Fuh-reezing
in New York last night. Winter’s here, a week early.
A
car in the holiday spirit on
Madison Avenue.
8:10 PM. Photo: JH.
At Janna Bullock’s house, a mansion on East
67th Street between
Fifth and Madison avenues, Jamee
Gregory, Amanda Hearst, Mai Harrison,
Cece Cord, Audrey Gruss, Luigi Tadini, Frances Hayward, Sharon
Bush, and R. Couri Hay hosted a “Holiday
Musicale” Open
House from 6 to 10 pm. (attire: “Haute Couture & Bijoux” — not
quite) for the Russian National Orchestra. Festivities for the
RNO’s 15th anniversary began in London earlier this year
and continued with events in Moscow and St. Petersburg in October.
In March 2006, the celebration comes to the United States and
New York at the St. Regis.
Chestnuts
roasting by an open fire at Ms. Bullock's
Ms. Bullock’s is a big old house that may not actually be
her residence although one day it will be someone’s residence.
(She also owned the house where Couri Hay gave a Halloween
party a few weeks ago). I was told that for many years the
house had
been converted into nine apartments. Most recently it was the
venue for the French Showhouse where a number of prominent
decorators came in and did their thing. They also gussied the
place up from
its former multi-residential self.
The rooms are enormous. The ceilings are fourteen
or sixteen feet and there is a lot of wainscoting and wood paneling
that has a
late Victorian flavor to it. There are working fireplaces in
almost every room which were working thankfully because when
we arrived,
the ground floor entry was very cold.
One flight up the fireplaces were a-roaring and bars and buffet
tables were set up and a-raring to go. On the third floor in the
front room, little gold party chairs had been set up in several
rows facing a grand piano. A concert had been scheduled with the
violinist Mikhail Simonyan.
Mr. Simonyan, who was born in Novosibirsk, Russia, the son of Russian
and Armenian parents, began to study the violin at five. In 1999,
at age thirteen he made his New York debut at Lincoln with the
American Russian Young Artists Orchestra (ARYO) and, with the same
orchestra, he made his debut at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.
Click
to order
He started his professional career in this country studying at
the Curtis Institute of Music with Victor Danchenko and with
Pinchas Zukerman at the National Institute of Music in Canada.
In 2001
he made his official debut with Leonard Slatkin at the 35th anniversary
of the Kennedy Center in 2001. The following year he performed
again with Maestro Slatkin conducting at Wolf Trap. Since
then he’s performed a number of times in the USA under Valery
Gergiev with the Kirov Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Symphony,
the Boston Pops as well as a highly acclaimed solo recital debut
at
Kennedy Center.
I knew none of this last night while watching Mr. Simonyan
perform. I didn’t even know he was only twenty. His presence
and bearing and command of his instrument belied a late adolescent
age. Although he had the physical power of youth he also had
the assuredness of maturity in his performance. The guests
sat
rapt
in the dark golden light of the room lit only by a small chandelier
and a half dozen sconces and warmed by the fire, the smoke
of which gave the place a homey coziness. For a moment there
I could
imagine
a late 19th century drawing room in Moscow or St. Petersburg
while Mr. Simonyan played some Tchaikovsky for us.
A drawing room at
9 East 67th
After
the performance I chatted with several of the guests while JH and the Digital took
in the atmosphere. I saw Jackie Rogers who told me her shop on
Lexington Avenue between 73rd and 74th Streets is doing fantastic
business and she’s taken the floor above (which used to be
a skating rink) and installed her workshops. Jackie learned her
skills as a designer from the great Coco Chanel herself for whom
Jackie originally worked as a model when as a very young woman.
Although I didn’t see all the hosts, I did see Mai Harrison who
was with
John Punnett, Charlie and Bonnie Evans, Cece Cord, Yung Hee, Sharon Bush
with
Gerry Tsai, Jamee and Peter Gregory, Daisy and Paul Soros, Edythe
Holbrook (mentor of Mikhail Simonyan), Armand Assante with
his daughters Alessandra
and Anya, Dejuan Stroud, Michèle Gerber Klein, Michel
Witmer, Coco and Arie Kopelman, Bentley Meeker, Harriette Rose Katz, Prince Dimitri
of Yugoslavia,
Anne Hearst and Jay McInerney, Denise Rich, Christine Schott, Christopher Mason,
Denise and Larry Wohl, Heather Cohane, Janis and Charles Cecil, Melissa Berkelhammer,
Felicia Taylor, Dr. Howard Sobel, Somers Farkas, Susan Burke, Richard Johnson
and Sessa von Richthofen, Lauren Thierry Watkins, Barbara de Portago, Alexia
Hamm Ryan, Sylvia Miles, Jill Brooke and Gary Goldstein, Sal Strazullo, Sharon
Hoge, Mallory and Roy Kean, Anand Jon, Annie Churchill, Maggie Norris, Emma
Snowdon Jones, and Alice
Judelson who was wearing a brooch she picked up in Paris on the Left
Bank that had been
designed by Elsa Schiaparelli. “Schiap” as she was
known was a great rival of the great Coco not only with her couture but also
her perfumes. She
has a granddaughter living here in New York who achieved her own fashion fame:
Marisa Berenson.
