NEW YORK— Fashion and art collided in a sea of black Tuesday night at the opening of “Richard Hambleton—New York,” an event sponsored by Giorgio Armani and organized, fittingly enough for Fashion Week, by French Vogue editor Carine Restoin-Roitfeld’s son Vladimir.

The party, held at 560 Washington Street, a factory-like space in downtown New York, brought out partygoers dressed in the sponsoring designer’s trademark inky hue, in a convenient yet interesting complement to artist Richard Hambleton’s series “Shadows,” street art painted in black early in the ’80s on the Lower East Side and photographed in 1981 and ’82 by Hank O’Neal, who was also in attendance. The exhibit of Hambleton's work runs through Oct. 2 at the Washington Street space.

Guests shared champagne and red wine and snippets of gossip from the Bryant Park tents while the soundtrack slipped easily from late-punk Blondie and the Clash to the more current Cut Copy, much like Hambleton’s work itself, whose large-scale Horse and Rider–Right and Horse and Rider–Left from 1984 seamlessly meshed with the painter’s recent works. A frequent attendee to downtown fashion and arts events, actress and designer Mary-Kate Olsen came out early and was later followed by musicians Alicia Keys and Mary J. Blige, actor Josh Hartnett, and models Caroline Winberg and Lily Donaldson.

Said O’Neal of his photographs of Hambleton’s work, “The only reason I took them was because I liked what they looked like. And at some point in 1982, I looked down, and I saw a shadow thing on a piece of paper, a flier, and that’s when I found out what his name was.

“It shows a history,” he said of the exhibit and the turnout. “A continuum.”