A Royal Wednesday in New York

Looking south towards the Manhattan skyline from the Great Lawn in Central Park. 2:00 PM. Photo: JH.

"The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery - not over nature but of ourselves". — Rachel Carson

May 19, 2010. Overcast and cool, yesterday in New York, as if waiting for rain.

At Michael’s the place was jumping like a typical Wednesday. My friend Wendy Carduner, who runs Doubles, told me last night that New York was “buoyant” right now. By which she meant riding the wind. She said the place to see it in New York right now is the shoe salon at Saks. It’s a hub of buoyancy.

She said it beats even the most popular benefit galas. There’s an express elevator. It’s doing business like nobody’s business. Everyday. She suggested I go up and have a look because it’s what New York is right now. The energy. The buoyant.

Oh, she also said maybe not go on Saturday because then it’s a crusher.

Looking west towards the Hudson River. 11:00 AM. Photo: JH.

The verdant forest of Central Park as seen from the 66th Street transverse. 2:00 PM. Photo: DPC.

Michael’s was buoyant. Ralph Lauren came in looking gentleman farmer-ish. Horse farm that is. Thoroughbreds. His garb is Ralph Lauren in style but worn/broken in/used. Daily. He stopped at the table to say hello to my lunchdate. After he left she told me she’d just been to the new Ralph Lauren store in Paris, which has two restaurants. The restaurants are a huge hit in Paris, crowded even on Sundays. Ralph is also a connoisseur/designer of the art of culinary retail. An interpreter. A translater.

Back at Michael’s. In the bay, the Imber-della Femina-Kramer-Greenfield-Bergman gang were at table, and a photographer (from the NY Times, Dr. Imber later told me) was busily getting copious shots of the gang. The Times is doing a piece on the doctor and his book and presumably his distinguished and highly successful career.

Dr. Imber is always in suit and tie at these lunches while some of his cohorts even go jacket-less and almost all tie-less. But Imber’s style is so offhand that his suits almost seem like he wears them to relax. Dr. Imber is another one of those guys who tends to look gentleman farmer-ish even in town.

More Michael’s. Hoda Kotb was there. Silda Wall Spitzer who was lunching with Lisa Caputo whom the world once knew as First Lady Hillary Clinton’s assistant. Deborah Norville was there; Lois Chiles with Alexandra Trower; Esther Newberg; Norman Pearlstine; Charles Cohen and David Zinczenko; Fern Mallis and Peter Benedek; George Ledes; Harper’s Bazaar publisher and editor-in-chief lunching a deux – Valerie Salembier and Glenda Bailey, Gerry Byrne and Mike Scotti; Peter Brown; Jenna Bush Hager with NBC’s Elana Nachmanoff (Ms. Bush is now contributing to the Today Show.) Mickey Ateyeh was with Carlos Falchi, who is holding a sample sale next month with a portion of the sales going to Audubon. Carlos Falchi, I am told, is the designer of what are now the must-have handbags in New York. Must. They always need a good bag to go with those shoesies.

HRH Prince Edward, the Earl of Wessex talking to Paula Zahn and friends at Geoffrey Bradfield's last night.

Wendy Carduner.

At 5:30 international interior designer Geoffrey Bradfield was hosting a cocktail reception for HRH Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex at his townhouse in the East 60s. The Prince is in town to promote his father’s “The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award International Association.” The night before last there was a big dinner for him at the Core Club. Wyclef Jean entertained.

The English royals are without peer in the American sensibility. And when they are present, it is obvious. People want to talk to them. Or about them. When the Prince’s great-uncle, the Duke of Windsor, came to America in the 1920s as the then Prince of Wales, there was a popular song that was written about it: “I Danced With A Man Who Danced With the Girl Who Danced With the Prince of Wales.” Anything.

There were about a hundred congregated in the all-white room on the first floor that lets out onto large patio where a bar was set up. Geoffrey’s style is very polished. It shines but luxuriously. It is dramatically cool. The only real color in the room’s décor was a round lush mass of pink roses set on a large round white table, no doubt set out by his friend Helena Lehane. The waiters wore white coats and passed the glasses of champagne (or sparkling water) and hors d’oeuvres. There was a lot of end of the day cocktail chatting.

The color for the reception room last night.

