Out of respect to the gossamer unity that is both the gathering ribbon and sometimes the rope of that disparate thing called “social life” uptown, downtown, and out of town, I have declined the best invitation of the week. (OK, maybe second best; the Valentino-Madonna-meet-Jesus party at the Standard hotel’s eighteenth floor was pretty “up there,” as Andy Warhol used to say when he was impressed with a soiree.)

All your favorite boldface names have been asked . . . I don’t know who has accepted. The party that I am declining is the opportunity today, to appear “as yourself—‘Real New York High Society’ ” — in a “Black Tie Alzheimer charity event scene which is set at the Metropolitan Museum of Art” in Wall Street 2, directed by Oliver Stone and starring, among others, Michael Douglas, Josh Brolin, and the delicious Carey Mulligan (see my caricature here.)

I’m a huge Oliver Stone fan, and I would have relished the opportunity to watch him work. Plus, there is nothing I like more than an idyll on a film set; it is a very diverting way of spending a day. But the following description of the scene itself gave me pause. Said an E-mail from a representative of the film: “Regarding the look I am hoping to achieve, it is likened to the ‘Last Hurrah’ of NY society, the last moment in 2008’s ‘Golden Age’ when everything was large and flowing. Oliver has used this analogy if helpful. . . . It is to appear similar to a salon on the Titanic, right before it hit the ICEBERG!!”

Now, why would I want my timeless mug seen in that scene? Drowning, not waving? Continue reading ›

God’s Love We Deliver celebrated two events recently: the Golden Heart Awards, which honored Calvin Klein, Christine Quinn, and volunteer Ed Prostak for their dedicated support, and serving its ten-millionth meal. Here vice chair Blaine Trump reflects on God’s Love’s early days and that remarkable milestone.
 
On the day of our ten-millionth meal, many of our earliest volunteers and supporters were there at our kitchen in SoHo. The meals were numbered so we could count down. There were floods of tears. I was shocked at how overwhelmed I was, thinking of all the people we had served and all the people we loved and had lost along the way. We started out in 1986 preparing and delivering meals to people with HIV and AIDS, about 25 a day when the pandemic was in its earliest stages. Now we deliver over 3,400, not just to people with HIV and AIDS but anyone with a critical illness who needs our help.
 
Back then, people either were terrified they were going to be infected with AIDS or they felt it was never going to be part of their lives. Brooke Astor, for instance, did not want to have anything to do with an AIDS organization. Her belief, she told me, was that the disease was self-inflicted, that it was a choice each individual made.
 
My feeling is, if you can afford a life of philanthropy, you really do get back more than you give. I worry that the younger generation is frightened about being labeled socialites, such an unfortunate term anyway, so they feel creating a perfume or some such is somehow preferable. But I don’t quite understand that. If you are lucky enough to have the privilege, volunteer. I was very lucky to have had a generous husband and a brother-in-law who was, and still is, so fabulous. From the earliest days, Donald Trump donated money, and he never said no when we asked for more. I always kid him, “Thank you for branding my last name. When I call City Hall,” which I have done many times for God’s Love, “they aren’t sure about the Blaine, but the Trump they’ve heard of.”

—William Norwich

From Kanye West to Serena Williams, South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson all the way to Janet Jackson’s bodyguards trying to clear a path of people so she could have a better view of Lady Gaga performing at the Marc Jacobs-V Magazine party after Marc’s show, talk amongst yourselves about what you think the hottest buy of the week is but how about an etiquette book? Especially one that, like the great out-of-print editions of Vogue’s Book of Etiquette, makes this point especially clear: the essence of good manners isn’t formality and protocol, it is treating others as you’d have them treat you.

The only good news about the upsurge in bad manners lately, as many have pointed out, including an excellent story in USA Today recently, is it is getting the nation talking about what is civil behavior, and what is not.

“American society is among the most informal in the world, and often that informality crosses over into incivility,” P.M. Forni, the author of “The Civility Solution: What to Do When People Are Rude,” told USA Today’s Marco R. della Cava. “Now, you add the informality of the Internet to this culture, and all bets are off. It’s an age of total disclosure and total expression, with very little concern for the feelings of others.”

