Election Day across America. Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Spitzer, and Mr. Cuomo, all Democrats, won in New York.

New York Lives. I had lunch at Michael’s with Michael Shnayerson who is working on a piece for Vanity Fair on Tory Burch, the fashion designer. Mrs. Burch and her businessman husband Chris were longtime fixtures on the social scene when she opened her clothing business three years ago. Her clothes were a hit from the start. Last year she made an appearance on Oprah which took her business into the stratosphere. With a business plan to open Tory boutiques across the country, they’ve already got three operating. This past year, the golden couple’s marriage fell apart and they are now getting a divorce. Speculation is rife about what will happen to the business since Chris Burch has a very successful track record in the garment business and Tory is a relative newcomer. The consensus is that she will succeed with or without her husband’s assistance.

Michael Shnayerson, a prolific writer of books and magazine features, is an old hand at Vanity Fair stories. I was first aware of him years ago when he did one of the first major pieces on the then rising star Diane Sawyer. He’s written three books – his first a biography of novelist Irwin Shaw, then “The Car That Could; the Inside Story of GM’s Revolutionary Electric Vehicle,” and “The Killers Within; The Deadly Rise of Drug-Resistant Bacteria.” We later met through a mutual writer friend about fifteen years ago when he was traveling to Los Angeles to work on an as-told-to memoir by Irving Lazar and he rented a room in my house, traveling back and forth to LA for the duration. He never finished that project (Annette Tapert did) and I don’t know what happened but we had a good time acting like two adolescent adults soaking up the Southern California social life. Now a fulltime Hamptons resident and father of an eleven year old daughter, Michael is engaged to be married once again, this time to a professor Renee Mauborgne who is herself co-author of a very successful in the business market called “Blue Ocean Strategy” which has sold a million copies. The couple will divide their time between East Hampton and Fontainebleau in France where Ms. Mauborgne teaches.

Michael’s was crowded with its usual suspects including a number of celebrities, but the star-turn was at the corner table where Liz Smith was lunching with Diane Keaton who came in wearing what looked to these eyes like a body-fitted knit black coat and matching hat. Ms. Keaton is one of those stars who is just fascinating to behold. Her charisma is in her sweet countenance and smiling eyes and apparently unassuming, although not quite self-effacing manner.

New York Success Stories. I started out last night at the Ralph Lauren store (referred to in the company as “the mansion”) on 72nd and Madison where Ricky Lauren a/k/a Mrs. Ralph L was having a booksigning party for her new coffee table book “Ricky Lauren; Cuisine, Lifestyle, and Legend of the Double L Ranch.”

Ricky Lauren is well known in New York circles but she and her husband keep a fairly low profile. You rarely see them at charity benefits (very rarely) as they prefer quiet dinners with friends. Mr. Lauren, as everyone knows, is a designer, but more than that a marketing genius, one of the great marketing geniuses of the last half of the 20th century. His sense of style and design is apparent in all aspects of his life, his wife’s life and their children also. They have two sons and a daughter (Dylan who has a very successful candy retailing business), all grown and all popular members of the community, it’s a very close knit family.

So it was somewhat unusual to see Mrs. Lauren out there in public with a book party. I don’t know her but she has a quiet, almost diffident manner in meeting. She sat at a desk signing her books to friends and customers in the second floor sales room that might once have been a drawing room of Mrs. Rhinelander Waldo who built the mansion a century ago (and never lived in it). Mr. Lauren, and his children were all present, greeting guests. The rooms and staircase were jammed. Mrs. Lauren’s style -- simple, clean, classic chic, like her husband’s, is very influential and there were reflections of it in a number of very attractive women throughout the store.

The mansion which houses Ralph Lauren was a white elephant for many many years, in a neighborhood of high rise, pre-war luxury apartment buildings, it rented out as apartments and commercial spaces for antiques dealers, decorators and smart New Yorkers with a nose for a bargain. No one could imagine a real future for it and demolition was often considered by interested real estate speculators. When Ralph Lauren took the place over and turned it into a retail establishment while keeping the architectural embellishments of a Gilded Age private residence, it was a stroke of retail and real estate acumen. What fun to shop in a mansion for your luxurioius duds. I hope he bought the place back then (the 1970s) because today it’s worth a jillions more than what it was going for back then. Furthermore, now with the exception of St. James’ Episcopal church and rectory next to the mansion, the entire block on both sides of the avenue occupied by Ralph Lauren establishments, so it’s kinda Ralph Lauren Lane.

From Ricky Lauren’s book signing I hailed a cab down to the Rainbow Room where the Animal Medical Center was holding its annual Top Dog Gala which benefits the Bobst Hospital of the Animal Medical Center. Way up there on the 65th floor the view was completely obstructed by the cloud cover so that all you could see was white as if sheets had been pulled over the building outside.

This gala brings out some of the most prominent (and sometimes distinguished) names in New York including Lisa and David Schiff, Barbara and Bobby Liberman, Nancy and Henry Kissinger, Emilia St. Amand and Fred Krimendahl, Jean Doumanian with Larry Kaiser, Paul and Daisy Soros, Adrienne and Ghighi Vittadini, Gail and Parker Gilbert, Cynthia Boardman, Rod and Jackie Drake, Jamee and Peter Gregory, Billy and Kathy Rayner, Gigi and Harry Benson, Duane Hampton, Stephen and Cathy Graham, Michael Conroy, Louise Grunwald with Billy Norwich, Annette de la Renta, Suzanne and Bill McDonough, Judy and (Ambassador) Ed Ney, John and Ann Pyne, Sue and Charles Bullock, Stephen and Wendy Lash, Deborah and Bill Zabel, Susan Cullman, Ken Langone, Glennis Schonholz who with Mr. Liberman are bringing a lot of fresh energy to the cause; Ellen and Jim Marcus, Patsy and Jeff Tarr, Graham Arader, Dasha Epstein, Helen O’Hagan, Charlie Ruger, Iris Love, Mickey Siebert, Heather Cohane, Petro Cicognani and Heidi Holterbosch, Roy Kean, Ann and Jim Sitrick, and that’s just the ones I know or recognize of the more than 300 attending. And Cynthia Phipps. Ms. Phipps is one of the guiding lights of the Animal Medical Center – at least the annual galas.

Last night’s honoree was the late Geoffrey Beene, and while it is unusual to honor someone who’s left us, this was significant because Mr. Beene bequeathed $10 million to the Animal Medical Center. He loved his animals. Animals give love. They also give us the opportunity to love, an experience something too many of us go without in our daily lives.

Call 212-329-8661 to order

The Animal Medical Center has been a leader in the field of veterinary medicine for almost a century. They have a unique community service program called Pet Outreach for housebound and institutionalized individuals, as well as financial assistance subsides for veterinary care for guide dogs and pet owners in need.

Three of the younger members of the community who were not there last night were Kristen Fisher, Ashley Phipps and Daisy Phipps, who did their part for the cause bitime by putting together the hilarious “It’s Reigning Cats and Dogs,” a collection of pet cartoons from the New Yorker. This is a perfect holiday gift for animal lovers – one that will benefit the Animal Medical Center of New York, with a foreward written by Oscar de la Renta. It is available for $50 and can be ordered by calling 212-329-8661.