7.30.07: Chock full o' New York | New York Social Diary

Chock full o' New York

The scene at Robert Wilson’s Water Mill Center benefit.

Weekend in Southampton for Robert Wilson’s Water Mill Center benefit, a Cinema Society party at the della Feminas on the beach overlooking the moonlit Atlantic.

Thursday was my birthday. My usual gift to myself is a Day Off. However, Peggy Siegal was staging one of her famous luncheons for Catherine Zeta-Jones and her co-star in her new film “No Reservations” Aaron Eckhart at Le Cirque, so I couldn’t resist at least a quick look (as well as a chance to taste a bit of that Le Cirque menu). These luncheons are interesting for the guest list as well as the stars attending. The stars were there, as well as their host, former real estate magnate turned chef-restaurateur, Andrew Borrok and that household name herself, Martha Stewart.

Martha Stewart, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Scott Hicks, and Aaron Eckhart

Martha and Catherine

Catherine Zeta from below the waist

Sirio Maccioni, Martha Stewart, and Eric Ripert

Clockwise from left: Norah Lawlor; Looking down at the main dining room of Le Cirque; Jason Binn and Cristina Greeven Cuomo.

The Daily News' Brenda Starr, Joanna Molloy

Andrew Borrok and Phil Suarez

My 66th birthday: I celebrated it at dinner at Swifty’s with nine old friends (not to be confused with nine friends who are old). The thing about old friends is they know you. The scales have long been peeled away. And they’re still there. Most of my old friends are talkers. Which I am too, as you may have noticed. At this age, I try to listen more since I never did when I was younger. It’s still a challenge.

Birthdays always provoke many thoughts about the self. They also anoint one’s thoughts with a more poetic aspect. Or is that just dripping sentiment hailing from my Irish genes? I remember thinking on my 30th that I was getting old. Who was I kidding?

Swifty’s was busy that night and I wasn’t the only birthday in the room. Across the way Cecily Davis (above, left) was given a surprise dinner by her husband Roy Davis and a group of old friends including Barbara and Bobby Liberman, Sallie and Robert Benton (the award-winning screenwriter), Suzanne and Edward Colt, Ann and Stephen Mandel, Melina and Ted Tally (also award-winning screenwriter), Bevelry Dolinsky, Aaron Shikler, the distinguished portraitistm and Evelyn Kroenlein. And right next door to us, Joan Israel (above, right) was celebrating her birthday with three sensible (notice the size of her cake) friends.

Toasting DPC Thursday night at Swifty's

On Saturday morning, the NYSD caravan headed out to Southampton. This included JH, his older brother Jason Hirsch (JH #1 according to big bro) on the vidcam, and this writer. We went to attend the Robert Wilson event which is held at the Water Mill Center every year at this time.

The Center is something Mr. Wilson created from an idea. With an old, abandoned, brick factory building in a most unlikely location in the woods behind the main drag of the hamlet of Water Mill, New York; along with a lot of help from friends, contributors, collectors and an expanding corps of dedicated interns, he made an institution. Over the years I’ve been attending, I’ve seen Mr. Wilson, his coterie of supporters and armies of interns turn a rough hewn piece of property into a fantastic laboratory and gallery and theatre of creative forces and contemporary art. This year marked its completed transformation. What comes next is for the artist to reveal. The annual Water Mill Center benefit is a trip with many facets provoking (inner) comment. I’m going to reserve mine for tomorrow’s Diary when we will run a gallery of pictures to accompany.

DPC greeted by the sponsor-toting frogs

A doggy friendly tote

The Water Mill Center summer event is a kind of artist’s concept of “society” today. Wilson is a big draw. His sphere of interest is very broad. The money there is big time. Tycoons, collectors, artists, rarefied suburbanites, auctioneers; then the historians, curators, auctioneers, kids, and people as artists (Or is it artists as people). On entering Saturday night every guest who was staying for dinner was given a hot pink (but not that hot) elastic rubber ID bracelet with the words: “everything you can think of is true”.