The other bit of, well, good news isn’t exactly the best way to say it, maybe “instructive” is a better word, is seeing how other people practice forgiveness. In their very different universes, both President Obama and Taylor Swift dealt elegantly with the unfortunate, offensive behavior directed at them in recent days. Beyonce, too, was saintly chic in how she responded when Kanye interrupted Taylor’s big moment to tell the audience at the VMAs that she, and not Taylor, should have won for best female video.

Damned by Kanye’s praise, the position he put her also constitutes bad manners. But Beyonce rose above it all when, upon winning for her video for “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It,) she distinguished herself by giving up her airtime so Taylor could complete her speech.

As Fashion Weeks unfold in New York, London, Milan and Paris…it’s not what you wear but who you are that makes you chic, and Beyonce’s kindly behavior has, by the power of example, advanced the cause of good manners everywhere. Put a ring on it, indeed. She’s my heroine this week.

—William Norwich

Late again, wondering what time it was and scampering across and over the bodies in what looks very often in this heat like a melting Duane Hanson art installation, I looked up—correct me if I am wrong—to realize there isn’t any time in Times Square anymore.

Excuse me, but what happened? After all this fuss to clean up Times Square and make it a tourist mecca, no time in Times Square? That’s like no Mickey in Disney World!

Meaning, especially without the New York Times clock or ABC’s digital flashing, at least at Forty-third Street, there is no visible timepiece, at least as far as I could decipher. Remember when signage used to tell what time it was not only in New York but in Los Angeles, London, Paris, Rome . . . ?
(There was a big ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday for the newly redone Times Square area with its car-free plazas. Here is what my friend Steve Cuozzo wrote in the New York Post: “It took 25 years to save Times Square from its dark age, and it took City Hall just three months to turn it into a squatters camp.”)

But never mind. I had a very good time this week points elsewhere. August is the easiest month—unless there’s a hurricane. Was touched by the charm of My One and Only, starring Renée Zellweger, which I saw at a Peggy Siegal screening Tuesday night at the Paris Theatre.

The next night I had the opportunity to talk with Renée at the Museum of Modern Art, where R. J. Cutler’s The September Issue, about the making of Vogue’s September 2007 issue, was screened. She looked radiant, as always, in a Carolina Herrera dress, and I asked what her plans are this fall. I’d read she would soon begin filming another Bridget Jones movie; wouldn’t that be great for her fans? Continue reading ›

Despite repeated denials from no less than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that daughter Chelsea is getting married later this month on Martha’s Vineyard, let alone is even engaged, the rumors won’t rest. The latest? Well, depending on your source, one is that Oscar de la Renta, a Clinton-family intimate, has just finished making a beautiful wedding dress for Chelsea—or, if you prefer the other side of the rumor, that Vera Wang, also a friend, has worked her bridal magic on Chelsea’s behalf. “No one here has heard anything about a wedding,” said Oscar de la Renta’s spokesperson. “At this moment we are not involved,” was the comment from Vera Wang’s office.

If rumors bloom and spread because they feed the Zeitgeist appetites of the national Body Gossip, what does it mean when someone as intentionally private as Chelsea Clinton suddenly this summer becomes the romantic lead—she’s a 2009 Tracy Lord, the press-phobic aristocratic character played by Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story—in August’s lighter news? (Remember when, campaigning for her mother, Chelsea declined to talk to a nine-year-old-girl reporter for Scholastic News? “I’m sorry, but I can’t take questions from the press, and that applies to you. But I can have a  picture with you.”)

To recap the rumors: The story goes that,benefiting from the helicopter-paparazzi-free zone assured by the presence of President Obama and his family on Martha’s Vineyard later this month, Stanford and Oxford grad Chelsea Clinton, 29, will marry investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, 31, supposedly at the home of family friends Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen. (On July 31, Ted Danson, talking to The Boston Herald, denied this.)

The Washington Post’s Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts, authors of the Reliable Source column, last week addressed the rumors, including denials from both the Secretary of State and Bill Clinton’s spokesman Matt McKenna. “As we have said repeatedly, these rumors are completely false,” said McKenna.

