The benefit gala season is on hiatus in New York now. People are preparing for their holiday getaways or at least their last minute shopping. Then there are the parties. There may be some spectacular ones, although I’m not aware of one. There have been the luncheons for the ladies and some lucky gents at the Colony Club.
Last Friday Jeffrey Podolsky, the arts and cultural correspondent from New York for the Times of London gave his annual Holiday Luncheon (Men Only) with his old Choatie roommate Harlan Levinson at the Union Club. The invitation read “Please come for A Holiday Luncheon, December 14th at 12:30 pm. The Union Club, 101 East 69th Street (corner of Park). Lower on the card it read: MEN ONLY (And See Milly Pop Out Of A Cake) (ed. note: Milly’s Milly de Cabrol, the interior designer who is Jeffrey’s longtime partner). However, as it turned out, Milly was not going to be popping out of anything. Milly wasn’t even going to be around.
For this writer, an invitation to the Union Club is always a special occasion. The club which was founded in 1836 is the city’s oldest social club and its initial membership has been drawn from the city’s socially prominent Protestant families.
The clubhouse was designed by Delano and Aldrich who were also responsible for the Knickerbocker, the Colony Club, The Willard Straight house (which now belongs to Bruce Kovner) on 94th and Fifth, and 583 Park. This is the fifth location for the club. It is a most elegant building and despite its quiet grandeur, the design is gracious and hospitable while maintaining its cultural connections to an age, now long past.
Mr. Podolsky is creating something of a tradition with this luncheon. Sasha Newley, one of the guests called it “the men’s social event of the year.” It was called for 12:30. When I arrived, closer to one, several had still not arrived and those present were having drinks in a small ante room off the guest dining room. Since I’m still a tourist in an environment such as the Union Club, I really just want to look and take in the sensibility of the architects who lived in and designed for a far different New York.
About one-fifteen, about 20 of us took our assigned seats at a large dining table in a large red room, its walls hung with portraits and one particularly large portrait of the British Royal Family in 1949 or thereabouts at a public ceremony related to the end of ware-rationing. I could have this completely wrong since this just what I was told. Whatever, the story was, the portrait – which included the late teenage Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret and Lord Mountbatten was an excellent document and in a perfect environment.
Our host announced that anything said at this table didn’t go beyond the walls of the room. The dinner partner on my right was late in arriving (and I was early in leaving) so my conversation was limited to my host. What might have transpired after I left before the main course, is unknown to me. But what it was was something quite rare in social circles today: it was civilized. The notion itself is archaic in contemporary terms. The experience, however, is nearer Zen than the rattling of the taxis and the pedestrian chaos of cellphone mania.
Among the partakers: Hamish Bowles, Larry Creel, Jamie Creel, Bart Quillen (Anh Duong's husband), Frederic Fekkai, Euan Reillie (Lucy Sykes’ husband), Stuart Parr (Allison Sarofim's big beau), Jay Snyder, Patrick McMullan, Sasha Newley, Andrew Roosevelt, Robert Rufino, Rufus Albemarle, West Coast decorator Nathan Turner who flew in from LA; James Reginato of W, the drollsome, edge-of-ornery Bob Morris of the New York Times (you read his column The Age of Dissonance in the Style section), Malek Kaylin of the Wall St Journal, antiquaire Louis Bofferding who allegedly couldn't stop salivating over the club's sconces and Federalist chandeliers; as well as the hosts.
Milly de Cabrol, I later learned helped with the placement and placing the little gifts. Mine was a new edition of Ian Fleming’s “You Only Live Twice” and a Union Club brushed metal Zippo.
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| Tory Burch |
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| Samantha Boardman |
Party party. Yesterday over at Swifty’s, Tory Burch took over the restaurant to give a girl’s lunch for her friend Samantha Boardman Rosen.
The young lionesses: Alexandra Kotur, Rachel Hovnanian, Marjorie Gubelmann, Eliza Bolen, Ide Dangoor, Susan Edelstein, Kris Fuchs, Sandy Golinkin, Fernanda Niven, Brook Neidich, Peggy Siegal, Blaine Trump, Caryn Zucker, Caroline Bethet, Miranda Brooks, Stephanie Seymour Brant, Cristina Greeven, Emilia Fanjul, Danielle Ganek, Amy Plum, Renee Rockefeller, Suzanne Ircha, Nancy Jarecki, Shoshanna Gruss, Gigi Mortimer, Aerin Lauder, Kimberly Kravis, Rachel Peters, Pauline Pitt (Samantha’s ma), Sarah Senbahar, Marina Rust, Alexia Ryan, Amalia Dayan, Nathalie de Gunzberg, Lisa Errico, Celerie Kemble, Nina Runsdorf, Jennifer Miller, Nathalie Kaplan, Samantha Gregory, Gervaise Gerstner. |
