In fashion, as Heidi Klum has made a television career of opining, one day you’re in, and the next day you’re out.
Unless you happen to be Jim Moore, the long-serving creative director of GQ, in which case you’re “in” practically in perpetuity — or at least as long as anyone seems able to remember.
On Saturday night here, GQ celebrated Mr. Moore’s 35th anniversary at the magazine at the private home where Leonardo da Vinci lived while working on “The Last Supper.” Wine grapes of the type da Vinci planted in the garden vineyard were once again growing out back, near a giant illuminated GQ logo.
The magazine has absorbed Mr. Moore for the entirety of his career. “Someone was like, ‘What job did you have before GQ?’ ” Mr. Moore said. “I was in school.” (He had studied fine art under Chuck Close but high-tailed it to New York, fearing the lonely life of an artist.)
The show season was in full swing, but this evening was “all about Jim, Jim, Jim,” said Jim Nelson, GQ’s editor, himself a long-serving veteran of the title. (“Other Jim, Jim, Jim,” he clarified.) Attendance was very nearly mandatory for Milan’s designers, many of whose careers Mr. Moore has nurtured and watched grow from seed.
“He was in my showroom when I had one rack of clothing,” said Thom Browne, in Milan to show his collection for Moncler Gamme Bleu. “He loved it. He was brave.”
Mr. Browne was waiting to greet Mr. Moore alongside Bottega Veneta’s Tomas Maier and Neil Barrett; Brunello Cucinelli was chatting in the foyer. By the end of the night, Dean and Dan Caten of DSquared2, Marni’s Consuelo Castiglioni, Kean Etro and Zegna’s Stefano Pilati had all been through.
In an exercise of bilateral diplomacy, many had, before or after, been to a competing party not far away. Details magazine was commemorating an anniversary of its own: the 15-year mark for its editor, Dan Peres.
“Have you celebrated Jim Moore’s 35th yet?” Mr. Peres asked in the open-air courtyard of the Villa Clerici. There were giant blowups of images from the magazine, though GQ had the edge on entertainment: Unlike Details, it had a groaning table of food in addition to drinks, and a live performance by the R&B singer Miguel, versus Details’ D.J. set echoing down the Via Clerici.
The two camps were full of diplomatic praise for each other (befitting their status as brothers in the Condé Nast family). “I think we’re all, as an industry, unbelievably inspired by Jim and his tenure at GQ, and the impact that he’s had on men’s wear in general,” Mr. Peres said.
He insisted that the scheduling was a coincidencem saying, “We’ve always done events around the same time as them, but I didn’t know until I was coming over here that it was Jim’s anniversary.”
Mr. Moore said of the night’s double bill: “I think it’s fantastic. I was telling Dan tonight, 15, 35, put it together, and. …” That number seemed to invite awed silence, so he trailed off, and said again, “I think it’s great.”
Though it is a few years shy of 35, 15 years is no small span to run a magazine, and a similar crew of designers and industry executives — including, at that particular moment, Mr. Etro, Mr. Maier and the Canali group communications director Elisabetta Canali — was there toasting that achievement in measures carefully calibrated to equal GQ’s.
Even for fashion week, this was an usually busy night in Milan. Ms. Canali allowed herself a glass of Champagne to toast hitting not one party, not two, but three. (“We also went to Leon, the Chinese magazine,” she said.)
Mr. Peres, for his part, was feeling both celebratory and reflective.
“So much has changed within our business, and so much has changed with me personally,” he said of 15 years at the helm. “It feels like a lifetime, and it feels like I was just coming over here to meet these people for the first time. Fifteen years ago, my first collections, I was wearing sneakers and jeans and not shaving.”
That’s become a fairly popular look among attendees again, though not on Mr. Peres, who was wearing a navy suit and open-collared shirt. (He said he felt too long in the tooth for the unshaven look any longer.) Which made one wonder whether he was looking forward to another 20 years, to a 35th bash of his own.
“Let me tell you something,” Mr. Peres said. “It’d be great to make it to 16.”
