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Mrs.Octavio Prochet, left, and Mrs. Sheldon Whitehouse, center, at the Society Benefit Ball at the Vanderbilt mansion, August 1959. Debutantes and their escorts fill the floor of the Astor Hotel ballroom for the 1964 International Debutante Ball. Film director Sidney Lumet and his wife, Gloria Vanderbilt, arrive at the 1962 Cannes International Film Festival. The new guard: socialites Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, Marina Rust Connor, and Lauren du Pont attended the Tango and Tapas Gala at The Frick Collection in New York in April 2006. |
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"To be in it is merely a bore. But to be out of it is simply a tragedy."
—Oscar Wilde
I am often told that "American high society" is an oxymoron, either by those who hold the quaint, bien-pensant belief that the United States is a classless society in which opportunity is open to all or by Europeans who believe themselves to be superior and look down pejoratively upon the social aspirations of a country that is younger than many families, social clubs, educational establishments, and even socks in the Old World.
Of course, America does have its high society, and to pretend otherwise is simply fatuous. To quote the great sage and Society figure Oscar Wilde, "Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals." It is those individuals—from the irascible Peter Stuyvesant to John Jacob Astor to Consuelo Vanderbilt to the very many men and women who comprise Society today—who have made the pageant of American Society so entertaining and engrossing.
Society novelist Marina Rust ascribes the phenomenon, at least in part, to that secular saint Oprah Winfrey and her colleagues, who started the national conversation on emotional health, family dynamics, spirituality, and giving back. In 1993, Rust, herself a scion of the Marshall Field dynasty, published Gatherings, a novel that anatomized the emotional bankruptcy of a patrician family. "The action in Rust’s deftly written first novel centers around Meredith, a wealthy young woman who is trying to overcome a childhood spent in a dysfunctional family plagued by drug addiction, alcoholism, and insanity," commented Library Journal at the time. The novel mixes privilege with an almost Poe-like sense of ancestral doom. "Haunted by the untimely death of her mother, who deserted Meredith and her father, she shuttles between a South Carolina plantation and a Maine vacation home owned by her mother’s family. She must in turn deal with her cousin Felicity and Felicity’s brother Pearce, who have their own demons to conquer, including their uncle’s mysterious suicide."
The way Rust sees it, in addition to money, the patriarchs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often bequeathed their heirs a sense of unease and unfulfillment. "One has to remember that when you look at the wonderful pictures of people like Slim Keith, a lot of those people were not very happy," she says. "In the 1940s and ’50s, there were fewer choices for women, and men were not expected to work so hard. The leisure became a burden. Even the lifestyle that was still enjoyed during the seventies and eighties was about excess all around them. It caused confusion and unhappiness."
As befits a novelist, Rust’s view of Society is tinged with a certain romanticism. "I think of American high society as wonderful pictures from fifty, sixty, or seventy years ago. Today it is no longer only about being there that day at the races or at that wedding—it is about supporting Robin Hood [a charity that combats poverty in New York City] or developing a foundation. Society is different, and there is a different kind of do-goodism," she says.
But whatever the guise, the philanthropic impulse has long been a motor of Society, whether it was the Carnegies or Rockefellers trying to "give something back" and assuage some of the guilt that might have lingered about the way their fortunes were made, by positioning themselves as saviors rather than exploiters, or today’s charity circuit, where much good is most certainly done and where considerable importance is attached to getting one’s name on the sought-after invitation lists or sitting on the "right" boards.
Rust is realistic enough to realize that the world in which her parents grew up is gone. "Today’s values have changed for the better," she says, adding with the slightest hint of longing, "but the old photographs look fabulous."
And so, as those old photographs fade gracefully from view, the constantly self-renewing pageant of American Society continues.
The turn of the century has seen new faces arrive on the social scene, people such as Chris Burch, whose ex-wife Tory’s eponymous fashion business has made a definite social impact. Indeed, it can be argued that wealth creation has become a quasi–leisure activity and is certainly more competitive than most sports. In a sense, this has always been true of American Society. The difference is that it is now socially acceptable to be a player in this most high-stakes of sports. In earlier stages of the development of American Society, women exerted great influence but it was the men who made the money; it was considered infra dig in the extreme for women to work. Thorstein Veblen articulated this position in 1899, at the height of the Gilded Age in The Theory of the Leisure Class. "In modern communities," Veblen wrote, "which have reached the higher levels of industrial development, the upper leisure class has accumulated so great a mass of wealth as to place its women above all imputation of vulgarly productive labor."
It has taken almost a hundred years for the status of working women in Society—as distinct, of course, from working-class women who have to work to live—to move from the position in Mrs. Astor’s day, when it was considered the height of daring for a Society woman to open a tea-room, through the period when women dominated such professions as interior decorating and became magazine journalists and authors, to the position today, when it is considered desirable and a mark of distinction to be successful in business.
One striking example of this shift in values is embodied by Ivanka Trump. A century ago, a young woman from a wealthy American family would have been schooled in the self-consciously feminine arts of graceful entertaining. She would have been presented to Society as a groomed and decorous potential spouse at her debutante ball, and her father might have aimed to boost the family’s cachet by marrying her off to a titled, if penniless, European. If she were really headstrong, she might have been allowed to take up riding or go into interior decorating. However, young Ms. Trump enjoyed her coming out not at a debutante ball but in Born Rich, a 2003 documentary directed and co-produced by the Johnson & Johnson heir Jamie Johnson, that follows ten young adults, including a Vanderbilt, who grew up in elite families. Trump came out in the (very extensive) press coverage of the film as well adjusted, hardworking, and values oriented, while managing to demonstrate much of her father’s shrewdness, if not his reputation for excess and vulgarity.
