A few days before setting sail for Shelter Island, Billie Eilish had an accident. “I fell down some stairs, you know,” she said with a laugh on the red carpet at Chanel’s pop-up yacht club at Sunset Beach on Saturday night, which included transport to the party by Riva yachts, Chanel-branded surfboards, beach umbrellas, badminton sets and board games, as well as a Chanel J12 watch shop inside Sunset Beach Hotel. “We wrapped my foot in a Chanel scarf,” she added, pointing down to her clunky medical boot and the purple interlocking C logos printed beneath the black velcro and plastic. Injury and all, Eilish was proud to represent the French fashion house that has believed in her from the very beginning of her career. This event and performance, which was a celebration of Chanel’s relaunched J12 watch that comes in four styles and has a new 12.1 caliber automatic movement, was Eilish’s second for the label. She’d previously performed at the Coco Club Party at the Wing back in 2017 when she was a 15-year-old pop star on the rise. This time, even on a small island adjacent to the Hamptons, a sizable line of kids awaited her arrival anxiously outside of Sunset Beach, eager to get a snap of Eilish, who currently has 32 million followers on Instagram.
“If I’m comfortable, I’m good,” Eilish noted when asked about her favorite way to dress for a performance. “I’m usually in shorts, a T-shirt; as long as I feel good and it’s me. My style changes once a month, but it’s always me. No matter what changes in my life or what I like at that moment in time, I’m always going to respect my personal style.” She added, “Even back when I was 10 years old and wore the ugliest outfits in the world, I still respect the fact that I wore what I wanted.” For the J12 yacht club, Eilish chose an oversized lime green T-shirt with the Chanel logo spray-painted on the front in black. She accessorized with crystal-encrusted logo chain necklaces and earrings, as well as a pair of Chanel bottle-cap shades and extra-long, pointy bright green nails. “I used to wear rings on every single finger,” she said. “Then I got nails, and I don’t do that anymore; I don’t feel insecure about my hands anymore. It’s hard to type on the phone, but I can pull grapes with ‘em and eat ‘em; I’m figuring out how to maneuver.”
Eilish was thrilled to travel to Sunset Beach for the first time and sing for a small audience alongside her musician brother Finneas O’Connell. As she’s become accustomed to giant stadium tours, she really enjoys an acoustic set because, as she explained ahead of the J12 dinner, “Every show I do I have fans singing along, which is literally a blessing, but I can’t really hear myself because they are singing along.” She added, “I forget that I can sing sometimes because it’s so loud, which is great, but I love a much more intimate setting like this.” Eilish didn’t spend too much time talking about her Chanel-wrapped broken foot or her love for small performances due to the fact that she was being mindful not to overextend her voice ahead of showtime. And before she hit the stage, guests—including Kristine Froseth, Phoebe Tonkin, Poppy Delevingne, and Camila Morrone—gathered upstairs at Sunset beach for icy cocktails and Frosé (it was still hot even after the sun went down over the water), as well as dinner that included fresh grilled branzino and fries. After the performance, in which Eilish sang several of her hits including “Bad Guy” and “Bury a Friend,” Kitty Cash deejayed and small plates of sliders and chicken fingers were passed around, as more margaritas and rosé flowed. Even in a heatwave, and with Eilish’s angelic voice echoing into the steamy breeze, Chanel managed to throw one of the coolest parties of the summer.