Quick-Change Artist
July 26, 2010 | Talk of the Town
At Jamaica station on Track 8, the woman waiting next to me as the Montauk train clanged in wore a black dress, understated gold flip-flops and a gold belt. Her long hair fell in a dowdy Jane Hathaway look, and her brown Louis Vuitton bag appeared large enough to carry an air dog. “Banker,” I thought.
After the scuffle for seats, I ended up—not by choice—on a fold-down bench by the sliding door of the W.C. (Thanks, L.I.R.R.) A green light indicated that it was “occupied,” and it remained so. I lost myself in e-mails. When the door finally opened, I faced a ravishing beauty in a belted, nearly DayGlo orange Chanel dress, her raven tresses blown out into a serious dinner coif. At the end of long, attractive legs were gold flip-flops. And then I noticed the Vuitton bag. It was the woman from the platform! She’d used the Vuitton as a Mary Poppins-style carry-on to pull off the day-to-night transformation that is the watchword of Project Runway. Brava.
Shout Out to the Weekend
Saturday, at the Mercedes-Benz Polo Challenge at the Bridgehampton Polo Club, I ran into Scott Disick. (I recall when the East Hampton club kid was PR guru Jonathan Cheban’s sidekick.) Disick used to teach me how to do the latest rap handshakes. Maybe five years ago, I ran into him on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. He and Rod Stewart’s lanky, tattooed son picked me up in an SUV with throbbing music. We did the snap and pop handshake, and they gave me a ride to the Mondrian.
So on Blue Star Jets Field during the opening of polo, Disick wore a white jacket, pink pants, a blue-and-white gingham shirt and a bright-blue paisley pocket square that looked to be Etro. He puffed on a cigarette at Kourtney Kardashian’s side. I had noticed him on the cover of Us magazine that week with a headline that read something like “Scott’s a Monster.” The three of us laughed about it. The couple recently had a baby named Mason. (Disick’s parents were watching the tyke while the young couple attended polo.) His dad used to be a successful garmento. But Disick now has the look of a movie star—like a young Robert Evans, who also happened to hail from the garment district. Hilarious.
Friday night, I ran into Caroline and Dina Manzo at Lily Pond. A newly slenderized Caroline wore a black cocktail dress and a single gold cuff. Love her. Dina sparkled in flowing hippie garb. The next time I saw them, they were in the big tent at polo. Dina had on Theory. “I’ve sweated off, like, 50 pounds today,” announced Caroline, in pants.
Chrissy Teigen, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit-issue model and current gal pal of John Legend, also did a total makeover on Saturday. According to Jeff Goldstein, owner of Blue & Cream, the elegant couple stopped by the store and Goldstein dressed her for Russell Simmons’ Art for Life benefit in a flowing white dress from the Blue & Cream VIP summer stock. At the party, Swizz Beatz wore a slim-cut white suit. Maxwell arrived with Selita Ebanks, both in head-to-toe white. She had on a fluffy Marchesa number, and mentioned that she nearly had to change at the last moment when she sat on something colorful. She reported that Shout wipes literally saved her back end.
Dispatches then raced to Watermill to catch Sharon Stone, also in white, at the mike auctioning off an evening with Rufus Wainwright. At one point she started dancing in spasms. “A bug flew up my dress,” she explained. “This is a little awkward… for the bug.” Shades of Basic Instinct.
After years at AmFAR, Stone can really hawk auction items. She turned over the evening with Wainwright twice. She also sat on Jay McInerney’s lap.
Some ladies had trouble negotiating the long hike to their cars in heels. “Have you seen Rick?” Kathy Hilton asked me. My dear pal Debbie Bancroft—who was recently in a boot cast—grumbled about all the gravel while she waited for her car with Marisa Berenson. Call me nuts, but Barry Lyndon is still one of my all-time favorite films.
Shipwrecked
By the way, as Dispatches mentioned last week, residents of North Main Street in East Hampton are currently battling John P. Lycke and the East Hampton town planning board over a possible convenience store. Well, just yesterday, I learned how the ancestor of my late neighbor, Sherrill Foster, who originally enlisted me into the politics of North Main, came to East Hampton.
Sherrill Farm spans North Main and some of Springs Fireplace Road. I was writing a letter to the editor of The East Hampton Star about my late, beloved comrade and mentioned that her family had lived in East Hampton since the 1700s. Another neighbor, the famed photographer Michael Mella, corrected me by e-mail: “Samuel Sherrill was shipwrecked on the shores of East Hampton circa 1639.”
Imagine the pristine Garden of Eden: no Shout wipes, no 7/11s… no reality TV stars.
BY JEFFREY SLONIM
