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 Muggy for early May
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| Outside the Met for its Costume Institute Gala. 11:30 PM. Photo: JH. |
May 3, 2010. Warm and not so sunny day in New York. Muggy for early May.
I went to lunch at Michael’s with Donna Antebi, who is an old friend of mine from Los Angeles. I met Donna when she first arrived in L.A., fresh from university in Florida. She had come to L.A. with big dreams.
L.A. is a dream destination, just like New York. Many times those dreams are related to the entertainment industry, naturally; but just as often they are the dreams harbored by young people starting out life.
She told me this about herself one day when we were walking the dogs. I was impressed by her frankness because I’m a big believer in dreams. I like to think that there is a universal connection. I also thought Donna’s dreams seemed like a tall order from a very young woman at that moment fresh on the scene of a great city whose very existence implies challenge. That was back in the 80s.
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| DPC and Donna at Michael's. |
All these years later, there is nothing she mentioned during that walk that hasn’t materialized in Donna’s life. She’s has three children - a son and two daughters, has been married to her husband for many years now; and they live in a big house on a hilltop in Bel Air that is often filled with young people visiting, staying, passing through.
Donna has kept her avid interest in business and projects, however. Her latest is a book coming out in September called The Real Secrets Women Only Whisper. It comes with a WARNING: “Keep this book away from men!” Soon to be a reality TV show.
Last night Beth DeWoody hosted a cocktail reception for Jon Gilman and Annie Kitchens of TASTE Caterers who are dissolving the longtime, very successful business here in Manhattan. I first met Jon Gilman through Beth when I came back from Los Angeles in 1993. I think they were just beginning. Much of their staff are going to be working with Stephen Kennard of Canard Inc catering. Mrs. DeWoody’s art-filled apartment was host to The Caterers’ friends and soon-to-be-former clients. Many were busily taking in the Gracie Square apartment with her vast and astonishing collections.
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| Michelle Oka Doner talking to a friend. |
Taste's Annie Kitchens, friend and client Joy Ingham, and Taste's Jon Gilman. |
| Anne Keating, Joanne Casullo, and Phil Geier. |
Isabella Rosselini and Jon Gilman. |
Last night was also the Met Costume Institute Ball. I haven’t been invited to this since it was taken over by Anna Wintour and Vogue Magazine. Over the years, Ms. Wintour has transformed not only the event but even the “society” who patronize it.
“Society” is the wrong word in terms of tradition but as legitimate today as the term “socialite,” which has also undergone a re-definition. (In other words, it means “something” to somebody.)
Twenty years ago, the star of the evening was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and The Costume Institute’s newly launched exhibition. Today, the center of attention may be somebody you may never have heard of, but who is very famous among the 20- and 30-somethings. Or it may be the dress or suit. But it’s all transition and we are at a time of extreme transition, whatever that portends.
The guest list these days is heavy on the celebrities – models, actors, rock stars, and anyone else who is attracted to that milieu and can afford the ticket, which I was told starts at $7500. Movie stars would have been impressive back in Mrs. Vreeland’s day too, but in those days movie stars were somehow not thought of unless they had a New York social connection. So they weren’t invited. Furthermore, it was a fund raising gala, and not a branding festival.
The last one I attended, back in the late 90s, was the last public appearance in New York of Princess Diana made in America before her horrifying death. The only thing I really remember about that night was Diana -- seeing her up close and observing the air of drama that surrounded her presence. That drama may have been entirely my imagination but powerful personages – like a great movie star – evoke that, and she had it. That is a great part of a star’s charm. |
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| Babe and Bill Paley and the Duchess of Windsor. |
Diana was beautiful and radiant when the camera lights went on, and when they went off so did that radiance. She wore a dark blue satin dress from the House of Dior (which was being feted that year with a retrospective). The one impression I had in watching her as she posed for the cameras was that she was All Alone in her world, and she knew it. That notion, however, may have been entirely in my imagination also for it is just as likely she was thinking something pedantic like “get me outta here!”
Massively, highly publicized parties like the Met Costume Institute really are over as soon as they begin. That red carpet arrival is the fun of it for the guests and the watchers and the photo archives. This is often true of famous parties that take on an aura of glitter and sophistication. It’s the anticipation and whom you see in the parade at the arrival. After that it’s the food (or not), the drink (or not), the people watching which is good if you know whom you’re watching.
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| From the sublime to the ridiculous: Madonna at last year's Ball. |
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Fifty-five years ago Cleveland Amory wrote a best-selling book titled Who Killed Society? in which he attempted to articulate how things had changed in his lifetime (generation). He renamed Society “Publiciety,” a term which never caught on afterward. In the book he placed the blame for its “death” on young(ish) women like the Cushing Sisters who were then Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Whitney and Mrs. Paley, and famous for their high profile husbands and marriages -- and in Mrs. Paley’s case, for her natural beauty and chic.
In reflection, nobody killed society in Cleveland Amory’s day because after all was said and done, it remained. The old had been mangled by history's terms and restored by the new faces. The faces changed, along with the rules of comportment. And the attitude. The Cushing Sisters were its heiresses as it turned out, and they became the fixtures, and in one case, (Mrs. Whitney) even the dowager of what this generation still thinks of as the “Society” that has disappeared.
If Cleveland Amory, whose own background was Boston Brahmin, were to pose the same question today, his answer might be: Anna Wintour’s Costume Institute Ball.
And he might be right. But only for a moment, because one day in retrospect The Met Costume Institute Ball will be remembered in aggregate. And it will be remembered with the same awe and reverie we have for past ones. That’s their purpose anyway. |
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| Outside the Met for its Costume Institute Gala. 12:00 AM. |
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