Cool and breezy Spring day in New York

Cool and breezy Spring day in New York

Friends entertaining Jolie Hunt on her birthday yesterday at Michael's (standing, l. to r.): Maureen Rya-Fable, Brigitte Trafford, Shari Rollins, Judith Czelusniak, Lyn Paulsin. Seated, l. to r.: Courtney Dolan, Valentine O'Connor, Jolie Hunt, Lisa Flehinger, Sara Nelson, and Betsy West.

Cool and breezy Spring day in New York where we were spoiled by last Saturday’s warm and sunny weather.

Down at Michael’s Jolie Hunt was celebrating her birthday. How old? I don’t know: 28? Whatever it is, she’s the next thing to a child prodigy in the corporate communications business. Actually she doesn’t look quite like a child, standing about 5’11” and with a presence – raven hair, big dark eyes, bright red lipstick and first to greet you. When I met her she was doing the PR for the Financial Times. Then she went to IBM. Now I hear she’s at Reuters. Anyway, whatever she’s doing, she knows a very wide variety of people, and some of them were singing Happy Birthday to the child yesterday at Michael’s.

Meanwhile I was being lunched by four women – Allison Rockefeller, Leslie Stevens, Anne Colley and Cynthia Lufkin. These girls had something else on their mind besides birthdays. They are planning the Audubon Society’s Women In Conservation Luncheon 2008 Rachel Carson Awards, which will be held Tuesday, May 20th at the Plaza. They will be honoring Teresa Heinz Kerry and Bette Midler as well as five women from the Central Park Conservancy – Jean Clark, Norma Dana, Marguerite Purnell, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers and posthumously Phyllis Cerf Wagner. These are all women who have made a difference in the neighborhood, the big neighborhood.

I’m not sure everyone nowadays knows who Rachel Carson is/was. But she is/was a woman who actually changed things in our world and in our heads, and she did this with a book she published in 1962 called “The Silent Spring.” The book was dedicated to Dr. Albert Schweitzer along with a quote of his: “Man has lost the capacity to foresee and forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.”

DPC with Cynthia Lufkin, Allison Rockefeller, Leslie Stevens, and Anne Colley

The book’s subject was the indiscriminate use of pesticides. The book which was praised and reviled, produced results: laws changed affecting our air, our land and our water. Rachel Carson started something. Ironically or not so, she herself died of cancer.

The women at lunch are more optimistic than Dr. Schweitzer. Whether or not their optimism is justified remains to be seen. In the meantime, they are doing something about it. They are all aware of on-coming tsunami of changing primary issues in our society together – those issues which affect all of us. They are enlisting everyone they can to get involved.

Allison Rockefeller, who’s been very involved in forest restoration projects for some time, gave me a card with a list of “10 Things You Might Not Know About What You Eat.” An example: “90% of all the fresh vegetable consumed in America originate from one region (California’s San Joaquin Valley).” Another example: “For a guide to finding local NY State food items, go to http://www.localfork.com/locavoreguidenyc.aspx.

You can get involved personally. Eventually we’re all going to be involved.


	Leslie Cafferty, Jack Cafferty, Leigh Cafferty, Carol Cafferty, and Nancy Collins.

Readers may be familiar with the name Nancy Collins. She’s the popular writer and journalist whose byline you’ve often seen in Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, New York, Harper’s Bazaar. You might have seen her on ABC’s Prime Time Live or 20/20. She’s met them all and written about them: Nicholson, Bill Clinton, The Giulianis, Elizabeth Taylor, Cheree Blair, Cindy McCain, Linda Trip, Renee Zellweger, Yassir Arafat, Nicole Kidman, Demi Moore.

I’m leading up to something. Last week this journalist/writer dipped her big blonde toes into a new gig: she opened Nancy Collins Bespoke Design for Center 44’s annual Spring Cocktail Mix. She was one of thirty-eight dealers who welcomed 300 guests to shop and snack.

I asked how this career diversion all came out. Since she’s a journalist, I’ll let you read her report on herself:

Last spring, I decided that my mother’s mahogany, drop-leaf table from the Fifties needed a face lift. And, seeking a doctor, I found a brilliant artist, faux painter and former teacher at the Isabel O’Neil Studio and School of Faux Painting. Throwing him a leopard pillow from my sofa, I asked: “Can you do this on that table?” He did, delivering, a week later Mama’s table re-invented in leopard spots -- the quintessence of wit and elegance: that is, leopard print vintage.

But I had no plans to start a business. After all, I am – first and foremost a writer and journalist. But when friends started asking where they could get something like my newly-hip table, I thought: “This is one idea I’m not giving away.” So, I called my faux painter, saying: “Let’s go into business.”


A corner of Nancy Collins Bespoke stall at Center 44.

That was July. And the Friday before Christmas Nancy Collins Bespoke Design opened its first small space (a second followed this year) in red hot Center 44, itself a mere two years old and home to 70 dealers … choice shopping venue for style mavens ranging from the ever-chic Mica Ertegun, Albert Hadley and Geoffrey Bradfield to hotter than hot, Nate Berkus, Oprah’s favorite decorator who lists Center 44 among his top ten resources.

Billed as “Vintage with a Kick, Art with a Function,” we feature unique vintage furniture, mirrors, lamps, decorative pieces (along with monumental floor vases and one-of-a-kind glassware) ... re-thought ... re-designed ... and custom painted in originally beautiful, occasionally irreverent, finishes, ranging from gold, silver, copper and platinum leaf to animal prints, neguro nuri and faux tortoise shell. In short, anything that grabs my imagination. I buy the pieces, we create the design, he paints.

From idea to reality, Bespoke Design was up and running in only five months. As I said: “If this goes like the best love affair I ever had I’ll do it – any glitches, I’m out. And fact is, if all my romances had gone this smoothly, I’d have had 178 husbands.”