Mikhail
Simonyan at work and at play
Alice
Judelson
Alice
Judelson's Elsa
Schiaparelli brooch
Andrew
Black and John Auerbach
Sylvia
Miles
Jackie
Rogers and DPC
Sharon
Hoge
Richard
Johnson
and Sessa von Richthofen
Charles
Cecil and Cece
Cord
Janna
Bullock and Marcia Levine
Michel
Witmer and Zoe Bullock
Roger
Webster and Joseph Lee
Heather
Cohane and Barbara de Portago
Cece
Cord and Mai Harrison
Denise
Rich
April
Gow, Edythe
Holbrook, and
Roddy Gow
Janis
Gardner Cecil, Christine Schott, and Amy Rosi
Cece,
Couri, and Denise pose for the lens
Background
music
From
the concert, I went around the block and up the avenue to Donna
Karan’s
boutique where the designer was hosting a party with Jay Johnson, Sandra
Brant, Bob Colacello, Arthur Dunnam, Tom Cashin and Temo Callahan in celebration of
Jed Johnson’s work and the publication of Jed Johnson: Opulent
Restraint (Rizzoli New York).
Sandra
Brant, Donna
Karan, and Ingrid
Sischy
We covered the publication of the book when Barbaralee
and Carl Spielvogel gave a party for Jay, the twin brother of the late interior designer who lost
his life in the Flight 800 tragedy over Long Island several years ago.
There is a great lingering Andy Warhol influence in this
crowd. Bob Colacello took his first steps in the media celebrity
firmament as a/d/c and editor for
Andy. The Johnson twins were prominent members of Andy’s Factory gang.
Indeed, Sandra Brant and her partner Ingrid Sischy own and run Warhol’s
creation Interview Magazine which set the tone for popular culture
magazines.
Karan’s large and elegant shop was beautifully decorated
for the holiday season with a large Christmas tree covered
in white lights and lots of red
garments on the mannequins. The atmosphere around the designer is always
comfortable and even casual. Despite her huge financial success
(she sold her company a
few years ago to LVMH for close to a half billion) and great fashion influence
as a designer, she remains her friendly effervescent self. Maybe not a first,
but a rarity.
In the crowd: Allison Sarofim, Ann Dexter Jones, Doug Hannant and Fred Anderson,
Somers Farkas, Alva Chinn, Carlos Souza, Sandy Gallin Patty Raynes, Margaret
Russell, Francisco Costa, Douglas Baxter, Dana Hammond, Geoffrey Bradfield,
Brad Gooch, Keith Scott, Andrea Stark.
Two
views of the Donna Karan Christmas tree
L.
to r.: Man in the hat; Philip Gorrivan and friends;
Diana Broderick.
Sonja
Mattal and her friend George
Jay
Johnson, Tom Cashin, and Temo Callahan
Keith
Scott and Miguel Pons
It’s
that time of the year when we get out our new calendars for
the next one. Every year I receive more than one from thoughtful
friends and last year I quite serendipitously picked up one called
The
Writers Desk by Jill Krementz. I chose it for use just
because it was there and because I know Jill. I didn’t
immediately see what a beautiful treasure trove it was/is.
Her calendar features not only the basic necessities for keeping schedules, awareness
of holidays and important annual events, as well important minutiae such as World
Time Differences, National and International Dialing Codes, Weights and Measures
but most compellingly: portraits and thoughts of writers Jill knows and/or has
known.
This year’s
list of portraits and their thoughts interspersed between the weeks
is composed of: André Aciman, Edward Albee, Saul Bellow,
Veronica Chambers,
John Cheever, Billy Collins, Edward Gorey, Stephen King, Stanley Kunitz, Tony
Kushner, Arthur Miller, Toni Morrison, Joyce Carol Oates, George Plimpton, Katherine
Anne Porter, Sonia Sanchez, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Susan Sontag, Amy Tan, John
Updike, Kurt Vonegut, Eudora Welty, Dorothy West, E.B. White, Thornton Wilder,
and Tom Wolfe.