And as ever, the glittering game of social mobility is played out across New York City at countless exhibition openings, charity galas, private dinners, and, of course, restaurants. Whether it is a party hosted at Soho House or a table at Swifty’s, the restaurant remains a social fulcrum.
Much like the opera used to be in the old days—a must-do even if you hated it—so the restaurant is today. Restaurant impresarios bring in new "acts" with which to impress Society, and the chefs themselves enjoy the level of fame associated with pop stars and major contemporary artists. Certainly, restaurant openings now generate as much interest as the people who go to them. When Alain Ducasse opened his eponymous restaurant in New York in 2000, there was such a degree of hostility that Nina Zagat and her husband, Tim, wrote an op-ed piece for The Wall Street Journal urging a more open-minded approach. Ducasse weathered the storm of opprobrium and the notoriety that it generated.
Meanwhile downtown, Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, has woven an almost speakeasy-like veil of mystery around the Waverly Inn & Garden, which has emerged as the heir to the tradition of restaurant as social fulcrum that has included, among others, Delmonico’s, Sherry’s, "21," and Le Côte Basque.
"Not all of the rumors one hears about the Waverly Inn & Garden are entirely true," explains Jonathan Kelly, the executive assistant to Carter. Kelly, who has worked at the restaurant since its inception, serving as Carter’s "seating deputy," says, "The Waverly does have a telephone number. However, the phone does not work." But there is a line that does. "The fun begins each night at 5 p.m., when the secret reservation line closes, and the guest list for the evening is surveyed. The register usually reads like the unfolding of a Sunday newspaper. First the local newsmakers, politicians, and the police chief; next, the media kingpins, statesmen, and behind-the-scenes boulevardiers; followed by actors, novelists, and directors; sportsmen, of course; then noted comedians and editorialists; then real estate moguls. Though the evening’s ledger is capped just after teatime, exceptions are made for certain Oscar-winning actresses, warmhearted tycoons, and fashion designers," says Kelly. Each evening is a work of art in itself, with Carter apparently going through revisions in three different colored pencils until the topography of the room is just right.
In his nightly table plans and in the monthly issues of Vanity Fair, Carter personifies a new generation of social blender. He mixes a hint of Hollywood with a soupçon of literature, a dash of fashion, a sprinkling of politics, a splash of old Society, garnished, of course, with the young and beautiful people of today and tomorrow.
It is Carter who, along with a small quorum of senior Vanity Fair editors, including Amy Fine Collins, superintends its Annual International Best-Dressed List. Continuing the work of its founder, Eleanor Lambert, the list is now carefully compiled using what Fine Collins describes as a mixture of "the popular vote and the electoral college. If you had to name a half-dozen boxes to check off to be considered a player or a leader in Society today," she says, "the Best-Dressed List would be one."
Listening to Fine Collins explain how the Best-Dressed List works, it is interesting to learn just how democratic such an exclusive grouping really is. "There is still a desire for quality, but we have to reflect what the world is around us. It is a mirror of the culture." Of Society in general she says, "Everything is more image driven now, and people believe in and aspire to what they can see, and that is where the fashion comes in."
Accordingly, say Fine Collins, a considerable portion of Society today finds itself at the "conjunction of the fashion and entertainment worlds with people with money. In New York Society, there is a strong tradition of charitable work, and that is driven by fund-raisers and big galas. To be involved in them, you have to spend the money for the ticket, the clothes, the jewelry . . . and the event becomes a showcase for the work of hairdressers and makeup artists, all of whom mix and mingle with the people that they are dressing." As we are having this conversation, Fine Collins is being made up for an evening gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
But Fine Collins is optimistic about the future of Society. The death of Society has been predicted so regularly—whether by the colonial patroons looking down on the English; by antebellum New Yorkers turning up their noses at the bouncers and shoddies; by Mary King Van Rensselaer in the twenties; or more recently, by the author Cleveland Amory, in his 1960 book Who Killed Society? Yet Society seems to endure.
Carter has coined the term "Espresso Society" to describe early-twenty-first-century Society. "With Brooke Astor gone, high society went too. Espresso Society, which is more international than café society, is in the ascendancy." Espresso Society is more rooted in profession and shared interest (like money) than in bloodline or where you live. It is a Rolodex of about a thousand names of people from the worlds of entertainment, art, technology, music, fashion, and publishing. They live in America, Britain, Europe, and Russia. And they all know one another. "Bloodline matters not at all, unless you happen to be a Rothschild," Carter says, adding wryly, "A big plane and a boat don’t hurt."
When asked who the people are who think they are in Society but are not, Carter’s answer is simple: "The people who pose for party photographs in local monthly magazines that think of themselves as chroniclers of Society." In the modern world, having a global perspective, along with money and drive, characterizes the leaders of Espresso Society.
The truth is that the United States is no longer a young country; it is a middle-aged nation with its own social codes and structures locked into its collective DNA. It has its prominent families, an untitled aristocracy, who exerted such a profound effect on the nation—or who have just been around for so long—that the doings of their descendants are still a source of interest. There is, of course, the plutocracy: men who made so much money that they simply paid to rise to the pinnacle of the social structure, building huge mansions and amassing art collections that remain among the most impressive the world has ever seen. And no country can compete with America when it comes to café society, whose luminaries are famous for . . . well . . . being famous.
Nick Foulkes is a British historian, author, and journalist. He has written books on subjects as diverse as James Bond to the Count d’Orsay, the subject of the biography Last Dandies. In addition to High Society, he is the author of The Carlyle, The Trench Book, Cigar Style, and Mikimoto, published by Assouline.
Photography Credits:
1. Yale Joel/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
2,3. © Bettmann/CORBIS
4. Mychal Watts/WireImage
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