Still, The Reliable Source reported evidence to the contrary, including that Mezvinsky was spotted shopping for rings and that “a Washington couple let slip that they’ve been invited to Chelsea’s wedding this month—then clammed up.”

And the rumors continue apace. So what makes the idea of a Chelsea Clinton wedding so compelling? First of all, there is the recession-induced Glamour Deficit—the country is hungry for glamour. Why bother talking constantly about money, or the lack thereof, if there isn’t any glamorous proof it is worth the trouble?

Consider the potential guest list; wouldn’t Malia and Sasha Obama make glorious flower girls? Then Caroline Kennedy, who summers in the house she inherited from her mother. Haven’t the Clintons forgiven Caroline for not endorsing friend Hillary for president? Next, there is Valerie Jarrett, expected to vacation on the Vineyard, and Vernon and Ann Jordan (it was also rumored that Chelsea might marry at their Martha’s Vineyard house). At dinner parties, Carly Simon, a resident, is known to break into inspired song. For movie stars, well, Chelsea will not be inviting movie stars unless they are her best friends. . . .

But the real appeal here is Chelsea herself. Strikingly beautiful and alluring in person—I remember overhearing a couple on a winter’s afternoon in the East Hampton bookstore talking exquisitely about Milton, the poet (not the comedian Berle or the tranquilizer Miltown), only to turn around and discover it was Chelsea Clinton and her boyfriend.

Maybe the fascination with Chelsea Clinton is her steadfast pursuit of her right to privacy. While the majority of Americans begin to discover the downside of babble, living 24-7 on-line, Twittering, watching reality TV, and generally just talking too much about ourselves, Chelsea is one of the few people in public life reminding us what privacy is—the right to it, the pleasure of it, and the dignity of it.

More power to her if there is a wedding and her family and friends wouldn’t say beforehand. All things considered, Chelsea Clinton deserves at least one day off from the national spotlight, her wedding day. If you agree, say “I do.”

—William Norwich

The oceanfront East End Long Island home of best-selling cookbook author and Baby Buggy founder Jessica Seinfeld and her husband, who needs no introduction—the artist still known as Jerry Seinfeld—will be the setting Saturday night for a much anticipated dinner-dance benefiting the aforementioned charitable organization. Founded in 2001, Baby Buggy is dedicated to providing New York City’s families in need with essential equipment, clothing, and products for infants and young children. Among the Seinfelds’ expected guests are Gwyneth Paltrow, Christy Turlington, Alexandra Wentworth, and Stephanie Winston Wolkoff. I spoke to Jessica earlier this week about her plans for the party, which is sponsored by Porsche.

WN: Rumor has it that your husband, a very sociable man but not someone I would describe as an indefatigable partygoer, is, however, very excited about your dinner-dance Saturday night.

JS: [Laughs] Yes, it is true, he is. As many know, he has been obsessed since he was five with Porsches—all he has ever dreamed about is Porsche cars—so this is a dream come true for Jerry, Porsche’s coming to us!

WN: How did it come to pass that Porsche became the sponsor for your fund-raiser?

JS: Well, long story, but in 2010 Porsche is coming out with its first ever family-style four-door sedan, called the Panamera, so…

WN: How is Baby Buggy doing in this economy?

JS: We are doing almost everything, like this event, with a budget cut of two-thirds. We’ve done three events so far this year at three different ticket prices, and they’ve all sold out. I’m so proud and appreciative of our supporters who have had to cut back their charitable giving but stayed with helping to care for the people who are most vulnerable in this city.

WN: Baby Buggy has never been extravagant but always mindful of budget. So I guess you were in a better position than many other organizations to adapt to the New Economy, especially in fund-raising.

JS: Thank you. We are proud of the fact that Baby Buggy is accredited by the Better Business Bureau. Ninety-one cents of every dollar we raise goes directly to our programs.

WN: Have you seen a rise in need due because of the economy?

JS: Yes. You cannot even put a number on it, but the need has grown exponentially. We are also seeing a higher rate of domestic violence and child abuse, which we attribute to the stress factors of this economy.

