8.30.10: August moon burning above | New York Social Diary

August moon burning above

Looking northeast across the East River toward the tip of Roosevelt Island, Queens and the Triboro Bridge, at the moon and Jupiter (white dot to the right), Friday night, 8:45 pm. Photo: DPC.

August 30, 2010. A sunny, very warm high summer weekend in New York. Very little humidity although the heat, after more than a week for cooling temperatures, came as a surprise. We begin the final week of the summer season as it manifests in the Hamptons and all other resorts up and down the coast.

One of the spectacular moments at night was the full moon and what has recently been touted lately to be the enlarged (visually anyway) presence of planet Mars. It isn't; it's Jupiter. The moonrise and good old Jupiter was a beautiful sight over the East River. I made several attempts to catch the moonbeams in their glory although none of them really got it right for me. This was the best of them.

Saturday night I dined with friends at that bistro-ish old standby, Café Luxembourg on 70th between Amsterdam and West End Avenue. For East Siders going west, it’s a perfect alternative. Casual, great menu, a wide variety professionally and age-wise and and friendly service. The clientele are people who might live in the neighborhood. You see stars of stage and screen as well (looking like they might live in the neighborhood). The streets of the Upper West (and East) Side were very quiet Saturday night, but Café Lux was packed.

Peter Rogers, taken last year at his house in New Preston, Connecticut which he sold this past June.

I had two calls for interviews with journalists over the weekend. One from the UK and one from here. The subjects were “Society” and the fourth generation of the Kennedys who are just beginning to show up on the social scene. Questions: Is there one? And: Do they matter?

There’s always a Society, at least in New York and, in many communities bigger than a village. Whenever people compete for “place,” there’s a society. It just isn’t the society of days of yore. Mrs. Astor RIP.


	Adolfo.

Coincidentally, I had dinner at Swifty’s on Friday night with Peter Rogers and Adolfo, the now-retired high fashion designer who dressed the ladies of society in New York in the last half of the 20th century. Adolfo brought along two copies of Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers as gifts for us. Adolfo, incidentally is a great reader and often gifts friends with books he’s just read and liked.

I read it when its excerpts were first published and then when it came out as a novella. The ladies and gents in Capote’s story are lightly disguised figures from what was Society in New York in the 1960s and 1970s.

Capote was writing from first hand experience. He was in their thrall and vice versa (their “darling”) until he wrote this book and, in their minds, skewered them. (It’s very short and obviously unfinished although very satisfying nevertheless.)

After he published an excerpt (from an unfinished work at the time) called Cote Basque 1965 in Esquire in the mid-70s, he was dropped down a deep well of social shame (their social/his shame). Deader than a doornail. Although he still had his fans and friends (including CZ Guest and Gloria Vanderbilt), he never really recovered.


After publishing "Cote Basque 1965," a chapter from his promised "Answered Prayers" Capote was tossed from on high and shut out by all of his "swans" except for Mrs. Guest who remained loyal to the end of the author's life. Here in 1988 at the Electric Circus in the East Village after the premiere of Capote's film "Trilogy."

The figures, then famous, in Capote’s story are largely forgotten today and almost all are dead. His crime as a novelist: recounting a lot of the tawdry stories about their relationships (mainly sexual) and shenanigans (mainly venal) among the leisure class.

Many of the book’s stories were actually long and oft-passed around between them for years preceding. Others were embellished or entirely dreamed up. But the result in print was a bunch of very chic looking, very wealthy, often spoiled and pampered, often disappointed and dejected characters, who more or less owned the town as it existed back then. The crème de la crème. Before the souring.

That society began to fade at about the time of Capote’s death in 1984. The 1980s and the age of Reagan ushered in a new crew, later known, thanks to John Fairchild, the fashion media’s Pepys, as the “Nouvelle Society.”

By the mid-90s, the nucleus of the new had split in several directions, dispelled by divorce, death and in some cases, terminal ennui. After that came Paris Hilton and after that came Tinsley Mortimer, and after that came Reality TV and desperate housewives.

Friday afternoon by the Pulitzer Fountain in front of the Plaza, people waiting to board the "Sex and the City" tour bus.

The plantings in the Grand Army Plaza at the corner of 59th Street and Fifth Avenue.

On my walk up Madison Avenue on Friday afternoon, I was tempted (resisted).

Shadows and foliage on Riverside Drive.

5:00 PM.

Word from Morocco. It’s the season in Marrakech, Casablanca, El Jadida and Tangier. Mohammed VI, the King, and his wife Princess Salma and their children were at the palace in Rabat, seaside and white looking like something out of Arabian Nights for part of the summer, and then moved to their palace in Tetouan on the Mediterranean.

Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, the King of Saudi Arabia, is in Casablanca at one of his three palaces. The king is traveling with an entourage of 300. The king left Saudi Arabia just before Ramadan. With the king and his government in Casablanca, there are no hotel rooms and very few car rentals available. The Saudi Royals also have palaces on the Atlantic in Tangier.

View from the terrace of Dar Zero in Tangier.

View at dusk from the terrace of Dar Zero.

The French Consulate in Tangier.

The Swimming Pool at the Royal Mirage Hotel in Marrakech.

Tangier, the St. Tropez of Morocco, is filled with young English, French, Italian and Spanish – models, actors, wealthy financiers, members of the international jet set and of course photographers. This is the world of beaches, wonderful weather and clubs that makes Tangier one big party night after night.

Charles Sevigny, an American who became an icon of French interior decorators, now 93, has lived in Paris and Tangier for most of his life. Charles is at his house Dar Zero which is on top of the Kasbah in Tangier. He and his late friend Yves Vidal bought York Castle in 1961 and created one of the most beautiful houses in the world. They entertained everyone from all over the world, making their parties world famous and Tangier one of the most fascinating places to visit in Morocco. York Castle was just doors away from Barbara Hutton’s famous house, Sisi Hosni.

The musicians playing for Mickey Easterling's party at Dar Zero.

Anwar, the Houseman at Dar Zero.

Rashid Alokusch with Mickey Easterling.

Yves Vidal died six years ago. But before he died the foundation of York Castle was destroyed by severe storms in the Atlantic. Fortunately Charles and Yves had bought the house, Dar Zero, which was next door. They also purchased two connecting houses, creating a palatial residence and great showplace of many bedrooms, terraces, dining rooms and courtyards. Charles recently sold his Paris apartment along with the antiques, art and objets that he and Yves collected over the years. The proceeds from the auction went to the Institut Pasteur in Paris. He now lives at Dar Zero year round.

Once a year, Mickey Easterling (from New Orleans) rents the house for a month and invites Charles to stay as her guest. She gives many luncheons, cocktail and dinner parties in the gardens and on the terraces overlooking the coast.