A very cold Monday in New York. Just like winter. Last night I went down to the Waldorf to a dinner in the Grand Ballroom for the Citizens Committee for New York City and their annual New Yorker for New York Awards. This is the real thing.
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Wesley Autrey with his daughter
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There are a lot of awards handed out in this town, right and left to this, that and your aunt Yetta. The machine runs that way. But the New Yorkers for New York awards go to those individuals who actually should be getting an award. These are the people who keep the community running (away from chaos). They deserve an award from all of us.
But enough about that. I’ll get to it on tomorrow’s Diary with a portfolio of pictures I took of the guests.
It’s Fashion Week which is more like Fashion Week and A Half. Hundreds of designers designing. Thousands coming to see. The pie just seems to get bigger and yet the slices don’t get smaller.
I don’t cover the shows, as you may know by now, except for a couple because they involve friends of mine. And under those circumstances, it’s fun. Fashion has inference and implications to my mind.
I can see how people can get into the whole Tents scene. It’s so New York. Something is going on all the time. More than you can take in. It becomes about choices; delicious because they aren’t life threatening like so many other things these days. People everywhere, all kinds of people; lines, mobs, hawkers hawking; the rich, the chic and the shameless and the rest of us, young, old and somewhere in between (face lifts for some). “The rest of us” in New York is made up of just about everything you could imagine.
There’s excitement as soon as you approach the Tents entrance on Sixth Avenue between 41st and 42nd, behind the New York Public Library. Cold or no cold, the place is cookin’. It’s the frivolous side of extremely serious.
I was late for the one o’clock date of the Oscar de la Renta Show by about twenty minutes but after a few years of this, I’d learned not to worry about it. It’s a big crowd, the whole tent. There must be hundreds inside. That’s a lot of seats to organize and seat. And there aren’t any empty seats.
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| So what I missed was the media melee that occurs along the northernmost aisle (there are two – a U-shape). That’s where the visiting celebrities are seated along with the fashion press. Glenda Bailey from Harpers Bazaar. The brilliant Cathy Horyn of the New York Times. That’s where Anna Wintour sits, often with Andre Leon Talley. She’s a little-bit-of-a-thing and he is this big, big guy, huge; and so it’s something to see. It’s a movie. All that personality and even so much more attributed to it (hers especially).
Nothing like the wonderful Meryl Streep version. She’s a very pretty woman and I’ve seen her smile and laugh which is charming, but the overall presentation is freeze-dried, tweeds, sables, silks and chiffons notwithstanding. And regarded by those in the know as the MOST powerful woman, indeed person, in the billion-jillion dollar fashion business. Making or breaking as she goes along. Still; ahh the choices we make along that same way.
And because I had to make my way through a throng of photographers and vid-men and women, anxious to get a seat in the front row, up front so that I could photograph, I didn’t stop to look and catch a shot. Although I like this part of it. It gives me something to do, and something even useful. It also gives me the opportunity to look. People are most often very polite around a camera. Best foot forward is what it is. Never a bad idea.
Across the aisle the great Bill Cunningham of the Times is doing his lens-thing. You know what he looks like. Elfin, white-haired, impish grin, in a navy pullover sweater; blue corduroys, bright New England countenance, wrinkled brow belying the very shrewd eye looking for the shrewd execution.
Also across the aisle are the young women of 21st century society in New York today. Not all, of course, but some. Many of those with the public profiles. Tory Burch who now has her own little fashion empire in the world of the Nouvelles Garmenteux was. And the Lauder sisters, Marina Rust Connor, Lauren DuPont, Jennifer Creel and many others. On my side were the older girls with some of their boys. Kenny Lane behind me. Robert Janjigian of the Palm Beach Daily News with Audrey Gruss. Mrs. de la Renta sits on this side, and always a few rows up to keep out of the client’s view. Many well known faces (including Jamee Gregory who’s written up a Guest Diary report in today’s edition).
I got a seat between Patricia Altschul and my friend Mr. Mazor (see The List) who organizes this part of the tent, like a circus ringmaster of sorts. And then the guys come down the aisle lifting the plastic runners off the pristine runway. Once that it is done, up comes the music, the beat, and out they come. The girls, the pony-stepping models who don’t look like any of the other women because they look like….models, long and lithesome, slender, long-legged with that unmistakable and always mystifying gait of one foot in front of the other as they go galloping down the aisle, (a canter really). It’s all magic by then and we’re just there to see and dream. Of one thing or another.
It was bristling cold when we emerged from the Tents about two o’clock. Emilia Saint-Amand Krimendahl very kindly gave me a ride in her limousine. Emilia always uses Abt which is about as old New York as a limousine service can be in 2007. Abt’s cars are all red and most of them (I think) are Cadillacs. They’ve been in business since the 1940s and many of the clients are second and third generation because that’s how it is. The drivers, including two Abts (sons or grandsons), are all like your “longtime” driver in the family. It’s hard to explain, but Abt has mastered the art of making the customer feel comfortable about the whole thing. I’ve never been a client so I can’t say what the customer pays, but you can be sure it’s not your average to-the-airport limo price. But that doesn’t matter anyway. A red Cadillac is also a lot easier to spot when you come out of the theater, the restaurant, the Tents into a river of limousines waiting.
Mrs. K’s driver was a man named Aberty Paul, a very pleasant fellow. After we dropped Emilia off, he drove me up to Eli’s on 80th and Third where I was going to get some hot soup (broccoli). So naturally I took Alberty’s picture. In front of the Abt Cadillac. New York days.
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