I came upon this sunny gentleman and the two ladies during the cocktail hour. As if on cue (Wilsonian cue), as soon as I appeared with my little Digital, they became (Wilsonian) camera-ready, invoking the spirit of the evening.

These guys are colleagues and an important implement to the sphere of Robert Wilson. Very important. They are “A” list when it comes to these circles. Jacob Bernstein (left) and James Reginato. They work for W and WWD. They have talent, access and the ability to work hard as well as socialize almost to the point of chronic fatigue. Because of that, they have influence, and some would even say Power (a word that is lightly tossed about in this crowd anyway).

They are smart and also very good company. Mr. Bernstein, who is still a baby in this business (still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the well-coiffed naked jungle) comes from writing parents (and a marriage made into a movie): Carl Bernstein and Nora Ephron. His maternal grandparents, Henry and Phoebe Ephron, were writers too. So is his maternal aunt Amy Ephron. And so's his step-father, Nick Pileggi. And who knows who else in that family. Mr. Reginato comes from Illinois. Which is to say: he has the heart of the heartland, where the glamorizing of America really comes from. Mr. Wilson’s from the same place (in Texas or Oklahoma). Mr. Reginato has a businessman father back there who always gets a thrill when he sees his son’s kisser in a picture on the NYSD. That explains the quest for glamour genes of Mr. Reginato. I took these three pictures with the intention of catching them candidly. Like all good reporters, that’s only half-possible as you can see.

The pretty young woman on the left is Sessa, the wife of the man to her left, Richard Johnson. Another Very Important implement in the famous world of Robert Wilson. Mr. Johnson is the editor/columnist of the New York Post’s Page Six, one of the most widely read gossip columns in the world. Most and more most. Although the column did not begin with him, he’s been at its helm for a number of years now, and in that time it has established him as one of the most powerful columnists in this country. It has also made him one of the most feared, most popular, most reviled by some, most-popular-with other-media figures in New York. Everybody knows who Richard Johnson is. In a room like this, he looks like like a successful entertainment industry lawyer (the movie version) relaxing for a weekend in the Hamptons. He’s tall and friendly although quite capable of reserve.

The woman on his left is Susie Hayes. Mrs. Hayes has a big personality and a big presence when she wants to be. Enthusiasm abounds. She is the wife of a real honest-go-god lawyer of literary proportions, and a legendary one too, Ed Hayes. Mr. Hayes is sitting across the table from this threesome and hence, where this conversation is directed. Mr. Hayes’ personage has been immortalized in Tom Wolfe’s classic “Bonfires of the Vanities.” He is also a very close longtime friend of Mr. Johnson. Oh the stories they could tell (and probably do when they’re in a close-knit group like this). This is a relationship that characterizes the synergistic friendships of New York, New York.

Now, for a little taste of Water Mill ...

Dita Von Teese

Robert Wilson on stage and at dinner with Dita

After we left the Water Mill Center about 10:30 (we’d arrived at 6:30), we headed over to East Hampton to a party that Andrew Saffir and his Cinema Society were hosting after a screening of “Becoming Jane” on the oceanside property of Judy Licht and Jerry della Femina – also two more New York personages (like the aforementioned Johnson and Hayes).

The party was poolside and the fare with the della Feminas is abundant, varied and tempting your dietary sensibilities. (Temptation usually wins.)

It was a beautiful night with a full moon beaming on the surface of the ocean. On the beach at the foot of the dune, some people were lighting the night even more with a bonfire. There must have been at least 150 milling about the terrace and at the tables surrounding the pool overlooking the beach. Tiki Barber was there and we had a moment’s conversation with this very charismatic man. But more on that tomorrow when we run the pictures of the party.