WN: When people come to a party for the first time Chez Seinfeld, what do you think surprises them, if anything?

JS: I think they are surprised to see that we are so informal, not fancy. Jerry and I are often the first people to sack out on the sofa.

WN: How is the follow-up to your cookbook for parents, Deceptively Delicious, coming along? Have you a title? And what exactly is it about?

JS: [Laughs] Let’s just say . . . it is about food and I’m right in the middle of it.

WN: Speaking of food, and aren’t we always, what is on the menu Saturday night? Those delicious hot dogs you grill on the Fourth of July?

JS: No hot dogs. But the menu is always summer comfort food here. Saturday night, that will include macaroni and cheese and local fish.

WN: And Porsches. . . .

JS: And Porsches as a decorative theme. My husband is going to be very happy.

Flashbacks, acidic and otherwise, of Woodstock are expected to increase as the fortieth anniversary of the legendary music-and-love festival approaches on August 15–18. 

Given the frequency with which hippie looks are richly revered and regularly revived, (seemingly every fifteen minutes someone sending out an homage to Yves Saint Laurent’s rich hippies) I assumed this significant Woodstock anniversary would be cause for great excitement in the American design community. 

Not unanimously, I discovered.

Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera, when I telephoned to inquire if Woodstock made any impression on them or influenced their earliest work, actually declined to comment. Woodstock, three days in the mud and a Hendrix hangover, was never their thing. The event didn’t make much of an impression on Oscar, his spokesperson explained. Mrs. Herrera, said her spokesperson, could happily discuss anything, except Woodstock, at a later date. 

“Donna”—as in Donna Karan; who else?—“did not attend and has no memories of it,” her office informed me. Anna Sui’s people said, “It wasn’t really her time . . . definitely it was influential, but” Woodstock “did not have the same significance as the rock-punk scene for her.”

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All roads in the wondrous world of style led to Water Mill, Long Island, this past weekend for the preview opening of the 2009 Hampton Designer Showhouse, presented by Traditional Home magazine and benefiting Southampton Hospital. Located at 179 David’s Lane, the show house will be open daily from July 26 to September 6, from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission is $30.

Two of my favorite designers, the husband-and-wife team of Jesse Carrier and Mara Miller, principals of Carrier and Company—their clients include entrepreneur Bob Pittman and the Tribeca Film Festival’s Jane Rosenthal—have decorated a very sexy den here, which Jesse and I chatted about on the phone the other day:

You were working for Jeffrey Bilhuber until 2006, when you and Mara started Carrier and Company. Is this your first show house?

It is. And we’re delighted. To my mind, of all the New York–based show houses, the two that have the most resonance are Kips Bay in Manhattan and the Hampton Designer Showhouse.

Whom did you lobby to get the den, or was it by lottery?

It was by lottery.

How did you conceive the room?

We’d just finished a games room for a client in Greenwich, and we thought we’d create another here, a colorful, seductive underground den, using a very saturated burgundy grass cloth, George Smith chairs, an ottoman from Old Town Crossing furniture in Southampton, Carolina Irving fabric upholstered on a screen, and this amazing 1920s billards table from Thomas Grimaldi, among other elements.

How is this room an example of the Carrier and Company style?

It is layered, colorful, edited . . . tailored but not stodgy.

How does the room include “green elements”?

The grass cloth on the walls and the sisal on the floor. . . .

Plus the antique billards table. Using antiques—that’s recycling, isn’t it?

Well, yes.

Have you noticed any trends emerging at the show house this year?

I think in this economy, what you are seeing is less custom madness, less necessity to have everything made to order. If you want to shave your budget, one way is to embrace a retail approach. I think the show house—certainly our room, at least—shows how you can pull off a retail room. Everything we used, you can go buy. It really is a cost-saver because it also takes all the guesswork out of decorating. You can see it before you buy it; you can test it out before you commit and spend all the money.

What are the top decorators wearing to work these hot summer days?

Seersucker by J.Crew.

