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A
New Orleans-style festival along Columbus Avenue to benefit
the victims of Hurricane Katrina. 5:00 PM. Photo:
JH.
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Last
week was Fashion Week in New York. It was also UN Week. Then beginning on Thursday, through
the weekend, former
President Bill Clinton staged a major world conference of leadership
over at the Sheraton for a thousand paying guests. That’s
a lot of important people for such a small island, and of course
egos were in over-drive.
There were scads of uniformed NYPD everywhere, protecting visiting
dignitaries who might have been under siege by disgruntled citizens
of wherever. The cops, it should be said, under these stressed
conditions are very pleasant, and helpful whenever they can be.
There is often little for them to do – if not directing traffic – except
to wait around in case something happens. And from what I can gather,
thankfully nothing happened.
The weather was fairly kind, with often cloudy skies hinting at
the aftermath of Hurricane Ophelia which passed New York by and
went directly up to Boston and Cape Cod to dump her residue.
The traffic was not so kind. The city blocked off (among other
streets) the two middle lanes of 57th Street from east to west
so that a normally jammed four-lane street became a dead-in-the-water
two lane street. Therefore rush hour and all the hours preceding
and following it, were at virtual standstill.
On Thursday, when sitting in a cab caught between 2nd and 3rd Avenues
at midday, a trio of speeding black sedans with red and blue lights
spinning in the rear windows, followed by a half dozen shiny black
SUVs filled with men in black suits, white shirts, black ties,
black glasses and black coiling plastic wires extending from behind
their ears. They were followed by a dozen roaring NYPD motorcyle
policemen. Happily speeding along as if on the open road (which
of course it was), protecting their delicate (yeah sure) charges.
I have no idea who were in the three black sedans but no doubt
they were very important and needed a great deal of protection,
as importance always does. Or likes to think it does. Otherwise,
would we know they were important? Meanwhile, on the sidelines,
the rest of us sat and cursed the notion that these men (and presumably
some women) were making this world a better, safer place for us.
As safe as, no doubt, it already was for them.
There was “security” over at the tents
in Bryant Park too but none of the black SUVs and whirling red and blue lights,
thank god. Instead we had idling red Cadillac limousines (from
Abt Limousine service) waiting for the chicest ladies who (used
to) lunch to emerge from one or another designer collections show.
Then, besides the collections (which were shown all over town besides
in the Tents), there parties. Parties, parties, parties. We gave
you the tiniest taste of them, thanks to Patrick McMullan and his
ubiquitous phalanx of photographers, on last week’s NYSD.
But there were many many many more that we missed (although I’m
sure Patrick didn’t).
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Alicia
Keys and Leigh Lake
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Last Thursday night I went with JH and his brother Jason Hirsch to
a couple of fashion parties downtown. The first, at a club called
Cain (44 West 27 Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues) was hosted
by designer Doug Hannant (whose fashion collection
debuted in the Tents that morning) and his partner and business
manager Fred
Anderson.
It was a “kick-off” for The Black Ball; A Benefit to
Keep a Child Alive. This was a fashion party that, thanks to some
enterprising individuals, also had another purpose. Alicia
Keys
was there to add to the excitement and drive the message home.
The Black Ball benefits an organization that provides medication
for children with AIDS in Africa.
Cain is located in what looks like a former brick warehouse only
a couple blocks from the Hudson River. The street, which only a
few years ago would have been empty at that hour except maybe for
a few trucks, was lined with limousines and jammed with party-goers,
velvet ropes, lines of PR girls and boys, photographers and crowds
waiting (and/or hoping) to get in. Once inside, the club is a huge
dark room on two levels — perfect for people watching — DJ
music blaring, room-length bar four and five people deep.
All the co-chairs for The Black Ball were there including Debbie
Bancroft, who is Mr. Hannant’s “muse” these
days, and Fabiola Beracasa, Alan Cumming, Beth Rudin DeWoody,
Iman, Charles Goldstock, Valesca Guerrand-Hermes, Emilia Fanjul
Pfeifler, and Eileen Naughton. At least
I think they all were all there, having seen some and hazarding
a guess about the rest, because
there were
hundreds in the mob, moving around, passing conversations, meeting,
greeting, standing, sitting, looking, gawking, drinking amidst
the melee of the music. This is the style of the fashion party
these days. It’s what my late friend Judy Green used
to refer to as a “rat-f**k” and she missed damned few
of them if she could help it because they are fun, one way or another.
The costume consensus among them is, with a few exceptions, extremely
casual and although I realize a lot of these people pay steep prices
for their get-ups, mainly they bear no resemblance to the notion
of style, which is now pretty much defunct at this stage of the
game.
