10.22.09: A breezy New York day | New York Social Diary

A breezy New York day

Conservatory Water (last week). The pond has since been drained. Photo: JH.

October 22, 2009. A mild and fair day in New York.

We got an email last night from a reader:

Pls, know I still enjoy reading ur daily reports, but am just wondering what has happened 2 the economy and that everyone is BROKE because of Madoff, and now all I read and see are fancy parties, flowers, hairdos, etc?

Interesting question. We’re not hearing so much about the secret lamenting that was going around several months ago. Even in the real estate scene, I hear there’s a major bidding war going on for an apartment in one of the city’s top co-ops with a number reaching up into the pre-2008 stratosphere. One of the bidders is in the financial business. And the other’s just filthy rich.

Also the social/charity circuit is the busiest I’ve seen for an October with three or four major events nightly, as well as the invitation-only screenings and “kick-off” cocktail parties. I’m told the high end jewelry business is very good; and especially the diamonds are serious sellers. And of course the Apple store is always jammed.

In the charity whirl, for example, last night His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco attended the 26th annual Princess Grace Awards Gala at Cipriani 42nd Street, founded in memory of his mother. These awards go to emerging artists in theater, dance and film. This year they honored Mandy Pantinkin who was presented with the Prince Rainier III Award for his contribution to the arts by that Lifetime Outstanding Contributor Herself, Elaine Stritch.

All this while over at the Plaza, Fountain House’s Associates committee hosted their fall event with cocktails at the Plaza followed by dinner and dancing at the Racquet and Tennis Club. Ann and George Baker, Sarah and Jeremy Goldstein, Katie and Doug Hand, Katie Tozer, Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, Claire McKeon, Madeleine Potvin, Lil Phillips and Elizabeth Pyne were co-chairs.

Fountain House Associates chairs.

Cocktail hour at The Palm Court at The Plaza.

The dinner scene.

Fountain House is a great organization that works with men and women recovering from mental illness. They volunteer their time to help operate the organization which fosters mutually respectful relationships among the entire community.

Fountain House has managed to re-define and raise awareness of what mental illness really is and how many of us in one way or another are vulnerable to it. They also have an annual luncheon which hosts an important guest speaker who shares his or her experiences on the subject.

Christopher Bollen, Byrdie Bell, Becka Diamond, and Derek Blasberg

Jennifer Argenti and Clare McKeon

Nina Okun, Robyn Marks, Kenneth Dudek, and Andrea Roy

Lucy Phillips and Chris Dunnagan

Julia Crowell and Ian Zinn

Frank Belleca, Meg Zaragoza, Beth Baker, and Graeme Sanderson

Sarah and Jeremy Goldstein with Christy Walton

Robert Lindgren and Evelyn Tompkins

Bill Manger and Mary Snow

Zibby and Jonathan Right with Sarah Ogilvie

Meanwhile, I was downtown. At New York Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center’s 2009 Cabaret which is their major annual fundraiser. Charlotte Ford is the honorary chair of this annual and this is Charlotte’s baby. She is devoted, she cares, and she loves it.

Someone said to me last night when I introduced myself as being a guest of Charlotte: “This room is full of FOC’s because we love her.” We do.


	Charlotte Ford

It’s a huge dinner held at the World Financial Center Winter Garden. When you live on the Upper East Side, the World Financial Center which is across the road from the World Trade Center excavation, where all kinds of construction, both road and building, is going on, you wish the Gala were a little closer to home.

Although people live down there. And it is beyond awesome with its gargantuan concrete, steel and glass edifices surrounding the 400-year-old Trinity Church and its graveyard (and its vast commercial real estate holdings in the area).

Last night’s dinner. Doctors everywhere, men and women, with their wives, husbands, partners, friends. This is where you hear about the Really Great Doctors in New York. The Inside poop, so to speak.

There’s a kind of subtle medical celebrity register in the air when you’re around these people. For example, I was introduced to a woman, Dr. Orli Etingen, almost diminutive, warm and attractive bright-faced brunette. Ellen Levine, the Editorial Director at Hearst (who’s married to Dr. Richard) then told me Dr. Etingen is an internist and all the top women in communications and media go to her. A celebrity doctor.

I said to Ellen that I thought Dr. Pat Allen was the doctor all the women go to. “Pat’s an O-B-G-Y-N. Orli’s an internist.”

The Winter Garden with its live palms, scene of last night's benefit at the World Financial Center.

I took a picture of Charlotte who was seated next to Dr. Reese Pritchett who is the Physician of Choice (if able to get an appointment) to some of the most prominent women in New York. It’s almost like a private club.