The Prince arrived about ten of six and was immediately escorted upstairs to the living room where a number of guests were waiting to greet him. People were eager to say hello. I refrained for the simple reason that I had nothing to add or to ask that wouldn’t be said or asked by the many curious others. So I watched. Far more interesting.

Except for his thinning hair and balding, Edward Wessex continues to look like the youngest of the Queen’s children; very young for his age. His manner is diffident but very courteous. That’s where the “royal” figures into the picture. He is not charming; he is earnest and forthright. He does not exude self-confidence or savoir faire, but the royal prerogative is intrinsic nonetheless. You can feel it. You get the feeling he’s doing his job, and you’re watching him do it. He makes an effort that looks pleasant but serious in nature.

Prince Edward, Geoffrey Bradfield, the host, Christopher Hyland, and Sharon Handler.

Liliana Cavendish and Hunt Slonem.

For this writer, Edward’s most interesting to observe considering his conduct and bloodlines. The matter of being royal among us. That is the most interesting thing about any modern-day English royal – aside from his mother’s historically long reign -- their connection to the past. Our past. Our history, the memory of it all and how it’s evolved.

Because today the English royal’s job -- and it clearly is a job – (and it’s a living also) is to represent high ideals. Selling high ideals. That is what the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award International Association is about. It is a form of charity that rewards personal achievement in young people and young adults. It is a program of character development and self-reliance through volunteering, helping others, assisting and enlightening the self. To learn more about this great and noble humanitarian project, go to: www.intaward.org [1].

After watching the Prince and the guests for a few minutes, I went back downstairs and tried to get some shots of the women’s shoes, thinking about what Wendy Carduner had said. I was looking for clues. This turned out to be a conservative, if at times elegant collection of footwear choices. The women, really liked showing their shoes.

Looking for clues in the shoes ...

After a few minutes, the Prince was ushered back down to the ground floor where the rest of us were waiting happily with each other’s company. It was such a comfortable atmosphere, chic but laid back, so much an Upper East Side Manhattan scene, that it almost didn’t matter who was upstairs.

Many gathered around the prince and listened to him describe the work of his father’s award association. He still looked very young for his age. I was thinking about when he was a much younger, still a single man pursuing a career in show business; and how the public was given the impression that this pursuit didn’t go down well with papa.

Now it’s many years later. Papa is an old man, almost elderly. Son is father of a young family and a working royal representing history. That’s his job. That’s how he makes his living to support his family. Yes, it’s full of luxurious items and the trappings of wealth. But. You wonder how he feels about it all. You wonder how you would feel.
That’s what makes them the modern royals without peer in the American psyche.

Alice Mason.

Brian Stewart and Stephanie Krieger.

Richard and Renee Steinberg.

Michelle Paterson, Jill Fairchild, and Michele Lee Clarke-Ceres.

Louis Rose, Alexandra Lind Rose, and Frederick Anderson.

Emma Snowdon-Jones, Charlie Scheips, Caroline Bassett, and Mario Buatta.

Donna Solloway, Janna Bullock, and R. Couri Hay.

Lucia Hwong Gordon and Larry Kaiser.

Patricia Duff and Mark Gilbertson.

Leila and Henry Heller with Sue Chalom.

After the Prince’s speech, he departed quickly and without fanfare, and so did I and my friend and neighbor, Charlie Scheips. We went across the Park to Shun-Lee West where Patsy Tarr was giving a book launch for 2wiceBooks’ Mah Jongg.

Remember Mah Jongg. Today Mah Jongg is associated in the Jewish resorts in the Catskills of the last mid-century, where the ladies would wile away their weekends playing Mah Jongg. It was as Jewish in the Noo-Yawk lore as bagels and lox. It was a cultural marker, a memory (and in novels).

	[2]
	Patsy Tarr with a copy of Mah Jongg. Click to order [3].

Charlie, who has been working toward his Masters in 20th century American history at Columbia, told me on our way over, that Mah Jongg was a very popular game in this country at the beginning of the 20th century up through the 1920s when that popularity waned, except for its being taken up in the 1930s and 1940s by Jewish women who would play for money and contribute their earnings to the War Effort and the fight against Hitler. It was a charity event.

