While nearly 400 guests celebrated Thom Browne and other honorees at Tuesday night’s Parsons benefit, pro-Palestinian protesters picketed outside of the Cipriani Wall Street event.
The annual gathering attracted such attendees as Tory Burch, Donna Karan, Carolina Herrera’s Wes Gordon, LVMH’s Gena Smith, Hudson Bay’s Liz Robdell, J.Crew’s Olympia Gayot and model-activist Carolyn Murphy. In addition to Brown, the founder and chief creative officer of his namesake company, the 75th annual event saluted fashion advocate and documentarian Bethann Hardison and the J.Crew Group’s chief executive officer Libby Wadle.
Towers’ appointment comes at a chaotic time for The New School, which like other colleges and universities has been dealing with on-campus protesters and encampments including a faculty-led one. Earlier this month, 43 protesters were detained by the NYPD, after school officials called for the removal of an encampment that they said was blocking the entrance to a residence hall, where 600 people were housed.
At the start of this month, supporters of The New School’s Students for Justice in Palestine claimed the university is invested in 65 funds that have positions in 13 companies including , General Electric, Boeing, Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, Motorola Solutions and the Raytheon Co. among others. The group asked that the school divest from those 13 companies.