"I'm the man of the hour tonight," Patrick McMullan crowed at Elaine's on Tuesday, where Interview magazine was hosting a party in honor of its 20-year relationship with the New York celebrity and party photographer. "Finally!" added the legendary lensman. Not that he was exactly off-duty: McMullan twirled his camera around the old-school eatery all night long, orchestrating shots of Lydia Hearst, Tony Shafrazi, Allison Sarofim, and a slew of be-hatted and heavily made-up ladies. And he wasn't the only one working it; one socialite was overheard saying, "I was sucking in so hard for that picture I almost fainted."

Many agreed that Elaine's, the Upper East Side eatery made famous by the likes of Woody Allen, Jackie O, and Truman Capote, was the perfect venue. "In my parents' day, this was the place to be," said Paul Sevigny, part owner of current hot spot Beatrice Inn. Both the Elaine's crowd and the Beatrice kids feature in an edited collection of two decades' worth of McMullan's photos that comes with Interview's February issue. "His old stuff is so good—and you really want to see what they were doing back then," editor in chief Christopher Bollen said. "But the stuff he's doing now captures this moment, too." As if on queue, a group still going strong from the earlier era—Marisa Berenson, Pat Cleveland, and Stephen Burrows—collapsed on a couch nearby. McMullan, of course, was there to document it.

— Derek Blasberg