Party Pictures 8/9/05 - Southampton Hospital's Safari Summer; More o’ the Belles of Southampton ...

Southampton Hospital's Safari Summer

Arlene and Allan Lazare

Lisa Arnold, Cindy Willis, Melanie Wambold, and Mary Unsworth

Diane Holmes and Charles Holmes

Last Saturday night in Southampton, they staged, as my friend Steve Stolman, the Southampton/ Palm Beach couturier of casual, calls it, “The Mothership of All Tent Parties” out East – 1100 people in two tents on Wickapogue Road. This classic summer social event has been chaired by every Grande Dame in Southampton for the past quarter century or more, and each one has done better than the last (that’s the spirit). What was once a small idea to make a difference now raises millions for the hospital.

Cindy Willis, Kelly Ripa, and Annette Leahy

They called this year’s affair "Safari Summer" — which started in a giant hotbox of a cocktail tent- with the obligatory silent auction, raffle, cocktail bars, Robbins-Wolfe cheese straws, a big "photo op" situation with a big faux zebra- velvet ropes- MC Kelly Ripa- lots of paparazzi flashing their digitals, the ubiquitous Bill Cunningham weaving, crouching, in and out- getting those fashion moments – so many of the girls in leopard prints, zebra prints; men in safari jackets, pith helmets.

Inside the HUGE dinner tent, very "Out of Africa" khaki, white, big arrangements of banana leaves and palms, silver candelabrum, whatta-show-whatta-show, there was honorary chair Vera Wang chic-as-hell in her long pleated beige silk with Arthur Becker, Dina Merrill, Julia Koch in white macrame, chairs Cindy Willis and Sheila Fuchs also both in Vera Wang, Cathy diMontezemolo, Jean Little and Bill FitzSimmons, Melanie and John Wambold. There was a big Palm Beach turnout including Ira and Nikki Harris, Catherine and Fred Adler, Kathy and Alan Bleznak, Robert and Jackie Harris Hochberg, the Sisters Welsh (Maribeth and Ellen) Isolde O'Hanlon, Peter and Jamee Gregory, Jonathan Farkas and Somers White, Charles and Diane Holmes, Randall and Barbara Smith, Howard and Lynette Gittis, Rev. Peter and Nancy Larsen, George and Patricia Kraus, Andrea Stark, Shannon Donnelly.

There was the throbbing disco junior party after dinner in cocktail tent turned into "Club Safari” — lots of hot young things in clingy, skimpy gowns, cute guys and the whole thing for the cause: the Southampton Hospital Department of Emergency Services.

Cathy Jones, Michael Fagin, and Cathy Dransfield

Marty Richards

Vera Wang and Arthur Becker

Sandra McConnell and Jamee Gregory

Sheila O'Malley Fuchs and Cindy Willis

Erica von Iderstein

Lucia Hwong Gordon

Kelly Ripa

Mark Consuelos

Cristina Greeven Cuomo and Chris Cuomo

Joy Marks and Leif Brinjslimark

Jonathan Farkas, Somers White, and Jimmy Nederlander

Julia and David Koch

L. to r.: Dina Merrill and Ted Hartley; Marty Richards and Andrea Greeven Douzet; Barbara Smith and Sheila O'Malley Fuchs.

Audrey del Rosario and Ambassador Enriquilio del Rosario

Jay Wright, Mike Mortellaro, and Adam Bernard

Bill Bruder and Frances Regatta Shelton

Tatiana Platt, Campion Platt, and Jeremy Platt

Photographs by Patrick McMullan/PMc

More o’ the Belles of Southampton ...

Brooke Corton, Jack Young, and Isolde O'Hanlon

Brantley Knowles and Steven Stolman

Cathy Bleznak and Tom Quick

The Historical Society of Palm Beach County and US Trust hosted a drinks party at the Southampton Club Friday night. What had been a steamy day cooled off to a balmy evening as the connection. The Southampton Club is the kind on institution that appears frozen in time — stuffy and worn in that wonderful WASPY men's club way — big green leather chairs, a billiard room, portraits of past presidents, even a little telephone booth, now quaint, once “the latest.” The dining room has a sign "Gentlemen Only" (pardon me if I call you “gentlemen”) although ladies are welcome everywhere else. The club also has guestrooms for weekend guests.

Mark Stevens

The guests at this particular party especially loved the old fashioned hors d'oeuvres made by the club's fantastic staff of ladies who turn out the perfect tea sandwiches that appeared cut with a laser beam — buttery asparagus rolls and those enigmatic peanut butter and bacon on toast things that can only be resisted by bodily restraint. The trays went back to the kitchen licked clean.

Everyone gathered around a bar on the front lawn while architectural historian Gary Lawrence gave a brief chat about the bonds between the two communities and the importance of preserving architectural masterpieces in the face of development. Mark Stevens, president of US Trust and Harvey Oyer, a Florida attorney who is also president of the Historical Society of Palm Beach gave welcoming remarks.

This event was also organized to honor the connoisseur and benefit committees of the upcoming Connoisseur Fair, the first major antiques show of the Palm Beach season. Frannie Scaife is honorary chair, and Brantley Knowles and Tom Quick are co-chairs.

The scene on the lawn of the Southampton Club

Among the guests, many of whom summer in Southampton and winter in PB were Andrea Stark, Tom Quick, John Mashek, Joe and Sheila O'Malley Fuchs, Nicky Harris and her daughter Jackie Harris Hochberg, Marjorie Gubelmann Raein and her mother Susan Gubelmann, Don Burns and Greg Connors, Steven Stolman and Jack Young, sisters Maribeth and Ellen Welsh, Brantley and Peter Knowles, Alan and Kathy Bleznak, Millie Brinn, Town & Country's Pamela Fiori, Roz Clarke, Laura Coyner, Randall and Barbara Smith, PB social scribe Shannon Donnelly, Judith Morell, Minot and Victoria Amory, Isolde O'Hanlon and Brooke Corton.