible only in person and in memories. Like at the Beatrice Inn, the cherished West Village celeb sin den also owned by Mr. Saraiva, there is a strict no-picture policy. We stopped by Saturday night after Istanbul ’74’s party for Sandro Kopp, a few blocks away at Pulqueria, with a friend who takes pictures for a monthly fashion magazine. Through the floating velvet, through the smoke, through the crowds of models, he hoisted his camera and snapped away.

We went to the bathroom, but ran into the photographer few minutes later.

“Lemme see the shots!” we said.
“No can do,” he said. “Somebody grabbed my camera and made me erase every last one.”

Given the shenanigans going on in the back crawlspace, the ban on pictures is quite prudent. Here’s a mnemonic snapshot: It’s well past 4:00 in the morning on Friday, the DJs and owners in head-to-toe black, Ms. Donaldson trying on other people’s glasses, the bunny rabbit from the front poking his head in, the actor Michael Pitt talking softly into the ears of a young woman. And then there’s Ms. Dexter-Jones, snuggling up to her beau, Mr. Saraiva.

“You have a wonderful bar,” we tell him after the dual cheek kisses.

“Yes,” he said, putting an arm on our shoulder. “You’re home now.”

Andre!

French nightlife impresario Andre Saraiva’s Le Baron—with respective locations in Paris and Tokyo, easily two of the most exclusive nightlife spots in the known universe, the likes of which you will never see the inside of—has been anticipated as the messanic salvation of New York City nightlife. Especially ever since word of its stateside arrival was confirmed...in March 2010.

In October 2010, it was rumored the Chinatown club was going to open the following month. No dice.

Last June, Mr. Saraiva was here to supervise construction over Le Baron, even though he didn't know if it was ever going to open (or so he told our nightlife correspondent, who may or may not have had a panic attack induced by Mr. Saraiva's cryptic answers).

Last September, Mr. Saraiva was reportedly spending much of his time hard at work "relaxing in France with lovely arm candy [socialite] Annabelle Dexter-Jones." Not shockingly, Le Baron has been about as elusive in its pre-natal stages as entry to it will inevitably be once it opens. For those who think they stand even the most remote chance at entry, however, good news:

The 32 Mulberry club's liquor licence has been approved. Scott Solish at Eater reports:

The liquor license for Andre Saraiva's nightclub has finally been approved by the State Liquor Authority, clearing the final hurdle for the club to open. No word on the exact opening date, but the hipsterati are already clamoring for it to open as soon as possible. It took almost 22 months from the time the project was announced for the place to clear all of the necessary hurdles, and from what we hear, expect the new three story Le Baron to offer the tightest door since the Beatrice in its heyday.

Will it be open for Fashion Week in Februrary?

Will it be open for Fashion Week in September?!

Will it be open for Robot Fashion Week when the robots eventually take over in due time?!? Because that's still, at this point, more likely to happen before Le Baron opens. Meanwhile, New York City's nightcrawling scenesters can still spend their evenings attempting to cadge drinks from their moneyed older dates at the Electric Room as Nur Kahn secretly transmits subliminals upon their delicate, desperate psyches. Hold out, young urbanite! You may be roused from your (distinctly French) existential nightmare in due time. Salvation may be forthcoming, yet.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Andre.

It's almost Fashion Week, which means that French nightlife savant and savior should be opening his much-delayed sin den Le Baron any day now. Um, what! We haven't heard of a single after party booked at the would-be venue in Chinatown. And so the wait continues.

In the meantime, Mr. Saraiva's been relaxing in France with lovely arm candy Annabelle Dexter-Jones. Sometimes, Olivier Zahm takes pictures of them. Good thing, then, that Mr. Saraiva took time out of his schedule to chat up AnOther magazine about the deeper side of fashion.

Would you describe fashion as a language and a discourse, as Barthes did it?
I didn't know Barthes had written about fashion until I passed in front of this old bookstore recently where I saw The Fashion System in the window. To be honest I haven't read it yet… Yes, it is definitely a language for some people, for example like the Hells Angels or hippies use fashion to show they are part of a group. But for others it is just an alternative to being naked.

The word "intellectual" was coined in a time of great political distress. Does fashion have a political role? And in which way?
If you look around at all the extreme groups, from Hitler and his troups to skinheads, or the Black Panthers, all have strong political ideas and a striking appearance.

How would you relate the concept of fashion to the one of style?
Fashion is an industry, and some designers. Style is how the people integrate fashion in their everyday life. Some do it better than others. I just saw the film about Bill Cunningham and I think he demonstrates that better than anyone.

What does fashion have to do with intellectuality ?
I don't know, I'm not much of an intellectual. I'm a handy man!

