Hardy party at the Grove

On Thursday night, as the fashion faithful were tucked away under the tents in Culver City watching the last of the "official" Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week events unspool at Smashbox Studios, Christian Audigier staged his spring-summer 2006 Ed Hardy runway show for several thousand fans at the Grove shopping center in the Fairfax district.

"It's Fashion Week and we're not just showing the line to fashion editors and the fashion industry," said Fred Levine (pictured below, watching the show), an owner of the M. Fredric retail stores, which sponsored the event. "We're bringing it to you, the people who wear it."
The crowd went wild as two Asian-style dancing dragons bounded off the stage and down the red carpet, followed in short order by nine gyrating dancers in fishnets and torn Ed Hardy T-shirts and then -- in ones and twos -- men, women and children of every stripe sporting the signature tattoo-inspired graphics.

The most impressive part of the event was the crowd, which packed the entire space between the central "dancing fountain" and the statue near Barnes & Noble, save for a sliver of red carpet. Although it seemed less than the 10,000 people cited by the Grove's VP of marketing, Jenny Gordon (we'd say half that number at best), the turnout still dwarfed that of any single fashion show at any venue over the previous eight days. That is perhaps an unfair comparison because the other fashion events weren't open to the public, but Audigier definitely seems to have tapped into the street.

At the end of a long week, this plank in the runway was too tired to ask about the "surprise celebrity guests" in the show. But I did spot oil heir Jason Davis rockin' some Ed Hardy on the catwalk in perhaps the most animated half-jig  of his life, and the tween girls beside me had made the trek from Mexico to proclaim their love for someone named "Boo-Boo."

The evening ended with the comical image of Audigier bounding enthusiastically down the stairs, missing a step and accidentally turning part of the front row into an unwitting mosh pit as the Crenshaw High School band played it to a close by marching down the red carpet.

And with that, another L.A. Fashion Week drew to a close, so we're rolling up the runway and handing the keys back to Booth.

-- Adam Tschorn

(Photo Credit:  Adam Tschorn / Los Angeles Times)