The St. Regis Aspen Snow Polo World Championship—it’s a convention that has carried on for 12 years because the kickoff to the mountain city’s winter season and this yr proved to be probably the most action-packed but, with the festivities kicking off with a pre-dinner disco on the Snow Lodge Jade Room.
The moody tented front room is a kind of hidden annex connected to the St. Regis the place in-the-know friends collect for aprés ski and, on the eve of the snow polo championship, introduced collectively a bunch of glitterati from the native Aspen group and past. In a single nook, cloak-maker Lindsey Thornburg and jewellery designer Jennifer Youthful, may very well be discovered sporting wares from their eponymous manufacturers, and within the different, {couples} Billy Magnussen and Erica Firestone and Paul Wesley and Natalie Kuckenburg outfitting their new Stetson cowboy hats for the event. The polo gamers had been out in full power, too, having fun with an evening away from the stables, together with Nacho Figueras, Alejandro Novillo Astrada, and Sarah Siegal Magness, who introduced her sidekick, a teacup poodle named Rosie, alongside for the enjoyable.
Revelers fawned over the over-the-top ice sculptures serving up Silent Pool gin martinis, and caviar bites due to Aureta, whose very personal caviar tins come labeled together with her identify and likeness. “There a sure over-the-topness in Aspen, and I stay up for all of it yea,r” quipped Jayma Cardoso, gesturing towards the room crammed to the hilt with shearlings and cowboy hats and turquoise jewellery. “It’s such a singular place, and actually, how might you not have enjoyable?”
The subsequent morning, on the snow-covered Rio Grande Park, founders of the Aspen Valley Polo Membership, Melissa and Marc Ganzi, gathered their finest gamers to placed on a correct exhibiting of polo for the newcomers within the crowd. “It’s at all times an amazing day for polo, however right this moment is especially good,” Melissa Ganzi informed Vogue throughout a go to to the announcer’s tent. “We’ve acquired solar, simply sufficient snow, and no scarcity of champagne.”
Sure, in true Aspen style, the champagne performed a co-starring function to the day. Because the matches carried on, St. Regis model lead George Fleck led a lesson in champagne sabrage, with Riley Keogh, Billie Lourd, Nicky Hilton Rothschild, and Jeremy Pope all attempting their hand on the theatrical artwork of opening a bottle of bubbly with a saber. Some had been extra proficient than others. Shaun White and Pom Klementieff, common guests to the festivities, wanted no instruction.
By the day’s finish, a proficient trio of gamers—Grant Ganzi, Pierre Henri Ngoumou, and Jason Crowder—took house the coveted championship trophy, celebrating with a hoist of the day’s prize and one other spray of champagne for good measure. Collectively, they led a merry band of partygoers to Hidalgo, a brand new basement boîte contained in the W Resort Aspen, the place Insurgent Wilson, Anna Kendrick, Fortune Feimster, and lots of, many extra danced atop tables and sofas to mark the tip of this rollicking kickoff to the vacation break.
