Conrad Hotel’s global reach

Event Review

Nikki Cormaci

A fashion show was just one component at the Conrad last week.

To announce their arrival in Indianapolis, the Conrad Hotel hosted a $125 a plate benefit party for Indy Hub and the Arts Council last Thursday, as part of a week of strategically lavish events celebrating its grand opening.

Partial corporate sponsors, Saks Fifth Avenue, Belvedere Vodka and Veuve Clicquot champagne, aided the Conrad in courting local young professionals with a global parade of music, food, fashion and free liquor.

Encased in a steel frame seeping neon light, DJ Stingray scored the event from his perch 10 feet in the air. A mindful import from the Miami Conrad, DJ Stingray gave the mostly young crowd a taste of what it sounds like to live in a real American international gateway city.

This promise of internationalism was present in all the night’s details, making the event feel as much a corporate courtship ritual as a crash course in global cosmopolitan aesthetics. A sea of Belvedere and Veuve Clicquot flowed tirelessly throughout the evening. Stations proffering samples of Giorgio Armani makeup lined the walls. The hors d’oeuvres bar offered guests gorgeous little bites of rich global foods.

The most pointed example of this phenomenon was the Saks Fifth Avenue runway show, featuring a collection of urban street wear heavy on designers like Versace and Prada. The clothes, which favored a tropical metropolitan exoticism in bold prints and sinuous lines, felt imported from the upper class streets of South Beach or Los Angeles, as if to display the young look of global luxury. In fact, the entire event seemed to dangle in front of the city’s least settled demographic the possibility of an Indianapolis soaked in luxury and global sex appeal.

By 1 a.m. the Conrad had flipped the switch on the neon and turned its Vienna Opera Ballroom back into a five-star pumpkin. Young Midwestern professionals tackled the sweeping staircase with various degrees of boozy success and tucked themselves away into mid-level sedans with visions of cosmopolitan nightlife still dancing in their heads.

Whether or not this society of young professionals, with their disposable incomes and appetites for loose luxury, will keep the cocktail lounge and restaurant at the Conrad significantly populated remains to be seen. Also to be determined is whether or not the Conrad really has the desire to deploy its resources to infuse the city with global cosmopolitanism. Regardless of the outcome, the Conrad has made it abundantly clear that there are perks to patronizing a hotel with a global reach and deep pockets.