Andrew Saffir is a New York born and bred boy. He and Jodi della Femina have been pals since they were early teenagers. And so, as Judy Licht explained Sunday night, he’s always been really like one of the family. The della Feminas are very family and extended-family inclined. So for Andrew Saffir, entertaining there is like entertaining at your family’s house. It’s also very casual in tone, no matter who (among the rich and famous) might be there. If there is any pretense, it’s left with the valet parkers.

The host in pink signature Ralph Lauren (with Judy Licht). Michael Cominotto and Dennis Basso (below, left), one of the longer lasting domestic alliances on the New York scene (which for them includes Southampton and Palm Beach), having withstood the test of time (and the times) in that frenetic and haute social environment. Jodi Della Femina (with children Charlie and Annabel Kim), and Saffir’s partner Daniel Benedict (see The List). Judy Licht, Mrs. Jerry della Femina entertains the crowds with the same enthusiasm that she broadcasts on TV. She’s glad it’s there to do and glad her guests are happy to come back again and again, all the while surrounded by family.

Spencer Morgan (below, right) is the Southern California raised reporter for the New York Observer. He’s fairly new to the game and is a real So-Cal sensibility despite his writerly ways. He’s also at least part show-biz since his grandfather is the TV and Movie Ubiquitous actor Harry Morgan. Spencer, who is a friendly fellow and with a strong journalistic curiosity (willing to plod to get to the facts), is currently working on a piece on legendary roués. Roues, you ask? See; only for legends they are. Spencer, to me, had he been born in another era, and with a lot of money, or access or proximity to it, could easily have been a roué himself. At least from the Jack Nicholson School of that practitioning. He’s the kind of young writer you suspect will write the great American novel or something close to it. If he doesn’t end up with a movie deal first. Then others will try at the Great American Novel about him.

And while we’re on the subject ... I’m not sure where Tory Burch was last weekend. I didn’t see her at either event on Saturday evening. She could well have been in Southampton or East, like these other two in the pictures. But I immediately thought of her when looking at the images of the other two. They all could easily be found in the same party and/or in conversation together. Tory and Elizabeth Harrison (seen here at the Saffir/Cinema Society party) are about the same age. Tinsley Mortimer (seen here at Robert Wilson) is a few years younger. Tory and Elizabeth are young mothers.

Clockwise from top left: Elizabeth Harrison (with Keith Schweibel, r., and friend); Tinsley Mortimer; Tory Burch (with Jill Roosevelt and Mark Gilbertson).

All three are married (Tory is in the process of amicably divorcing Chris Burch, and recently has been dating Lance Armstrong). Tinsley actually once worked for Harrison in her public relations firm (Harrison & Shriftman). That was before she acquired the lucrative mantle of celebrity-licensing. All three are as social as they want to be. Each is intensely focusd on her business and more specifically its success. Tinsley, they say, has aspirations to act. Ambition is the key word here. Because it’s also a word so many women use to cast epithets, draw ire or bruise egos, none of them would describe themselves thusly. Hard-working would be more appropriate. And true. But there are a lot of women out there who work hard and don’t attain the same (perceived) rewards. However, these three are excellent subjects for Vogue profiles and Danielle Steele (Plum Sykes, Holly Peterson?) novels. They are bankable and adventurous. They are also women who are not afraid to express their feminine side. And they are intent, and most of all, about the work. And the family; they don’t for a minute forget the family.

Also on last Thursday night in New York: JH went down to the Chelsea Piers to a cocktail party hosted by Broward (the boat builders), Marsh (the world's leading yacht insurance broker), and Nigel Burgess, the specialists in chartering, buying, selling and managing of large yachts. The party was held on brand new 120’ Broward megayacht. Guests got to tour the new boat as well as loll and lounge on the top deck and entertain thoughts of leisurely cruises in the Caribbean in wintertime or the Mediterranean in summer. Is there a greater luxury, a more heavenly way to enjoy your rewards, a greater opportunity to experience real luxury in life? Maybe, but I don’t know of it.