It is Fashion Week in New York, as anyone who is remotely interested in fashion knows. Besides the shows, the hoopla, the celebrities, the models, the music, yesterday at the Lincoln Center show of designer Joanne Mastroanni, Zelda Kaplan, the 95-year New York fashion icon, nightlife aficionado, philanthropist noted for her humanitarian efforts in Africa, and friend to many, passed out in her chair as the models were starting their walk down the runway. Zelda was carried out of the tent by security and CPR was performed while they waited for a hospital ambulance. It was too late; Zelda had departed forever.
I went to Zelda’s 94th birthday in June 2010 (NYSD 6.25.10 [1]) in the upstairs clubroom at Orsay, the restaurant on 75th and Lexington Avenue given by a small group of friends – Kerry Ingvarsson, Jake Bright and Mia Morgan, all of whom were at least half, a third or a quarter her age. They sold tickets which benefited “Keep A Child Alive.” The place was packed. There was a DJ and lots of champagne and Zelda was in her glory taking it all in. She was just a girl who liked people, liked going out and living life to the fullest. Born on June 20, 1917 on a farm in Flemington, New Jersey, one of four girls (Zelda was the oldest). I remember asking her what 94 felt like. “34” was her quick reply. She felt most at home with the thirty-somethings, although she first came to the city to live when she was 44. She just kept getting younger and younger until she’d had enough, exiting from a place that was like an old stomping ground for her – the fashion runway.
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| Rob Grimshaw, Managing Director of FT.com, Reed Phillips, Co-Founder and Managing Partner, DeSilva+Phillips Investment Bank and Andrew Heyward, Senior Advisor, Marketspace. |
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I started out the night at the UN Plaza apartment of FT US editor Gillian Tett who was hosting a cocktail reception for Rob Grimshaw, the new Managing Director of FT.com. Mr. Grimshaw who hails from London will be living in New York full time for the first time in his life.
There was a good crowd when I arrived just after 7. UN Plaza apartments have magnificent views of the UN, the East River as well as midtown Manhattan. I chatted briefly with the new man. The FT is my favorite newspaper in the world these days. The Weekend edition is, in my humble opinion, the most interesting weekend journal with wonderful writers and always an excellent interview (FT Lunch) with all kinds of people. They also seem to be staffed with gracious friendly journalists and executives. I’ve seen evidence of this again and again. I remark on it because it does seem an unusually pleasant and unique attitude for people who are acknowledged to be some of the best journalists in the business.
From the UN Plaza I caught a cab to go up to Fifth Avenue in the 80s where Diahn and Tom McGrath were hosting a PEN Authors’ Evening dinner at their apartment with the honored guest being Dick Cavett. Cavett’s “Talk Show,” originally published in hardcover by Times Books, has recently been issued in paperback by St. Martin’s Press.
These PEN dinners which take place at this time of year, are fund-raisers and fun for the guests as they get to break bread with some of the most interesting writers here (mainly) in New York. Cavett, who started out in the television talk show business as a kid working for Jack Paar on the original Tonight Show (Paar broadcast from the NBC Studios in New York) in the early 1960s. In the late 60s, he got his own talk show, and although talk shows have become an art form as commonplace and ordinary as gum chewing, the Dick Cavett Show had an intelligence quotient that proved you could have popular guests (writers, actors, etc.) and be not only amusing (even hilarious) but really really interesting.
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