Honey Dijon’s DJ Fashion Week Party

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She may not have won a Grammy, but she's an undisputed champion in the D.J. booth.

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By Shane O’Neill

Honey Dijon's D.J. set on Saturday night at the Glasshouse in New York came on the heels of her appearance at the Grammy awards, when millions outside the club scene got a glimpse of the D.J. mastery that those inside of it have danced to and admired for many years.

No matter that Beyoncé's "Renaissance," which featured two collaborations with Ms. Dijon, was snubbed for album of the year. Among dance music connoisseurs, Ms. Dijon's long career and masterful D.J. sets have already secured her legacy.

The party was thrown by Teksupport, a New York collective that specializes in Ibiza-style club nights. Techno snobs, circuit queens and other party people came out to dance at the altar of Ms. Dijon.

At 12:30 a.m., the gargantuan venue was still slowly filling up as D.J. Hank K clapped from the decks. "We call this D.J. ‘cocktail sauce’ because we’re all just waiting for Honey Dijon,’" said one goateed partygoer, who looked glum as he and his wife waited out the set.

Hank K was aware that he was playing second fiddle but insisted it was an honor. "Anyone can be a great D.J., but she has swagger," he said.

That swagger was honed in a decades-long career that began in the 1990s Chicago rave scene. She later garnered international acclaim as a D.J. and produced two albums of original house tracks. Madonna has called Ms. Dijon her favorite D.J.

When she took to the decks a few minutes before 1 a.m., she was dressed simply in an unbuttoned black shirt, bluejeans and a Dodgers baseball cap. It was a look that said, "I came here to work." And work she did.

Ms. Dijon's set was wide ranging but rooted in traditional house music. She made ample use of vocal samples set against spare drum loops or dramatic silence that spun into dramatic climaxes. The crowd responded with screams and fist pumps.

A longtime fan named Jorge Egal, 37, who works for JP Morgan, danced and blew kisses from the front row. "I’ve been seeing her in the underground scene for years," he said, adding that he met Ms. Dijon when he first moved to New York City in 2010. "She was still amazing and big, but now she's untouchable."

Another fan, Gili Eliash, 42, who works as a D.J., said he had traveled on a whim from Tel Aviv and paid $170 for admission that granted him backstage access. "Money is nothing to me," he said.

The crowd included many shirtless musclebound men who greeted one another with hugs and kisses A V.I.P. section, stocked with bottles of vodka and mixers, was filled with young women in tube tops dancing alongside gray-haired men in hoodies or puffer jackets. The main dance floor was packed, but there was enough space at the margins for those seeking room to dance.

Among the dancers on the outskirts was Honey Bxby, 23, an R&B musician from New Jersey who wore a Dolls Kill fishnet bodysuit. Nearby were a pair of towering drag queens, a young man delighting his friends by pacing back and forth in a runway stomp, and a bearded man in neon biker shorts gyrating frenetically against his fanny pack.

The scale and sound was reminiscent of a warehouse rave, albeit one that had been bleached and polished to a high gloss. There were no glow sticks or plastic candy bracelets to be seen, but lollipops and whistles abounded.

Several partygoers brought fans that they began to clack around 3 a.m., when Ms. Dijon played several tracks from her 2022 album, "Black Girl Magic."

Her set lasted more than three hours, and she ended it by playing air keyboard over a jazzy piano house riff, then touched the outstretched hands of fans reaching into her booth. As Eli Escobar took over the decks, someone in the front row passed Ms. Dijon a pair of glasses, which she gamely wore for a photo, flashing a megawatt smile.

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