One of the best events the social whirl in the Hamptons has to offer is the Parrish Art Museum’s annual Midsummer Party. Taking place this Saturday evening, July 11, it has more buzz than ever due to the fact that the woman being honored, Dorothy Lichtenstein, is one of the most beloved women in the art world today. That she is also deeply chic, wildly bright, and intentionally underexposed helps, too. 

Having met the artist Roy Lichtenstein in 1964, while she was helping to curate a gallery show titled “The Great American Supermarket,” she married him the next year. The artist died in 1997, and in 1999 Dorothy established a foundation to promote his art.  A year-round resident of Southampton, Dorothy has been a trustee of the Parrish Art Museum since 2000 and recently agreed to chat with William Norwich about the Parrish, its eventual move from Jobs Lane in Southampton to Watermill, and the party Saturday night.

Dorothy, the folks at the Parrish are honoring you, in their words, for your “extraordinary energy, enthusiasm, and generous commitment to art and culture.” So may I ask you, from your vantage point, how are art and culture doing these days?

I think art and culture are more important than ever, binding us, giving a center that can hold, whereas before, in more moneyed times in the art world, money seemed to have become not just an external measure of success but an internal one as well.

Young artists probably come to you all the time and ask for help. What do you do?

They do, and that is one of the reasons the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation doesn’t do individual grants. Roy and I always felt that we could never see all the worthy young artists, so it was better to support organizations such as Artists Space and Exit Art that are in a position to make broader and better decisions.

Everyone glamorizes the sixties, whether the art, the music, the fashion. Were the sixties really the best decade ever?

Well, we never could have elected Obama in the sixties, so no. Now is the best decade so far. 

When did you first come with Roy to Southampton?

We came out to Long Island all through the sixties and moved to Southampton permanently in 1969. Eventually we let our place on the Bowery go and had the charm of staying in hotels, usually the Stanhope, if we needed to spend a night in town.

You’ve been on the board of the Parrish Art Museum since 2000, but you always supported the museum. What do you like best about it?

I love the energy. The Parrish is “the little museum that can.” It is both a wonderful regional museum anda global museum, with artists and exhibitions coming here from all over the world. 

You have friends from all over the world coming to the Parrish dance on Saturday night. Agnes Gund, Jo Carole and Ronald Lauder, Larry Gagosian, Danielle Ganek, Kelly Behun Sugarman, Debbie Bancroft, and Gayle Perkins Atkins are on the host committee . . . what are you going to wear?

My outfit is still a work in progress. You see, many years ago I came across something Henry David Thoreau said, and it stuck with me: “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” So something has to have hung in my closet for at least a month and a half before I will wear it. 

A last question, if I may? Before you met Roy Lichtenstein, who was your favorite artist?

I suppose Matisse. Yes, Matisse.

Late Sunday afternoon, after Roger Federer’s Wimbledon triumph, a few pals were keeping score of various happenings from the holiday weekend—and talk, of course, circled around to this afternoon’s mobbed memorial for Michael Jackson at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Had anyone applied for a ticket to the memorial? One friend said his online bid had been rejected, and some people who received tickets tried to hawk them for upwards of $10,000 on eBay! Also mentioned was the Michael Jackson Dance Party that style guru Amanda Brooks and designer Phillip Lim are hosting this Thursday night in New York. People are buzzing about whether this is a proper homage to Michael, or perhaps too festive when more somber decorum would be in order. Regardless, trust me, the turnout at Collective Hardware, where Amanda and Phillip are giving their dance, will be tremendous. It is that rare beast, a party without any apparent commercial tie-in! Of course, there was conversation about the 24-7 media coverage of the life and death of Michael Jackson.

“So, Billy, do you think the collective media guilt about how horribly they treated him during his lifetime will change the way the media gossips?” someone asked me. “Will the media be less mean?”

Kindly media? Well, there’s a concept, but I doubt it. Michael’s curious behavior pushed the limits of what are essentially a very conservative-thinking media. But it was something else that always fascinated. Plastic surgery always will be the number-one topic of gossip everywhere, anytime, anyplace, and Michael was a poster boy for 1980s and 1990s procedures, good and bad. Critiquing plastic surgery is the twenty-first-century version of art appreciation. See the latest sculptures of the gods! 

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