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San Francisco Museum of Modern Art by day
and night |
Jeanne
Lawrence for NYSD
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Helen
and Charles Schwab
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The
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) inaugurated its first
biennale spring gala, aptly named The Modern Ball. With more than
1,500 art lovers and revelers attending, it was a smashing success
and raised more than $1.7 million to support the Museum’s
programs.
The Ball was held at SFMOMA, the museum designed by Swiss architect
Mario Botta, which opened in 1995 in SoMa (South
of Market). Guests had a choice of three venues: The Gala Dinner,
The Supper Club, or the Post-Modern Party according to their taste,
age,
and budget – so egalitarian and isn’t it refreshing
to mix with the younger social set?
After dinner, New Yorker and Vice Chairman of Sotheby’s Jamie
Niven (son of the late actor David Niven)
auctioned items to the tune of $140,000.
Throughout the night performers such as Voodoo Lounge, New Society Orchestra,
West Coast Music All-Stars, DJ Angola, DJ AM (Nicole
Richie’s fiancée), and DJ Spooky kept
the hip crowd hopping. |
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Jamie
Niven in Action
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At
the helm was gala chair Helen Schwab. Naturally hubby’s
company Charles Schwab & Co. agreed to help underwrite the gala, as did VISA
USA. Other committee hosts included Carolyn Butcher, Carla Emil, Amanda
Michael Gamble, the party designer Stanlee Gatti, Mimi Haas (husband Peter
Haas of the Levi Strauss family), Francesca Koe, former
SFMOMA board president Elaine McKeon, Eileen McKeon Michael, Yurie Pascarella (husband Carl
Pascarella is former CEO of VISA), Catherine Post, Becca Prowda,
Rachelle Sessions, art collector Norah Sharpe Stone,
and Summer Tompkins Walker.
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Mayor
Gavin Newsom and SFMOMA Director Neal Benezra
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The
town was in a tizzy because of the dress code as the invitation
simply stated “Attire:
fabulous.” The photos tell the tale; guests interpreted as they wished
and ran the gamut from designer frocks and vintage finds, to the ubiquitous blue
jean craze which started in San Francisco with Levi Strauss, don’t forget!
Faces in the crowd: Handsome and current bachelor Mayor Gavin
Newsom;
SFMOMA
director Neal Benezra; art dealers Gretchen and John
Berggruen; the Schwab off-spring Katie and Michael Schwab;
director of Sotheby’s Jennifer
Biederbeck with
husband restaurateur Doug Biederbeck; George Roberts (KKR)
with daughter Courtney
Roberts; Christie’s honcho Ellanor Notides with
husband Russell; Danielle
and Brooks Walker Jr.; Kay and Sandy Walker (Brooks
and Sandy’s great grandfather T.B. Walker founded the
Walker Art Center in Minneapolis); Vanessa
Getty (wife
of Billy Getty); newlyweds Kimberly and Nic Bini;
board chairman Steven Oliver and his wife, Nancy;
and District Attorney Kamala
Harris. |
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Nicola
Miner
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Kathryn
Keown
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Norman
Stone
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Norah
Sharpe Stone in a Gucci Jacket
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Tatiana
and Serge Sorokko
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Kimberly
and Nicolo Bini
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Summer
and Brook Walker |
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Elaine
McKeon and Stanlee Gatti
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Emily
Carroll and Thomas Weisel
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Juliet
de Baubigny
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Katie
Schwab, Ron Nicholsen, and Christina Spaulding
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Shelley
Lindgren
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| Helen
Schwab in Prada |
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| Above: Gerson and Barbara Baker. Right: SF
Attorney General Kamala Harris and Vanessa Getty. |
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| Kimberly
Lights and Alan Turner |
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Artist
Todd Hido, Nina Hido, Robert Mailer Anderson, and artist
Leonardo
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Table
Settings sans Flowers
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| L.
to r.: Natalie Daniel; Emilia Buchanan and Ames Morison;
Julia Umnow and Jessica Mullens. |
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| L.
to r.: Amy Rogers; In your dreams;
Brian Wilsey, Kim Miller, and Charles Schwab. |
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You
never know who you’ll run into on a Sunday morning wandering
the Melrose Trading Post which is held eveery week on the grounds
and parking lot of Fairfax High School on Melrose Avenue. Everybody
loves a “find” at a bargain price in the open-air “flea
markets and we are generally first in line at this popular barter
venue – even before it opens.
Our
most recent star-sighting occurred when we encountered the blonde
and beautiful Scarlett Johansson who could hardly wait to show us
the stunning Vreeland red Oriental-style coffee table she’d
just bought.
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Josh
Hartnett
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“Do you approve?” she
wondered, and of course we did. Then we reminded her that Diana Vreeland once
said, “Every room needs
something red and something Oriental.”
She was thrilled with her purchase and we congratulated her. Scarlett
was in town from London, where she is filming the as-yet-untitled
Woody Allen movie with Hugh Jackman and Ian
McShane. She has another
film opening this month, the period comedy, A Good Woman,
adapted from an Oscar Wilde play, and she’s
doing promotion for it here. We noticed that the man in her life, Josh
Hartnett, was nowhere
to be seen and she quickly made it clear that she didn’t want
to “talk about my personal life. I don’t think it’s
anybody’s business unless I’m formally engaged. Only
then would I feel confident talking about a relationship,” she
opined. When we told her we’d seen her kissing Josh (or he
was kissing her) she already had a response: “Look Josh is
a mid-western boy and you know they’re always friendly.”
Scarlett sold her Hollywood home and has moved into the Chateau Marmont. “It’s
less lonely. I am making my place there more to my own personal taste,” she
said.
