How The Band Cookie Crumbles

Can Scott Sternberg ever be normal? Answer: No. Trust the Band of Outsiders designer to eschew the hip, hard-to-get-into spots when he throws a party to celebrate his first runway show on Saturday night, and instead decamp to Zaitzeff Burgers, a homey, perpetually under-attended joint in the East Village. Kirsten Dunst (above, with Sternberg), Aziz Ansari, Humberto Leon, Carol Lim, David Chang, and Dick Page joined Sternberg and his team for burgers and fries, not to mention beers and Dewar’s, and talk turned (as it must, when Sternberg is around) to cookies. Exhibit B, in the ongoing non-normalness of Scott Sternberg: The lemony cookies on the seats at the Band of Outsiders show. They were called Lemon Tree Huggers, which must be shorthand for the Best Cookie Ever. Sternberg recruited Momofuku Milk Bar pastry chef Christina Tosi, who previously contributed a Thai spiced cookie to his Fashion’s Night Out concession stand one September not long ago, to whip up an exclusive confection. “You will never eat that cookie again,” said Sternberg, sounding rather Heraclitus-like. “It existed only for the show.” Sternberg went on to note that Tosi’s cookie was subject to the same exacting scrutiny as the clothes in the new Band, Boy and Girl collections. “There was a lot of debate over the size of the cookie,” he recalled. “I thought they should be normal size. Some people thought a normal-size cookie at a fashion might be a little, you know, gauche. We finally agreed on a 3/4 scale.” Speaking on behalf of the BOO show attendees: Had we known we’d never taste that cookie again, the additional 1/4 would have been welcome.