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Looking west from Murray Hill. 8:35 PM. |
New York finally got a beautiful summer day yesterday. I went to lunch at Michael’s with the fabled fashion designer Jackie Rogers, who is writing a book about her fabled life. Ran away from home (Boston) at seventeen, came to the Big Town where she met the world and got herself a job modeling on Seventh Avenue. A trip to Monte Carlo a couple of years later, she met Sam Spiegel who introduced her to the international world of Onassis and Callas, Agnelli and eventually Coco Chanel for whom she went to work modeling and then assisting. Chanel, she said, was always ripping everything apart and refining, refining, refining; that was “how she designed.”
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Laughing Allegra. Click on image to order. |
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Last night’s calendar was book parties, books being in the headlines in the last few days what with J. K. Rowling’s astounding sale of 5 million books the first day of sales of her new Harry Potter entry, and Senator Hillary Clinton’s hot selling memoir (almost half a million copies sold).
Early in the evening I went over to Steve and Tina Sloan McPherson’s Park Avenue where they were giving for their friend Anne Ford, who also has a new book Laughing Allegra about the “story of a mother’s struggle and triumph raising a daughter with learning disabilities.” Mrs. Ford, who was born into one of the most famous (brand) name families in 20th century history, actually eschews publicity of any kind.
She says it’s because she’s shy. So getting out and pushing a book is not exactly her style. However, she wrote it for all those mothers (and fathers) out there who have been daunted by the issue of learning disabled. In another time, such children were often institutionalized. Indeed when Allegra’s problem was diagnosed, one of the first consultants encouraged just that. Nothing doing, responded the astonished mother. This book is about that journey and its ultimate success. Allegra, who is now over thirty, lives a wholly independent life liberated by her mother’s fortitude and tenacity. Hope is the word for Laughing Allegra.
The crowd at the McPhersons were lots of friends of the couple and the author — about forty — including Derek and Nicole Limbocker, Barbara Uzielli, Hilary Geary, Quest publisher (you’ve heard of Quest by now, no?) Chris and Grace Meigher, Charlotte Ford, the author’s sister, Sharon Sondes and Geoffrey Thomas. |
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According to the New York Post: "The best 'Sex' ever." |
Thirty blocks south at the W Hotel on East 39th Street was quite a different book party, sponsored by Gotham Magazine for Candace Bushnell and her new book Trading Up (as in life style), which I suppose you could say is a kind of learning ability. Ms. Bushnell, who as the world must know by now created Sex and the City (for which she sold the TV rights for a measly twenty grand). In other words, she knows her stuff.
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Candace Bushnell and Charles Askegard |
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And talk about publicity ... no eschewing here – in fact the place was teeming with publicists and public relations people, not to mention magazine editors and a cast of thousands of Sex and the City-ites. I was probably the only one there who’s never seen the show (except for the first installment – which I thought was hilarious – at a screening about four years ago at the club Jet East in Southampton with Peggy Siegal doing her brand of the heavy glitz flackery. This is Ms. Bushnell’s third book, I think, the last being Four Blondes which she dedicated to her friend Ann Fell, one of those blondes you know is (and has) more fun.
The author, who had a steamy and volatile relationship with Conde Nast publisher Ron Galotti back in those days, is now married to the ballet dancer Charles Askegard, whom she met at an ABT Dancers for the Dance fundraiser a couple of years ago. It was a coup de foudre and from the looks of it, the foudre is still cooing (Haha; sorry I couldn’t resist).
Two distinctly New York groups, some of whom pass through each other’s lives at times, at parties, at dinners – one uptown, society, the other downtown/around-town hip and partying, full of the energy that draws so many to this city, just as it did for my lunch date, the aforementioned Jackie Rogers decades ago. Fulla dreams, fulla schemes and fulla moonbeams; this is the place, the Big Casino. |
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Ilene Rosenzweig and Rick Marin |
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Jill Brooke, Campion Platt, and Brett Easton Ellis |
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Candace's friends Chantal and Ann Fell |
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The scene last night at the W Hotel for Candace Bushnell's book party. |
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