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Uma
Thurman, Brooke Neidich, and Andre Balazs
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Speaking of the Chateau Marmont, we recently came upon Uma
Thurman whose boyfriend Andre Balazs owns the storied Sunset Strip hotel.
Uma was leaving the Knitting House, loaded down with 16 balls of
cashmere yarn and some knitting needles. She said she was getting
ready for the cooler weather, knitting sweaters and other go-with
for her kids and her boyfriend.
The busy beauty said she is about to start her own line of skin care
prodcuts, but said it was premature to offer any explicits. And she
quickly added that it would have the secret ingredient that makes
her one of the most beautiful women in the world.
Bret Easton Ellis celebrated his new novel Lunar
Park, his
fifth novel, at a party at the Chateau, hosted by Uma and Andre.
A glamorous group gathered to help Bret launch his book, including
Sex and the City hunk, Jason Lewis, who’s been tapped to star
in the film version of Ellis’ 1998 novel, Glamorama, along
with his steady girlfriend Rosario Dawson. In November Rosario will
be seen in the eagerly awaiting film version of the hit Broadway
show, Rent.
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Bret
Easton Ellis
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By
the time you read these lines, we’ll be winging East where
we’ll help our best friend Brigid Berlin celebrate
her birthday and on our collective lap will be a boxed, natal-day
cake from her
and our favorite bakery, Hansen’s Cakes in Beverly Hills.
While
we were there, we learned that Hansen’s has received
hundreds of orders for the kind of cake they made for four year old
Maddox, Angelina Jolie’s son – decorated
like an off-road racetrack. The birthday party was held at Brad Pitt’s Santa
Barbara beachfront compound. “Photos of the cake appeared everywhere,” we
were told, and, according to our source, “the phone hasn’t
stopped ringing since.”
Brad has also recently placed an order for a cake that replicated
a Frank Gehry-designed building and which was baked and decorated
for a screening party of Sydney Pollack’s
new documentary, Sketches of Frank Gehry, held in Brad’s
new screening room in Malibu. The documentary will debut at the Toronto
Film Festival
opening this week.
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Angelina
Jolie and her son
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A
little Hansen’s history: Although we’ve been told it’s
been around even longer, the bakery first gained national attention
at JFK’s famous Madison Square Garden birthday
party where Marilyn Monroe wished the chief executive
a “very happy birthday
Mr. President” with an on-stage rendition of the age-old song.
The tabloids are saying Brad and Angelina made the bakery famous – which
is hogwash. For anyone keeping track of these things, the Kennedys
are still ordering birthday cakes from them more than forty years
later. In fact, Governor Schwarzenegger and his
wife Maria
Shriver helped their 14-year-old daugher Christina top
off a dinner at Mr. Chow with a Hansen’s birhday cake,
adorned by a shiny tiara, just waiting for Christina to pose prettily.
Maria,
incidentally, still drives her kids to school and, she reported,
they still do household chores, still are in the same school, have
the same friends. “I want to keep them close as long as possible,” she
said, adding that it’s a bit of a struggle, juggling he different
roles – wife, mother, first lady, public servant, keeper of
the Shriver flame. For her, the challenge has been to support her
husband, keep her children normal and find “my own life somewhere
in the middle. She has written her fifth book, And “One more
Thing Before I Go,” a collection of life lessons for young
women preparing to go to college.
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The
Governator
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Princess Madeleine,
the 23-year-old daughter of Sweden’s King
Carl Gustaf XVI and Queen Silvia, was recently in Hollywood
visiting some Swedish friends and we’re told did some major
shopping on Rodeo Drive and at Neiman Marcus where she bought some
Oscar de
la Renta sweaters and dresses and at Hermes where she picked up some
blets and bags, and at Chanel where she purchased some evening wear.
The princess has dabbled in design, fashion and advertising and it
is not surprising she used her trip to check out our wonderful Beverly
Hills fashion emporia. Swedish and European women, especially those
in their 20s, take their fashion cues from Princess Madeleine and
he sister, the 28-year-old Princess Victoria.
Her Swedish hosts reportedly took her to Disneyland and to some of
Hollywood’s hot spots such as Koi, where she is said to have
sat next to Paris Hilton, Kimberly Stewart
and Lindsay Lohan, and
ordered he restaurant’s baked crab rolls and the albacore tuna
with onion. After dinner they say she checked out the Tropicana Bar,
the Hollywood Roosevelt hot spot that she somehow managed to hear
about in Stockholm; she was anxious to see what all the fuss was
about. We were unable to get her reaction to the XXXX-designed nightspot.
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Madonna
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We understand that Madonna, the undeterred, would-be equestrienne
is doggedly determined to get back in the saddle and plans to take
some riding lessons from her friend Zara Phillips,
a champion horsewoman and daughter of Britain’s Princess Anne. Zara has been spending
time at Ashcombe House, the former house of the late Cecil
Beaton
that Nonnie, Maddie, Mo Madge, Esther, Mrs. Guy Ritchie (take your
pick) shares with her writer-director husband and two children Lourdes and Rocco.
Zara’s making an equestrienne out of little Lola
too. And, as if to keep the equine thing going, Madonna is reported
to have begun to collect artist George Stubbs’ paintings
after seeing an exhibition of them at the National Gallery in London.
While we’re on the subject or horses, did you know that blonde
and beautiful Nicollette Sheridan adopts retired
racehorses and is a dedicated advocate for the humane treatment of
them once they’ve
quit racing? The Desperate Housewives star is interviewed
in Show
Circuit, the Magazine of Equestrian Lifestyles and
speaks on the subject. We saw a copy of the magazine on the coffee
table at Templeton,
the Long Island estate of our friend Cornelia Guest where
we are staying while in New York. Now, it seems that Madonna is doing
the
same thing — adopting over-the-hill thoroughbreds and letting
them run free on the grounds of her 1200 acre estate. |
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