It was, Patsy Tarr told me last night, the first time Jewish women organized participation in philanthropy. Nevertheless, as Melissa Martens writes in Mah Jongg in a chapter called “The Game of a Thousand Wonders,” – “Long associated with vice and virtue, the game has played a role in everything from family gatherings to gambling halls, immigrant neighborhoods to resorts, crime scenes to charitable events and retirement villages to Hollywood.”

There was a pretty good crowd of prominent New Yorkers at Mrs. Tarr’s launch. The Shun Lee fare was being passed around and consumed in bulk by those of us who compulsively can’t resist really great Chinese in New York.

While I was consuming with consuming the frequent selections, someone pointed out to me that Mah Jongg is at once timely and historical: the back-and-forth of the Orient and the Occident; the oneness of today.

The ABC television show Lost comes to an end with its series finale this Sunday, and people are talking about it around town. The Vilcek Foundation, on 73rd Street between 3rd and Lexington Avenues, last night debuted an exhibit of props used on the show and original photographs of immigrant and first-generation cast and crew members. Established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia, the Foundation is devoted to promoting the contributions of immigrants to the sciences, arts, and culture in the United States.

Photographer Peter Hurley traveled to the Hawaii set of Lost to capture images of members of the production team, including Jorge Garcia ("Hurley"), Yunjin Kim ("Sim"), Nestor Campbell ("Richard"), Dominic Monaghan ("Charlie"), and Daniel Dae Kim ("Jin"). Besides the photographs, life-size props like the DHARMA Initiative van are now on view at the Vilcek Foundation through the close of the exhibition on June 5.

For more information, visit http://www.vilcek.org [4].

— SD for NYSD

Anne Schruth, Jan Vilcek, Rick Kinsel, Jorge Garcia, Elizabeth Marshall, and Joyce Li.

Jan Vilcek and Carlton Cuse.

Christiane Cuse and photographer Peter Hurley.

Marcia Vilcek and Zuzana Stivinova.

Roland Sanchez and Zuleikha Robinson.

Kiara Jones and Meghan Phadhe with the hydrogen bomb.

Yelitza Hurley, Lois Hurley, and Ronnie Cammarata.

Steven Cohen and young fans pose for a photo with Jorge Garcia.

The DHARMA Van.

DHARMA Initiative Food and Beverages.

Walt's Spanish-version Flash comic book.

Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 boarding passes.

Ben's "Dean Moriarty" Passports.

John Locke's suicide note.

The scene inside the Vilcek Foundation.

Outside the Vilcek Foundation.

Just a few blocks north of the Vilcek Foundation, Vital Voices hosted a dinner reception for mentors and mentees at a penthouse apartment on 75th Street. Hillary Clinton established Vital Voices when she was first lady, and the organization is now a non-profit with bipartisan support that seeks to identify and invest in extraordinary women around the world.

This is the fifth year that Vital Voices, along with Fortune magazine and the U.S. State Department, has hosted the Global Women's Mentoring Partnership. Last night's dinner was the capstone to a three-week visit to the U.S. for 33 businesswomen from 25 countries around the world. The women, from as far away as Afghanistan and Argentina, are chosen by the U.S. embassies in their respective countries and then matched up with mentors from among Fortune's Most Powerful Women. The idea is a "pay it forward" method of leadership: the businesswomen, rising talents in their home countries, learn business skills from America's top female thinkers and then return home and share their newfound knowledge.

Soprano Manon Strauss Evrard performs for the group.

Alice Kandell, the night's host and a lover of both opera and Tibetan art (most of her collection is now on view at the Smithsonian's Sackler Gallery in Washington), invited opera singers including soprano Manon Strauss Evrard to perform for the group.

Hassina Syed, a mentee and president/CEO of the Syed Group of Companies in Afghanistan, said the singing nearly brought her to tears. She recorded the performance and plans to show it to her friends and co-workers as a striking example of American culture and art when she gets back to her home country.

More information about Vital Voices is available here: http://vitalvoices.org [5].

-SD for NYSD

Alyse Nelson and Alice Kandell.

Lea Strauss Evrard, Manon Strauss Evrard, and Laura Strauss Evrard.

Lora Villarreal and Hassina Syed.

Pattie Sellers and Alice Kandell.

Peter Mark, Thea Musgrave, and David Hochberg.

Enter your email address below to subscribe to NYSD's newsletter. It's free!

Comments? Contact DPC here. [6]