"You don't feel right if you are slick at the Frick," said Visionaire's Cecilia Dean at the Upper East Side museum's Young Fellows gala on Thursday night. "With this incredible backdrop, you might as well put on your most full-on gown." Dean wore a white Rodarte dress with a pannier skirt, a look that was certainly full-on if not entirely in line with the gala's Hunt Ball theme. "I am dressed for the era of the hunt," quipped Dean.

While Mark Gilbertson gamely donned a red master-of-the-hounds hunting jacket, most guests eschewed traditional staples like tartan gowns, jodhpurs, and riding crops. "I made sure I had a forelock, which is kind of horsey," said gala honorary chairperson Marina Rust Connor. "And look, Lauren [duPont] is wearing a small ponytail."

Connor's dress, meanwhile, was from Angel Sanchez, the gala's sponsor. "This is a well-dressed room," declared the designer as he surveyed his "angels," who also included Tinsley Mortimer, Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos, and Gillian Miniter. "All I have to do now is make a dress for her," he said, pointing to Jean-Antoine Houdon's nude sculpture of Diana, the goddess of the hunt. "I wonder what size she is?"

Horseplay of a different sort was the topic of discussion at the Museum of the City of New York's Winter Ball earlier in the week. Many of the attendees had just touched down after the Oscar weekend festivities and had plenty of tales to tell. "I landed this morning at 2 a.m.," confided decorator Antony Todd. "I had an earlier flight, but there was no way I was going to make it." Chatter became so animated that the busy Gilbertson, the evening's chairman, had to yell for people to be quiet during the announcement of the raffle winners.

Remarkably, there were few signs of post-awards party fatigue. Jackie Astier celebrated her birthday with a candle in her chocolate cake; Gilles Mendel (another of the just-back-from-L.A. brigade) spun Dr. Lisa Airan around on the makeshift dance floor; and Valentino's Matthew Marchak, whose company was one of the Winter Ball sponsors, pondered the possibility of heading to Bungalow 8. "Zani is trying to get everyone to go out," he said, referring to the ever-energetic Ms. Gugelmann.