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Mark
Gilbertson is one of the most high-profile men in the New York social
scene. This is the result of time and an enduring commitment to
his interests. He is, without question one of the main leaders
of a group of young and prominent New Yorkers who are largely an
urban-exurban crowd with names often found in the Social Register,
the Southampton Blue Book, the Quest 400 and
the New York Social Diary Party Picture pages. A lot of people
from the tonier suburbs of Long Island, Connecticut and New Jersey
who keep apartments or pied-a-terres in Manhattan. Lawyers, bankers,
designers, publishers, trust fund babies, young mothers, young
grandmothers, real estate executives, philanthropic activists,
people who went to boarding school and college together (along
with people who didn't), many of whom have known each other all
their lives, many whose parents knew each other's parents all their
lives. Many of these people still know and see each other a good
deal because of Mark, the ring-leader and chief organizer of what
for years has been known as "the younger set" in New
York All things being relative, this is still true. Although ...
all things must pass.
For years Mark (pictured
with Sara Ayres and Cynthia
Lufkin) gave a couple of big cocktail
parties at his small bachelor pad on the Upper
East Side. Because of the limitations of space,
he’d juggle the list, often alternating
his guests season to season. A few years ago,
however, he had the bright idea of taking space
in one of the posh private clubs on Park Avenue
where he could have hundreds at one time. And
so he does. There are very few in New York who
do this with regularity that Mark does. The Mark
Gilbertson cocktail has a Wasp-ish down-home,
touchstone kind of atmosphere. Very clubby, very
old friends, all playing catch-up, before going
back out into the melee and the fray.
After years of this, he is one of the leading Manhattan social impresarios, a
longtime fixture on the New York-Southampton-Palm Beach circuit. His unassuming
appearing tenacity and sheer force of personality has made a big difference to
certain philanthropies, such as the Museum of the City of New York and Lenox
Hill Neighborhood House. Because he’s grown up in this world and gets around,
he knows everybody. He's also assiduous about keeping in touch with scores, maybe
hundreds of people (and not by cell phone), friends and acquaintances. At his
parties, he often takes snapshots of people and a few days later, one is likely
to receive a print or two in the mail. A nice touch; excellent p.r. He’s
quick and reliable and thoughtful with his thank-you notes and he’s got
a Rolodex that some savvy corporate executives would long to have just for business
purposes.
There are a lot of people who first met at Mark's cocktail parties, and even
more than a couple of marriages here and there (I don't know about the divorces).
He's a genial host, as well as a bit persnickety about who’s who and what’s
what. He’s extremely sensitive (sometimes to the point that you wonder
if he's putting you on) about whether or not people had a good time at his receptions
and events. Although he needn't worry, they always have a good time. It's a real
age mix, and always some new faces and even some old faces that look like new
faces.
He hails from Rumson, New Jersey where he can still be found almost
every weekend that he’s not in Southampton or Newport or PB. He often even
divides his weekends between Rumson and the aforementioned because he’s
a committed club man, as well as gardener at the family homestead. It’s
a single life, or at least it has been up to this point, which now is nearing,
I would guess, a half-century. Roots and connections dominate it although he
loves meeting new people. In that way, he could be regarded as an authentic social
arbiter although he’d consider that a gross exaggeration. Years ago when
he was younger and out of college, he was in the real estate brokerage in Palm
Beach. Today, although he appears to be a man of very stable leisure, he is industrious
about his social activity, even serving as adviser and consultant to several
charities and companies on their philanthropy ventures. Few work as assiduously
at our tasks as he does at his. |
Albemarle,
Rufus
Aston, Muffie Potter
Basso, Dennis
Benedict, Daniel
Capehart, Jonathan
Cominotto, Michael
Curry, Boykin
Dahl, Tessa
DeWoody, Beth Rudin
Duchin, Peter and Brooke
Duff, Patricia
Eaton, Phoebe
Fales-HIll, Susan
Fekkai, Frederic
THE FULL LIST
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