Our friends at Club Chess collabed with Highsnobiety and Maison Margiela over the weekend to debut very smol MM-inspired chess sets. The minimalist sets featured the king and queen delightfully fashioned as tiny MM tabi boots. The Highsnobiety party, Not In New York, took place at The Standard High Line hotel and included music curated by Club Chess co-founders Corrine Ciani and A. L. Bahta. Bringing chess to the NYFW party for the avant-garde haute couture fashion house that popularized the split-toe silhouette within a luxury consciousness reads as extremely coquettish. 

This flirty aesthetic archetype is the femme fatale reforged in the fires of Sandy Liang bows and tabi footwear. Even the names of our coquette demigods–Sabrina, Addison, Gabriette, Lana–evoke both demure and devastation. She contains multitudes: she rots and she parties, she’s surrounded by piles of stuff and she’s doing secret bumps in the Boiler Room bathroom. She might even be celibate. 

You’ll probably find her at a Dare show. The Dare, our indie sleaze (anti)revivalist* who is both reviled and lusted after, recently released his debut full length album, What’s Wrong With New York?, on the heels of producing Charli’s Guess. He pranced across the FEST23 amphitheater stage last summer against a backdrop of triple-stacked Marshall amps spitting the lyrics to Girls in his white dress shirt and skinny black tie. While the coquettish archetype is coy and untouchable, The Dare is obvious and sex-obsessed.

He self-describes his album as “a drunk punch in the face,” which, at only ten songs and twenty seven and a half minutes, is accurate if not very un-coquettish. What ties these archetypes together is the performance of after-dark fantasy informed by a coastal intellectualism and the constant threat of party drugs. 

But The Dare is purposeful in his character-driven performance art. Just like his coquettish counterparts who are sharp witted and well read, The Dare provides a projected simulacra in the face of a crumbling algorithmic culture. Either you get it, or you don’t. 

The Club Chess co-founders graced the FEST24 main stage with their original lecture “3D Chess: The Metaphysics of Party Culture”. In it, they make the case for the party as an operating system. Bringing chess to the LES club is their salve for a too-online and flattened zeitgeist. It’s high society crashing into a coastal elite-informed party culture, invoking fellow NYC party legends The Misshapes, DJ culture, and (of course) Maison Margiela’s Parisian night-time underbelly-inspired fashions. 

The TL;DR: Coquette aesthetics continue to ravish us. But we seem to be a-ok with that. Wear your tabis to the club, kings.

FEST24 Lecture: “3D Chess: The Metaphysics of Party Culture” by Club Chess

"3D Chess: The Metaphysics of Party Culture" is an original lecture given by Club Chess co-founders A. L. Bahta & Corrine Ciani at FWB FEST 2024.

Charting the rise of in 3rd spaces, “physical social media,” and measuring the importance of taste and fantasy in these crucial times. Club Chess is a conceptual social club founded in 2023 by A. L. Bahta and Corrine Ciani in New York City. As an opaque fusion of party, lore, and chess, Club Chess serves as an aesthetic testing ground, attracting those at the intersection of art, technology, design, fashion, and culture. Having been thrown internationally, replicated profusely, and attended by both Hans Ulrich Obrist and Julian Casablancas, Club Chess has stoked the rising interest in chess and shifted the paradigm of the party.

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FWB DOES SINGAPORE WITH REFRACTION

Catch FWB in Singapore at Token2049 with many a friend. Tuesday, September 17 from 9pm to 1am. RSVP below.

THANK YOU TO OUR PARTNERS

Refraction, LUKSO, Livepeer, Mesh, & Squid

SINGAPORE FOOD CRAWL

co-hosted with Story Protocol

​Let's eat insane food in Singapore together. The Hawker Centers are absolute culinary wonders of the world - literally everything looks good and it's amazing. We'll rally the bellies and get that sweet sweet grub.

Story is the world’s IP blockchain, a Layer 1 solution to tokenize the multi-trillion-dollar asset class of intellectual property, making it programmable, sovereign, and liquid - transforming the internet into an IP legoland.

The Story team is hungry for lunch and wants to eat food with you.

CALL FOR PARTNERS AT SCOPE ART FAIR

FWB is partnering with SCOPE Art Show during Miami Art Week. We’re exploring the theme of interdependence and the power of collaboration. SCOPE is not just a venue for art but a dynamic ecosystem where gallerists, artists, collectors, curators, and enthusiasts converge, each playing a vital role in the collective experience. The focus of SCOPE’s large-scale installations will be on artworks that explore the interconnectedness of individuals, communities, and the wider world.

FWB is hosting the web3 hub for us to convene, trade ideas, put our toes in the beach, etc. We know that you probably haven’t sorted your Miami plans so we got you — if you are looking to do something impactful with all your frens, then come work with us and SCOPE. Reach out to us to scheme.

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