NEW YORK, NY.- Here is a lesson in not leaving a party early: When the Dior show ended Monday night, some guests headed straight for the exit.

This is standard behavior at runway shows — muscle memory for many attendees like fashion editors, influencers, buyers and celebrities. (On the VIP list for this production: Charlize Theron, Naomi Watts, Michelle Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy and Haerin from NewJeans.) Often, guests must rush across traffic-jammed cities to make it to their next appointment.

But this wasn’t fashion week — Dior presenting a fall collection at the Brooklyn Museum in the middle of April was a special occasion. No need to storm the exits! Have a glass of Champagne and some canapés, like bagels the size of half-dollar coins. Linger for a chat with Lauren Santo Domingo, the co-founder and chief brand officer of Moda Operandi, and Karlie Kloss, the model and nascent media mogul.

“It’s a great thing for New York,” Santo Domingo chirped. “It’s been a long time since we had a European show here.” (Balenciaga, another Paris-based fashion house, paid a visit to Wall Street in May 2022.)

“I love the way she story tells,” said Kloss, referring to Dior’s creative director, Maria Grazia Chiuri. In the collection, which was inspired by the androgynous style of actress Marlene Dietrich, Kloss had picked up on an “ode to reproductive rights,” she said. (Indeed, a news release later distributed by Dior referred to “a woman’s right to choose her attire,” be it a masculine tweed suit or a dainty slip dress.)

If you stayed long enough, you might have caught Chiuri dancing on a raised platform in a suit of her own making, alongside Dior ambassador Rosamund Pike, while the former Sonic Youth frontwoman, Kim Gordon, performed.

Here, in the museum’s Beaux-Arts Court, was an Italian-born designer known for her feminist messaging; a British actress wearing Matrix-style sunglasses indoors; and a 70-year-old alternative rock star singing a song called “Cookie Butter” in front of reality television stars and contemporary artists.

Only in New York. At least that was the idea.

A Night of Jazz at Lincoln Center

The mood was similarly buoyant on Wednesday night, despite the drizzly weather, at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s annual fundraising gala at the Rose Theater on Columbus Circle. This year the event honored singer Tony Bennett, who died last summer at age 96 after a yearslong battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

“You can’t even say his name without holding yourself,” said Gayle King, the longtime broadcast journalist and current co-host of “CBS Mornings.” “That’s what he did to so many people.”

The event, which was attended by about 1,100 people and raised more than $2.8 million, attracted a smattering of celebrities from the film, music and theater worlds, among them actor Robert De Niro, a longtime friend of Bennett’s; actress Emmy Rossum; and Broadway leading ladies Bernadette Peters and Kristin Chenoweth, both of whom performed renditions of songs recorded by Bennett.

Other highlights from the 90-minute concert, which was hosted by singer Josh Groban and featured the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, included Jared Grimes, on the heels of his Tony-nominated turn in the recent Broadway revival of “Funny Girl,” tap dancing to “Steppin’ Out With My Baby,” sung by Shenel Johns; Norm Lewis, the first Black actor to play the title role in “The Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway, singing “It Amazes Me” in his rich baritone; and Groban himself performing Charlie Chaplin’s “Smile.”

The music spilled into dinner, with Marsalis leading a second-line parade — a tradition in his native New Orleans — around dozens of candle-topped tables in the atrium.

After tucking into plates of Tuscan chicken atop fregola sarda, followed by a brown-butter-and-walnut-crusted lemon curd, some people — among them Peters, in a navy blue wrap — began heading for the elevators. But about 100 others, including Lewis, who had already pulled double duty that evening by stopping by the opening night of the Broadway musical “The Wiz,” began filtering down a mural-lined hallway into Dizzy’s Club, an intimate space with bamboo walls and a large window looking out over Central Park that was a favorite haunt of Bennett’s.

The crowd was soon shoulder to shoulder as Nicole Zuraitis, who won this year’s Grammy Award for best jazz vocal album for “How Love Begins,” sang a spirited rendition of “Two Fish,” backed by the 17-piece Danny Jonokuchi Big Band, as the lights of Upper East Side apartment buildings across Central Park twinkled behind her.

For many, the evening — already four hours in — was just getting started.

“We look forward to this all year,” one man leaned over and told another, as waiters circulated with silver trays of sparkling rosé and sliders. “We got a babysitter. We’ll be here until they close the place down.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.