Some readers lose their cool when we determine a “Best Dressed
List” from what we see around and about because the images
we use as examples in no way reflect that “classic” image
of Best Dressed. That was represented and drummed into our dear
little heads in decades past by women like Babe Paley,
the Duchess of Windsor, Nan Kempner, (and the likes of Cary
Grant, Fred Astaire and the Duke of Windsor for
the boys) etc. Although there are still some of those girls and
boys around who illuminate the idea of
chic and impeccable, and we do see them at certain fashion shows
and charity benefits, the costume, in general, is now more fad
bumping up against that thin line of “fashion” — consumer
choices of a moment, and not much else. |
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Alicia
Keys addresses the crowd
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This
is not a complaint, incidentally, but merely an observation. We
are now living (probably at our peril) in the age of the
cell phone and whatever is going on in people’s ears
is, generally speaking, if you’ll pardon the pun, All
That Seems To Matter.
Now that I’ve grumbled and harrumphed, I should add that
I had a great time at Hannant and Anderson’s party at Cain. Alicia Keys
spoke for a few minutes to a suddenly quiet and attentive crowd, beseeching everyone
to do everything they could do support this cause because in some communities
in Africa the AIDS rate is 40% of the population. Ms. Keys brought the reality
home by asking the crowd to imagine that 40% of the people in that room Thursday
night had AIDS. No one even wants to go there. After Keys’ speech, the
crowd went back to the big music, and the movin’ on. |
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L.
to r.: Debbie Bancroft, Douglas Hannant, and Somers Farkas;
Helena
Lehane.
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Keith
Scott and friend
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Arthur
Altschul
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Stacey
McLaughlin and Jon Barman
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Andrew
Saffir and Bettina Zilkha
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Christiaan
McPherson and Loren Wlethroth
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Sylvester
and Gillian Miniter
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DPC
with Denise and Larry Wohl
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L.
to r.: Blending in; Nicole Miller, Patricia Duff,
and Patty Raynes.
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L.
to r.: Cruising through the crowd; Susan Fales-Hill
in stitches; Rufus Albemarle.
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L.
to r.: In the thick of it; Anthony Linzalone and
Angela Rich.
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Nicole
Maisel and Greg Klein
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Standing guard
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Susan
Fales-Hill and Elizabeth Loomis
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DPC
and Martha Carozza
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Emilia
Fanjul
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We
left to go next door, invited by Larry and Denise Wohl who
were going to designer Zac Posen’s
party at Home, another club in what looks like another former
warehouse. We got there about 11:30 and the place was sparsely
settled with a handful of party-goers who, again, were dressed
like they could have come from a baseball game if not a fashion
show.
By midnight the place started to fill up. Open bar again, four and five
feet deep with revelers. There was dancing in the center of the room (the
dance floor) and a VIP section velvet-roped off and empty. Awaiting the
designer, someone said. Awaiting Godot might have been more like it because
by one o’clock when the place was packed, the designer hadn’t
showed and for all we knew, was never gonna show. Nevertheless, that was
fun too; yadda-yadda back and forth with this one and that; music, dancing,
flashing cameras (JH was trying out a new digital for such occasions).
Finally about one-thirty, two, we decided we’d made a night of it.
Outside, this block of 27th Street was wall-to-wall cabs, limos, people
waiting in line for the velvet ropes to part to let ‘em in to party.
One thing
that is classic Fashion in New York now, as it has been for
sometime, is Downtown. Be it SoHo, Tribeca, Chelsea, Nolita,
East Village, the Meatpacking District, Downtown in New York
is where fashion is, what fashionable is. For those of us
who’ve been around for a long time, it’s an amazing
irony. I recall when one of my oldest friends first came
to New York out of art school at Yale and rented himself
a 3500 square foot loft on Canal and Broadway. $325 a month.
No bathroom, no kitchen. Twenty foor ceilings. Streets abandoned
after five in the afternoon. We thought he was crazy.
He
bought the place in 1982 for $45,000 and flipped it six months
later for $415,000 and moved upstate, never looking back.
Of course, if he had, he might have wished he’d held
on another ten years and sold for ten times more. Today,
of course, everything downtown is desirable to the golden
hordes (or, I should say, the hordes with the gold).
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| NYSD's
Jeff Hirsch who has sold his apartment, which he needs
to vacate by October 1, is
looking for a light
and spacious Manhattan rental (a loft would be ideal) for
himself and his faithful, perfectly trained and well-behaved
four-legged
companion Oliver
Dog, open to convenient (to transportation) locations for a
monthly $3500 or under. Any thoughts, ideas or suggestions
will be greatly appreciated. Contact him: jeff@newyorksocialdiary.com. |
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