We like Bill Cunningham New York a lot, too, Andre! Does this mean you'll come back stateside soon? We know a place that could use a handy man, actually, and it's at 32 Mulberry Street.

We kid, we kid. We're just excited, OK?

Anthony Haden-Guest, the fighter, at The Standard.

Consummate party-goer and writer Anthony Haden-Guest stood on the deck of The Standard last night having just seen the premiere of The Shoe, Andre Saraiva's sex-filled Parisian romp with a slight footwear fetish. He was drinking a glass of red wine. It was, The Observer noted, not his first of the night.

"Let's go up to the party!" he said, gesturing toward the other end of the balcony. The celebration was set to continue at Le Bain, the top-floor spot Mr. Saraiva had opened with Andre Balazs last summer, still going strong a year later.

"It's such a mess out here, though," The Observer responded. In order to get to an elevator we had to direct the 74-year-old Mr. Haden-Guest through a vast and tightly packed crowd, dodging half the art world and half-drunk fashion kids.

Not going to happen. So Mr. Haden-Guest grabbed a rolled-up poster for the film and started thrashing at the men and women ahead of him. The Observer followed dutifully. And as he smashed into the shocked onlookers, jabbing at them with the makeshift sword, the clearing begrudgingly began to form.

"Who is this guy?" said a woman holding a cocktail.

"It's all right," said her companion. "He's a successful writer."

By the time we reached Le Bain, Mr. Haden-Guest had ditched his Excalibur and began dancing wildly, all jerky wonderful motions that would get anyone with less cache kicked out of the place, or at least mocked. Tom Hooper, the Oscar-winning director of The King's Speech, stood by the bar, watching. He couldn't even eke out a stutter.

Shortly thereafter Mr. Haden-Guest challenged The Observer to fight. We accepted, of course.

"Do you box?" he asked us.

"Not really," we said.

"I used to be a boxer," he said. "I trained with the greatest."

He said the trainer's name. We didn't recognize it.

"All right, let's go!" he said.

The Observer put up two fists and hopped around Mr. Haden-Guest, who was just as nimble in the ring as he was on the dance floor. Unfortunately, the ring in this case was the strip next to Le Bain's indoor hot tub. After a bit of sparring and some light touches to the chest there's a flash and a slight pain in The Observer's nose. It turns out Anthony Haden-Guest has a mean left hook.

"You see that?" he said to us. "You let your guard down."

Andre + Annabelle

Barely halfway into The Shoe, the 20-minute debut film from nightlife curator Andre Saraiva and fellow Frenchman Olivier Zahm, a young man meets a pretty girl in a Paris park scribbling in a notebook and they lock eyes and begin kissing as the music shuts off, the only sounds the clicks of teeth on teeth, and seconds later they're at her apartment -- clothes fly off and they go at it, the camera catching all. He wakes the next morning, steals the titular footwear, and we never see her again.

Who was she, that girl with the notebook? She was, of course, the director's girlfriend, Annabelle Dexter-Jones, and she watched the X-rated dirty deed with her mother sitting beside her.

"She liked it!" Ms. Dexter-Jones told The Observer much, much later in the night.

We told her we liked it, too.

"It was tasteful, no?" Ms. Dexter-Jones responded, and curled back her hair onto the big collar on her orange sherbet-colored dress.

"For sure," we said.

We had ended up at Kenmare --yes, yes, but where else? -- and so did the director and his starlet, so we stayed until after closing time and sat down to talk about the stacked levels of awkward that struck her during the screening. An edited version had been scheduled especially for Ann Dexter-Jones, but mom insisted on seeing her daughter's risque scene. And things couldn't have been all peachy for Mr. Saravia -- he had to watch Leo Fitzpatrick, the kid from Kids, get hot and heavy with Ms. Dexter-Jones.

But it seems all is well.

"In the scene," Ms. Dexter-Jones said after a sip of her drink. "I was writing a love letter to Andre."

The film may have been Mr. Saraiva's own mash note to his muse, too, but it was also infatuated with the contraband loafers, made by J.M. Weston. It was a particularly convincing ad for the shoes -- it's perfectly clear why Mr. Fitzpatrick steals them, has them stolen from him in kind and, when he finds the thieves, beats them to a bloody pulp to get them back. The guy cares about loafers!

The crowd skipped the first showing, the edited version, in favor of vodka drinks on the third-floor stone balcony, and then filed into the screening room for the film. Paris, pretty people, sex, loafers, cafes, etc. And yes, as Annabelle would reiterate later, her mother had no problem whatsoever witnessing the spectacle.

