4.26.11: An Up for all of us | New York Social Diary

An Up for all of us

A birdhouse. 4:15 PM. Photo: JH.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011. A warm, sunny Spring day in New York. An Up for all of us. I went down to my doctor’s to pick up a new pair of reading glasses and caught these shots of the tulips in bloom to match the Ryman roses on the Park Avenue islands.

This is going to be one of those weeks; multiple luncheons and dinners until Friday. I don’t mean for me; I can’t do all of that. I mean in general. Thursday is a particularly busy night in New York with several major benefits, not to mention the booksignings and the kick-off cocktail parties in the stores, not to mention screenings, theater, concerts, dance and music. The city always moving.

The benefits are crucial to the culture of the city for a couple of reasons. One is the money they raise to fund many good causes. Some have a profound effect on the community and even the world. Some are the result of an “idea” someone had thought of to meet a specific need – medically, financially, psychologically, educationally. These charities are often The Source that moves us as a people living together on this planet.

Another aspect, an important one in the scheme of things, is the social aspect. The benefits are where the social order of this era is cultivated and defined. For many it is a passing through, a device profitably used on the way to higher planes. Their participation is weighed in cash on both sides of the exchange. It is most important and it makes the difference. This is mere tradition. When these “benefactors” move on to more glorified sofas, they will be replaced. If you observe the Society of this city, as it exists and how it exists, you are watching a moving picture. And it is reality.

Another aspect, and the most important of all, is that benefits are the best education in leadership. These charities are vehicles for leadership, all of them.


	Philip Glass and Ruth Shuman.

Last night I went over to Martin Luther King Jr. High School on Amsterdam and 66th behind Lincoln Center. I’d never stood in that specific spot with that particular vista to the east and the back of Lincoln Center. It’s a very new area, new in my lifetime. Sleek and substantial. I’d never been in the high school building before. It’s a beautiful building.

I was going to the Stir, Splatter and Roll 11, the annual spring benefit for Publicolor, the organization that teaches leadership to young people, especially young people who are underprivileged or disenfranchised or experiencing the deprivations of poverty. These are poisonous times for young girls and boys in city who are under the duress of those situations.

Ruth Shuman came up with this idea – years ago now – employing something which seems simple, and even manageable. It’s too long and interesting a process to explain in a few words here on this page, but the result is that there are now many young men and women who are on their way out into the world prepared to take care of themselves and each other. All achieved through basic learning. It’s genius and it’s an example of what optimism really is. It’s not a Hope; it’s an Achievement.

One of these days I’ll have mastered the description concisely because every time I think about it, I’m too in awe to organize my thoughts.

So there they were last night in the basement of the Martin Luther King Jr. high school with lots of adults and lots of kids and many of the adults and kids painting together.

Howard Sobel and friends.

Deborah Krulewich and Bill Lauder.

Nicholas Stern.

Christopher and Deborah Buck.

Their specific objective in painting is to paint the interiors of these schools with colors chosen by the kids who attend school there. This is the first step of Ruth Shuman’s brilliant contract with the kids.

You can see the difference this idea makes in my pictures. It lifts, these colors, and changes the feeling of the interior and changes the feeling of the interior for those young people who go there five days a week. So the first step is to lift the spirits just a little. Then add a huge serving of self-fulfilling participation at a task with one’s contemporaries, and soon people are learning the pleasure of learning.

Their words for it: “to creatively engage disaffected students in their education, and teach them not only a marketable skill but also strong and transferable work habits. Publicolor’s students do not drop out.”

Last night they were honoring the Estee Lauder Companies’ volunteers (“for their steadfast support of Publicolor students”), and Soledad O’Brien for her work in reporting on unreported communities in America.

In forming this organization Ruth Shuman brought together a broadly diverse group of New Yorkers including many people in the arts as well as business. Last night’s roster including “honorary team leaders” and “team leaders”: Christo, Mark di Suvero, Philip Glass, Harold Koda, Meredith Monk Ted Muelling, Gaetano Pesce, Hazel and Robert Siegel, Stanely Tucci, Lella and Massimo Vignelli; Jeffrey Banks, Ross Bleckner, Laura Day, Jamie Drake, Chip Kidd, Tom Krizmanic, Nancy Lorenz, Jonathan Marvel and Rob Rogers, Takaaki Matsumoto, Nicole Miller, Henry Myerberg, Michele Oka Doner, Patrick Robinson, Alex and Michael Shuman, Michele Smith, Peter Stamberg and Paul Aferiat, Mimi Taft and Frank Lupo, Vicente Wolf, and host of like minded citizens. The cause itself – building the community by educating its young to leadership is of great personal interest to many of this group. It’s not glamorous. It’s not social – although that world moves through it too. It’s vibrant, and that is where the younger people find satisfaction in participating.

I can’t say anymore except that this is another example of what leadership can do for all of us. This organization is destined to have profound influence on thousands of young New Yorkers, and they’re learning through giving. Their lives will be better for it and so will ours. This is what I mean when I say the “benefits” make a serious difference in our lives.

That aside, I left the “cocktail reception” (where I took these pictures). On my way back to the East Side, I stopped by the Ralph Lauren store (the new one) on 72nd and Madison where Charlotte Moss was having her booksigning.

I don’t know what number book this is because Charlotte is a small industry in the interior design business. The interior design business in New York is an industry because of women and men who have businesses generating enormous revenue as well as creating the style that moves the market and plies the imagination.

Charlotte Moss and her new book. Click to order Charlotte Moss Decorates: The Art of Creating Elegant and Inspired Rooms.

Talking to a friend during her booksigning.

The book is Charlotte Moss Decorates: The Art of Creating Elegant and Inspired Rooms. We interviewed Charlotte for our HOUSE section a few years ago. Her own house is beautiful but also impeccable in its finish, its completion. What always amazes me is that she has so much going on in her life and her business and yet maintains this “impeccability” about her work.

I see her out also out at the ballet and the opera and the galas, not to mention the restaurants and the dinners and theater, and the weekend retreat when she and her husband get out of town.

Mrs. Parker-Bowles and Clare Potter.

Daphne Matalene wearing a Milly (who's above in the Publicolor paint suit with the bikini painted on it).

The new store, officially the Ralph Lauren Women’s and Home store, is the ultimate luxe in the Big Town. It’s serenely elegant. It feels good. I am, of course, entirely aware of the cost of the merchandise, and my own relationship to affording it (not really). But it is nevertheless a pleasure. You’re glad you’re there.

The booksigning was on the fourth floor. Joanne de Guardiola, Carol Mack and Georgia Spogli were hosts, and when I got there at the end of the hour, there was still a good crowd of guests and people buying the book as well.

From the West Side to the East Side, I was thinking when I got home how both women I saw last night, Ruth Shuman and Charlotte Moss have made impacts on the community in the most positive, nurturing ways, and lay claim to a place where the message can get out to the world which needs it. This is New York.

Our hostesses for the evening. Ralph Lauren's swans setting the style.

Looking south on Madison and 72nd at 8:15 with the fog beginning to set in.

Meanwhile, the City’s color. These past few days of Spring emerging with the flowers and the trees inspired JH to concentrate on what beauty nature provides us in abundance and lifts all our spirits in the city.

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