Jill is, of course, the distinguished photographer who began her professional
career on the staff of the late lamented New York Herald-Tribune in
its last
glory days when that great American scion and capitalist Jock Whitney, the
consummate
gentleman owned it and set a good example (remember “set a good example”?).
Its pages were snappy and enlivened by the young Jimmy Breslin, Dick
Schaap, as well as Walter Kerr (as drama critic), and Eugenia
Sheppard writing fashion.
The Trib was the “Republican” morning paper (versus the Times being
the Democrats’ paper). How times have changed.
The wonderful Herald-Tribune,sophisticated,
smart, cosmopolitan would no doubt be considered left-wing according to our currently
bleated and doltish notions of what’s what and who’s
what.
Jill’s works have also graced the pages of NYSD at times. Writers have
always been of a special interest to this photographer. Indeed, she is married
to one of the greats – Kurt Vonnegut.
So not only did she do portraits but she added their words to this calendar.
Some are a sentence or a paragraph; some offer a few:
Eudora Welty’s is short and concise: “A sheltered life can
be a daring
life as well, for all serious daring starts from within.”
Or Saul Bellow: “I feel that art has something to do with the achievement
of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer took,
and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest
of attention in the midst of distraction.”
Or that great novelist, professor and proponent of Proustian lore, Andre Aciman: “I
like to write in the subway. In a subway car I am surrounded by so much noise,
so many distractions, and the place is so seemingly unfavorable to meditation
that I couldn’t possibly write anything serious there. And yet it is precisely
because nothing I jot down in the subway car can ever really “count” that
I find myself coming up with ideas and trying out connections I wouldn’t
have dared make at my desk, and that if these thrill me now it is because they
are so different, so unusual, and always so new. The subway is where I go to
speculate about things I normally never think about, perhaps because it is in
transit that I come closer to what I feel, the way it is in writing, more than
in just living, that I come closer to who I really am. It is by being elsewhere
that we find our self, and it is when we’re most absent that we find we
may have come home indeed.”
André
Aciman
Dorothy
West
Edward
Gorey
Eudora
Welty
George
Plimpton
The
Writer's Desk by Jill Krementz. Click
image to order.
Barnes
and Noble carries Jill’s Writer’s
Desk diary exclusively.
It’s already sold out in their 53rd Street store and at the Lincoln Center
store, but you can still find it at other Barnes and Noble’s and online.
It’s a beauty.
And
for those who were curious about the gingerbread house we photographed
Sunday night at Bill Reilly’s holiday party, I got
this very interesting email yesterday afternoon from a man
named Randall Gianopulos:
Hello David,
I was so excited to see the picture of the Reilly's gingerbread townhouse on
your website. I thought maybe you'd like the little story behind its existence.
Bill
Reilly's gingerbread house
My wife
Eleni, of Eleni's NYC was asked by the Food
Network's show Sugarush to make a gingerbread house for their Holiday show.
Although gingerbread houses aren't our specialty, Eleni decided to find a really
beautiful house to fabricate. We moved to the Sutton area about a year ago
and often walk our dog by the Reilly house, so Eleni decided that it should
be the house she would replicate.
When the show taped, Eleni drove the film crew by the original and they panned
the mansion. One of the staff came out and Eleni, gave them a business card,
explained the story and said she would like to give them the house after the
Xmas season. Not sure if any of this reaches Mr. Reilly.
A week later we were having dinner with our friend Webb and Eleni was telling
her about the show etc. and turns out that Webb knows Tony Reilly, Bill's son.
Also, turns out we have another friend who knows Tony and that is how we found
out about the party and decided to give it to them early. So, since it's the
busy Season and Eleni couldn't spare any help, I was given the job of driving
the cake from the Chelsea store up to the Reilly's on Sunday afternoon. The
house lost some bricks and grills along the way but was fairly well intact
when it arrived. Dimming the lights probably helped as well.
Sounds like the party was a blast.
Sincerely,
Randall Gianopulos
My reply to Mr. Gianopulos:
Thank you for this. The only thing I have to say about Eleni is that I learned
of her business two weeks ago when Karen LeFrak sent me a holiday gift of a
dozen cupcakes. It was awful!!! I ate every one of them. I tried consume them
one at a time, once a day, once a night but then it got ugly and I just ate
them all. I was glad when they were gone, taking all temptation with them.
Terrible. I especially liked the devils food cupcakes. I think they were devilsfood.
What ever they were, the devil made me do it. Sugarush. I call it Sugarcrush.
