"I love it when my friends set up shop in New York," said Ghislaine Maxwell at her dinner party for British-Italian designer Allegra Hicks on Tuesday night. "I wish more of them would come so I don't have to buy clothes en masse when I go home to London." More than a handful of English accents—courtesy of the likes of Hamish Bowles and Ben Elliot—were heard amongst the crowd in the hostess's Chinese lacquer box-style drawing room. Aren't there enough Brits in New York? "Well, all my London friends say they're being overrun by New Yorkers," said Maxwell with a laugh. "I think a turf war might be brewing."

Natives and expats happily regrouped for the opening of Hicks' new Madison Avenue store the next day. "This is turning into a block party," declared Andrew Saffir, as he stood on the crowded sidewalk where Dennis Basso gamely manned the velvet rope, asking attendees like Renée Rockefeller, Zani Gugelmann, and HBO's Rome star Zuleikha Robinson if they were on the guest list.

Later, over dinner at Swifty's, New Yorker-turned-Londoner Lillian von Stauffenberg weighed in on the transatlantic debate. "London has its great points, but for me this town's the one," said von Stauffenberg, who was due to head back over the pond the next morning. "I never come back for too long because I'm scared I might fall in love with it again." The last word on the issue, however, came from Rena Sindi. "New York, London—what does it matter?" said the dinner's London-based host. "You take the party with you wherever you go."

— Jessica Ramakrishnan