They were not talking that kind of talk up at the Princess Grace or over at the Racquet. You see what I mean? Doctors are oddly intimidating. If not awe inspiring (which in most cases they are not). Although I tend to think all of these men and women know more than I do and could potentially know just about everything about me and sum it all up in a diagnosis or point of view.

Dr. Orli Etingin, Ellen Levine, Dr. Dick Levine, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Anna and Bob Kelly, and Laura Forese (whoops, I'm a little off-kilter with the digital).

Once people were seated for dinner, Charlotte took the stage and thanked the event committee Katie and Frank Bistiran, Leslie and Brian Brille, Lisa and James Cohen, Stephanie and Chase Coleman, Shoshanna and Josh Gruss, Julia and David Koch, Patricia Allen MD and Doug McIntyre, Claudia and Nelson Peltz, Pamela Lipkin MD and Bruce Ratner, Samantha Boardman Rosen MD and Aby Rosen, Stephanie Landess Susiak and Neil S. Susiak. Through the efforts of these people and all of those who pitched in and assisted them, they raised $2.1 million last night, she announced.

Glorious Food catered their signature deliciously creative dishes such as the Wild Mushroom Ravioli with Tomato Basil Gratine followed by Chicken Scallopine with Prosciutto and Fontina Cheese, Tomato filled with Spinach Puree, Corn Pudding. Pear Tatin with Vanilla Ice Cream. Really good.

Then Charlotte introduced the Guest Star of the night: Bernadette Peters. I’m a Bernadette Peters fan. She’s got a beautiful voice which she uses like an operatic singer and yet she also has the brilliant interpretation of a jazz vocalist or actress (which she is).

Bernadette Peters.

She sang a song from Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George, also Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Nothin’ Like a Dame” and “Some Enchanted Evening,” both songs identified with a male role but perfect.

Her performance lasted nearly an hour. The audience loved her. Her approach to her work and her profession is on the same plane as many of the men and women in that vast room last night. Like a good doctor she evokes confidence and attention as well as an open heart. Figuratively speaking, of course.

The evening ended about ten-twenty. I was offered a ride uptown in someone’s limousine but I opted to make the short hike three blocks east and one block south and grab the 6 going up Lexington Avenue. I probably got to the subway about the same time people were getting their cars back at the WFC Building. The subway wasn’t jammed at 10:30 but it was full. I then was uptown and in a cab and home in twenty.

The Bronx is up; and the Bowery’s down. The people ride in a hole in the ground; New York New York It’s a Wonderful Town.

Charlotte Ford and Dr. Reese Pritchett

Serena Rhinelander and Dr. Bill Davis

Rosemarie Lieberman;

Dr. Mickey Stewart

Bonnie Pfeifer Evans

Mrs. Reese Pritchett with Frank and Katie Bistrian

Dr. Nathan Saint-Amand and Anne Ford

Meanwhile, there’s more from our NYSD correspondents. Those in attendance last night at The Rubin Museum of Art (on West 17th Street) were treated to a spiritually and intellectually stimulating evening with fabled heiress/artist and author Gloria Vanderbilt.

The event, which paired Ms. Vanderbilt with Dr. Andrea Fiuza Hunt, a psychoanalyst trained in the methods of legendary Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, is one of a series of psychoanalyses commemorating the first-ever publication of The Red Book of C. G. Jung.

After introducing Jung's book and explaining the momentous nature of its publication -- for fear of its impact, Jung specified that The Red Book not be published for at least twenty years after his death, the Director of Programming at The Rubin, Tim McHenry, showed Ms. Vanderbilt and Ms. Hunt to the stage.

Gloria Vanderbilt on stage at The Rubin Museum of Art.

The mechanics of the analysis were simple: Ms. Vanderbilt was shown an image created by C. G. Jung (a vibrant Gustav Klimt-esque illustration of what the heiress likened to "an egg") and then haltingly voiced her emotional reactions to the work's multifarious figures.

An overriding theme of "growth-from-tragedy," was the response to the illustration. Vanderbilt and Hunt used phrases like "harmonious," "hopeful," and "Yin-and-yang."

The audience bore in mind that the Vanderbilt family name, usually associated with the vast wealth accrued from shipping and railroad interests by Cornelius Vanderbilt -- known as The Commodore -- during the industrial revolution, is not infrequently linked to tragedy. The Commodore’s namesake Cornelius J. Vanderbilt's suicide in 1882 (at the time, a highly publicized scandal) seems to have indelibly stained his lineage with misfortune.

Tim McHenry presents ceremonial Himalayan shawls to Andrea Fiuza Hunt and Gloria Vanderbilt.

Hunt and Vanderbilt onstage (the big book in Gloria's hands is her copy of the illustration).