"I was very comfortable!" the elder Ms. Dexter-Jones told The Observer. "She was acting. It's not like I'm a peeping Tom! I had to appreciate --"

"Can I get one photo for Women's Wear Daily?" said a woman with a Polaroid camera. Apparently the rag has gone retro with its fashion slideshows.

She snapped it and the hazy undeveloped image puttered out of the clunky machine.

"But yes," Ms. Dexter-Jones continued. "I think she's a great actress."

The party migrated to Le Bain, where it's finally warm enough for the hot tub to be open, but The Observer chased the party downtown and split for to the pop-up Madame Wong's (which got the full Thursday Styles treatment in today's Times). Before seeing The Shoe we had run into Simonez Wolf, impresario behind the traveling hush-hush infrequent club, and he told us it was on tonight. But when we arrived at Jobee, the nondescript place the party occupies, there was only Nico, a waiter, and he said it had been quiet.

"Just went to wong's at jobee, is it somewhere else?" The Observer texted Mr. Wolf. "Nico was cleaning up."

"idk," Mr. Wolf responded.

Oh well. Luckily enough Kenmare had on display a wobbly Josh Brolin who rolled through with his bros, Paul Sevigny hauling his DJ rig brought over from Le Bain, and eventually Mr. Saraiva and Ms. Dexter-Jones. It got late and after discussing The Shoe Ms. Dexter-Jones changed the subject. She wanted a book recommendation.

"Have you read The Day of the Locust?" we asked.

She hadn't. But later we realized that, given the film we had watched her in earlier that night, a much more appropriate choice would have been the book stuffed in our jacket pocket: Dylan Thomas' Adventures in the Skin Trade.

Then the couple left, driven away by one of the bouncers as dawn started to hit the rooftops, and as we walked away we realized we had two lighters in our pocket. If you want yours back, Annabelle, let us know.

“andre est a paris … !” the man said, on Twitter, April 21.

“Je suis a paris!” read another tweet, from May 28.

And then, on June 9: “very hot in N Y … !”

The Transom confirmed his stateside presence on that sweltering Thursday when we ran into him at the Boom Boom Room. Samantha Ronson was on the decks (it’s been noted that Mr. Saraiva is dating the D.J.’s younger sister, Annabelle Dexter-Jones), and the Baron Andre sat windowside with a spread of Standard Hotel fries and Champagne. As the party waned, many of the attendees followed their Cognac buzzes from the meatpacking to Nolita, where, until Le Baron opens, Kenmare will suffice.

We stayed late. Around 4 in the morning the Transom was wedged in a booth next to Ms. Dexter-Jones, in a slipover jersey sweater and tiny hot-pink shorts, as we waited for Mr. Saraiva and Nur Khan, the owner, to finish up talking. Ms. Dexter-Jones happened to mention, not casually, the recent article on her boyfriend that had run last month in BlackBook.

“You know, none of that is true,” the 24-year-old Ms. Dexter-Jones told the Transom. She was referring to the bit that equated the sound of the couple’s shower sex—overheard by the BlackBook editor in question—to “someone strangling a crocodile.”

We never believed that, Annabelle, we said. Never even thought about it.

Then Mr. Saraiva returned to our wing of the booth.

“I don’t know when Le Baron will open,” he told the Transom. “Maybe it will never open!”

We pleaded with him to go ahead with his plans. Then, knowing his transatlantic tendencies, we asked where his travels will take him in the next months.

“Well,” he said, plucking out his English words as if from an ill-stocked, cluttered bag. “I have to be New York, to watch over the construction of Le Baron.”

So it will open!

“I don’t know,” he said. “But when it does, you will know.”

Even with a two-person crew working to tidy nightlife impresario André Saraiva’s new Chinatown apartment for the busy weekend ahead, it’s impossible to ignore the high-pitched shrieks coming from the shower in the back room. Saraiva is “having breakfast,” I’m vaguely assured, with his girlfriend, socialite Annabelle Dexter-Jones. It’s Friday, a quarter past noon. [...] “Either André and Annabelle were having sex in the shower,” a partygoer will say to me later that weekend, “or someone was strangling a crocodile."

The upshot, however, is that we all now know what having sex and/or breakfast with a socialite sounds like. Do with that what you will. It's the alternative positioning that matters, though, as if that is indeed what Mr. Saraiva's breakfasts sound like these days, Manhattan should eagerly await Le Baron's arrival on the nightlife scene. 

[fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek]

The opening party was predictably packed with affected-looking people in see-through lace, ripped t-shirts, and severe hairstyles. Also: stylist Rachel Zoe, Becka Diamond, Hannah Bronfman (Edgar Bronfman Jr.'s daughter) and jewelry designer Waris Ahluwalia in mandals!

Oh and did we mention there were two topless women dancing in the pool?