When New York social dynamo Lauren Santo Domingo planned her first trip to Houston, she considered packing a basic little black dress to look chic and proper.

"But then I thought, it's Texas! It's Becca! I'm definitely wearing Versace," she said with a laugh.

The Vogue magazine contributing editor and founder of the shopping website Modaoperandi.com, who accompanied her friend, author Derek Blasberg, to Houston for a party thrown in his honor by Becca Cason Thrash, looked sizzling in the patchwork-patterned Versace dress with a peek-a-boo fringed back, Givenchy pumps and a black Proenza Schouler clutch (all from her website).

But so did everyone else.

Hosts Thrash, Greggory Burk and Allie Fields invited an eclectic mix of familiar names and fresh faces on the Houston social circuit to the Thrash home Wednesday night to celebrate Blasberg's new book, Very Classy: Even More Exceptional Advice for the Extremely Modern Lady (Razorbill, $17.99), and everyone came dressed to impress in looks that ranged from Yves Saint Laurent to Fendi.

"I've never seen Houston look this chic," Thrash exclaimed.

With the Dom Perignon flowing and the conversation at high-decibel level, the party had the atmosphere of a weekend blowout rather than a mid-week romp as some of the guests excitedly glimpsed the art-filled ultra-contemporary Thrash home for the first time.

Blasberg, an editor at large at Harper's Bazaar who recently interviewed a makeup-less Lady Gaga for the May cover, charmed the crowd, signing books and even drawing hearts on the hands of his Houston admirers. (Thrash graciously gave each of the 150 guests a copy of the book, which always makes a book party flow smoothly, because guests don't have to fool with cash or credit cards.)

The book is an expanded version of Blasberg's 2010 bestseller Classy, a tongue-in-cheek guide to social mores for the modern woman, with 100 new pages and all-new illustrations. "I thought I had told everything my girlfriends knew, but they said you left this out and that out, so I thought it was worth a whole new book," he explained.

The two new chapters, "A Lady Decorates" and "A Lady Stays Healthy," were taken directly from questions and emails Blasberg received after Classy came out. Among the tips: A lady buys things she loves, not what's trendy or expensive, and a lady never wears a Wonderbra to the gym because gyms are for exercise — not wild displays of cleavage.

Even his pal Gwyneth Paltrow contributed a question (though it's not attributed to her in the book): If a guest brings a bottle of wine to a dinner party as a gift, is the host obliged to open it immediately? Blasberg says no, because it might not go with the planned menu.

All the guests, including Ceron, Scotty and Jana Arnoldy, Sarah Dodd-Spickelmier, Laura Spalding, Neal Hamil, Laura Casey Greenberg, Luvi Wheelock, Natalie Kirklin, Molly Johnson, David Nachtigall, Laura Fraser and Jennifer Ban, each received a $250 coupon toward a purchase on Modaoperandi.com, a membership-only site that features trunk shows of such major designers as Marc Jacobs, Isabel Marant, Proenza Schouler, Vera Wang and Missoni immediately after their runway shows.

"It's a new way of shopping," Santo Domingo said. "We're growing like crazy. Women really like it."

Also on hand were the Thrash's houseguests, Linda and Louis Beukes, who are visiting from Botswana, and newly engaged Dominque Sachse and Nick Florescu. Guests couldn't help but notice Dominique's large engagement ring, which she had just gotten resized earlier in the day and was proudly displaying to admirers.