Gloria Vanderbilt's life has been fraught by highly publicized misfortune since childhood. Her father Reginald gambled and drank his way through his enormous inheritance and died at 43. Her fourth and last husband, Wyatt Cooper, died tragically during surgery in 1978 and one of her sons, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper (brother of CNN analyst Anderson Cooper), committed suicide in 1988.

Throughout the evening, Ms. Vanderbilt, by all accounts an effervescent socialite in her heyday, was not to be dragged down. Though the audience was rapt with the silence of the auditorium punctuated by the occasional laughter at Ms. Vanderbilt's witticisms.

"This little figure reminds me of E.T.," she stated simply in response to the depiction of a snake-like creature with fangs. When Ms. Hunt suggested that Ms. Vanderbilt extrapolate upon her idea of herself as "the egg," Vanderbilt countered with: "I believe it was Alan Watts who said, 'Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.'"

Brigid Berlin and younger sister, Richie.

Vanderbilt was only momentarily upstaged when the audience was invited (albeit by she herself) to join the discussion. Brigid Berlin, famous for being one of Andy Warhol's Factory people spoke lengthily from her seat about how the image reminded her of the Rockettes and (perhaps in a less opaque, egg-related association) Carl Faberge.

Following Vanderbilt recaptured her audience with mention of a recurring dream of three people sleeping together in a bed.

"Did you see who they were?" someone asked in relation to the mysterious trio.

"No," she replied definitively, "But, I have my suspicions... but let's not go there."

-- TS for NYSD

Jung's The Red Book, published by W.W. Norton 48 years after Jung's death in 1961.

Vanderbilt signed copies of her own book, Obsession: An Erotic Tale.

And not far from the Rubin during the same hours, at the SVA Theater in Chelsea, Showtime hosted the New York premiere of "Bon Jovi: When We Were Beautiful."

The film is directed by Phil Griffin and follows the band through its 2008 Lost Highway World Tour, which came to a close with a concert in Central Park.

It's the first documentary for the band, which is too bad since they are fascinating characters. Jon Bon Jovi is the leader, obviously, but his bandmates Richie Sambora, David Bryan, and Tico Torres certainly have interesting stories to tell.

Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, and David Bryan surrounded.

Sambora was married to Heather Locklear for a time, Bryne wrote the music for the Broadway musical "Memphis," and Torres, at one time the wildest of the group, is now the most tame having settled down to raise his family. Given the musicians' ages, which range from late-40s to mid-50s, you can see why their lives have calmed down from their earlier days.

The documentary's television premiere is on Showtime this Saturday at 9 p.m. After the screening, a party followed at the Showtime House in Tribeca.

Among the crowd: Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora, David Bryan, Tico Torres, Ric Ocasek, Paulina Porizkova, Nikki Blonsky, Rachael Ray, Peggy Siegal, and Showtime Chairman and CEO Matt Blank.

-- SD for NYSD

Paulina Porizkova and Ric Ocasek

Chrishell Stause

Nikki Blonsky

Going back a few: Few High-Visibility Artists have the strength of character and vision to be steadfast in their aesthetic throughout the decades. Barbra Streisand (as reflected in her new album “Love Is The Answer”) is one, and the beloved, brilliant designer, Betsy Johnson, is another. And they’re both divas.

Betsy Johnson, a child of the ‘60s, its very essence, projects peace, love, and Rock’n Roll and FUN!


	Betsy Johnson Mannequins displaying her celebrated Fashion from the 1970s thru 2009.

This unique style has always been reflected in her design – whether wearable or home-furnishings. Very feminine but with an iconoclastic whimsy – sometimes bordering on spoof.

I first met her in the early ‘70s when my daughter CoriAnne and I visited her studio/residence in the Soho’s Thread Building. Mother and daughter acquired two matching ruffled taffeta, circular skirts, replete with attached crinolines. I still treasure my shiny violet creation.

Although raising her daughter Lulu (the same age as CoriAnne), and working hard she was also out there on the scene, and at our hang-outs – from Max’s Kansas City through the Mudd Club.

This happy sensibility infused the National Arts Club gala dinner celebrating Betsy, and she was awarded their Medal of Honor for Lifetime Achievement in Fashion. With tributes by Fashion Committee Director Chrishaunda Lee, Business Partner and co-founder Chantal Bacon, and Betsy’s mentor, MaryLou Luther, of the International Fashion Syndicate, as well as the gushy unveiling of two portraits of Betsy painted by VP Dianne B. Bernhard.

Betsy unrolled a hilarious long hot pink scroll detailing the high-points in her life, so long that it had to be supported by Chantal, Lulu, her sister and brother. There was an impromptu dance to “All That Jazz” and Betsy blessed all by showering them with pink rose petals.

She also noted that the happiness she felt that evening was better than any with her husbands and second only to the birth of Lulu.

-- Jill Lynne for NYSD