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subscribe to style file blog via RSSIsland Living—And A Little Golfing—With Oscar De La Renta
April 23, 2010 6:03 pm
Don’t let the thatched airport fool you. There’s nothing shoddy or shabby about Punta Cana, the tony resort community on the eastern end of the Dominican Republic, home to one of the DR’s most famous sons, Oscar de la Renta. That airport? The oldest privately owned airport in the world, as it happens. And Punta Cana—formerly a scrubby, inhospitable bit of island paradise—has been remade over the past 40 years as an epicenter of beachfront luxury. You don’t wind up with the Caribbean’s only direct flight from Moscow for a sliver of sand and so-so accommodations.
The latest addition to the island’s attractions, the new Corales Golf Course, was inaugurated last week. Señor de la Renta was on hand for its christening, an event even President Leonel Fernández Reyna fit into his schedule. (Albeit about 45 minutes late. “Our president is not an early riser,” quipped one stylish Dominicana regarding the 11 a.m. ribbon-cutting. That’s the tardy president, center, with de la Renta, right.)
Corales itself is a golfer’s dream green, designed by the legendary course designer Tom Fazio and with a good claim to be the best in the Caribbean. Its most famous fan, Mikhail Baryshnikov, owns a house on the property and is frequently spotted in his beat-up golf cart. His neighbors are no less notable: Julio Iglesias, de la Renta, interior designer Bunny Williams. The night before the course’s inauguration, de la Renta threw a fête for a few fabulous attendees, James and Gina de Givenchy among them. We were welcomed to his stately beachfront home, with towering walls of coral limestone, lined with books and Grecian vases. The designer himself appeared bronzed and stately in monogrammed (”OR,” for the curious) white linen. The following day, at el tee-off, he would praise the way Corales’ designers “managed to capture and pay homage to the beauty of the land.” But Don Oscar himself, it turns out, is more a dominoes player than a linksman. (He plays a daily 5:30 game, not with the social set but with the locals—his chief of security; the chief of police.) At home among friends and admirers, standing on a high terrace overlooking nothing but barely rippling water and the Dominican Republic’s famously white sand, de la Renta leaned forward candidly and acknowledged with a smile, “I don’t really play golf.” Hard to blame him. However great the holes, they’d be hard-pressed to compare with the view.
tags: Corales, Dominican Republic, Gina de Givenchy, James de Givenchy, Oscar de la Renta, Punta Cana
