Parties and benefits
Tropical Chic Wave
The Watermill Center benefit defines glamour in the Hamptons. Underwritten by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, it brings together 700 of the richest, most influential, and most fabulously dressed arts patrons from this country and Europe to support a summer program that in turn brings together dozens of interns working in the arts and humanities under the leadership of Robert Wilson.
This year’s theme was Brazil, the dress code was “tropical chic,” and the outfits, as you would expect, hit the high notes of color and opulence. The look was florid and frilly but artistic. The installation art, done for the event, was elaborate and ingenious, conceived on a huge scale. Appearances truly reflected the substance of the Center, where the approach is extravagant but cultured—baroque in its proportions and ambitions.
We arrived early to help out and went on trash patrol. Our partner in picking up was no less than Robert Wilson. A reminder that it takes plenty of mundane work to be this gorgeous and grand, and to raise a million dollars in one night.
We slipped out of Watermill early enough to get to the EECO Farm Blue Moon Ball at the very un-farmyard-like oceanfront estate of Jim and Ellen Marcus. Sustainable agriculture is the goal, but the evening, chaired by Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook, and B. Smith and Dan Gasby, was not exactly a hoe down. Jacques Franey organized a group of celebrity chefs to come up with a Further Lane version of a barbeque. Ted Conklin was honored for getting the Slow Food movement started in the Hamptons and for hosting all those terrific Slow Food dinners at the American Hotel that make our winters a lot more fun. (If you don’t know about the organization, check out slowfoodusa.com)
We managed to find some time over a busy weekend to get to the Elaine Benson Gallery. As the first serious gallery in the Hamptons, it achieved legendary status during the lifetime of its founder, Elaine Benson. Now run by her daughter, Kimberly Goff, it continues to show the most exciting and original painting, sculpture and jewelry of area artists. Elaine Benson Gallery, 4317 Montauk Highway, Bridgehampton, (631) 537-3233 August 4, 2005
Dianne B, Redux
We love parties but we also love staying at home, and we managed to combine them last week by hosting a party under the stars on a beautiful, breezy evening. Nobody in the Hamptons needs an excuse for a party, but it was Dianne Benson’s birthday that got us jazzed. The dress code, at least for the women, was the posh and sumptuous look Benson created in the 1970s and 80s with Dianne B, her legendary fashion stores in Soho and on Madison Avenue.
We men were not quite as decorative, but we were nevertheless an interesting and creative group. Robert Wilson, in the middle of his season at the Watermill Center with interns in all the arts from all over the world, took the evening off to celebrate the Benson birthday. John Glover, of Smallville and currently starring in the Roundabout Theater’s smash hit, The Paris Letter, came for the party and the weekend.
Benson is now known for her lush gardens and her gardening books (Dirt was the last) and articles. Even with a few shots of Miracle Grow we couldn’t convince our Casablanca lilies to bloom in time for the party, but everything else was perfect. July 27, 2005
Golden Youth
Of all the breaks we’ve had this summer, the most convenient one has been the lack of traffic between East Hampton and Southampton at cocktail time on weekends. Is there a cocktail god on Mt Olympus watching over us? Whatever the reason, it’s enabled us to toot back and forth among the villages without the complicated planning and countdown usually reserved for Cape Canaveral.
Last weekend we glided right from the East Hampton Historical Society benefit, with actors dressed for a wedding from 1809, to Nina Griscom’s stylish house in Southampton, with actors quite undressed to promote a new line of skin care products called Hampton Sun, developed by Salvatore Piazzolla and Grant Wilfley, and sold in the Nina Griscom stores.
While Phoebe Mulford and her groom were appropriately modest for a two hundred year old ceremony, the suntanned, sculpted bodies around the Griscom pool revealed practically every perfect body part, with the tightest littlest speedos on the boys and briefest of bikinis on the girls. They circulated around spraying Hampton Sun samples, giving a sexy Hamptons twist to the New York department store custom of “spritzing.”
All that youthful flesh got a little help from Mark Zovine, who did the hair and makeup. We toyed with the idea of talking to him about a makeover but decided against it when we realized we did not have the same arm candy equipment as those kids, and we had probably waited a couple of decades too long anyway.
Some of our favorite foodies were there: Rosanna and Elena Scotto of Fresca, and Pamela Morgan, the food consultant whose August pot luck dinner in Bridgehampton gets all the top chefs in New York to head east. And some of our favorite friends like Tim and Helen Shifter, and the design team of John Dransfield and Goeffrey Ross.
Nina Griscom demonstrates a pitch perfect sense for blending commerce with hedonism, for making opulence just one of those everyday things. She makes even sun block seem sumptuous. Reality returned when all those dazzling young people put on some clothes at the end of the evening and headed back to their day jobs in the city as actors and models. And we headed back to East Hampton—with no traffic. July 19, 2005