Remember Fun? Here's a Short History of the Best Parties in Recent-ish Memory
Jay McInerney, novelist
One of the best parties I ever attended was a bash at George Plimpton’s townhouse on East 72nd Street. I’m guessing it was fall of ’83. For a grad student who’d just taken the train from Syracuse, it was nirvana—packed with famous writers, actors, and artists. George introduced me to William Styron, Gay Talese, and Robert Stone. I played pool with Plimpton and snorted coke with Truman Capote, who gave me writing advice and tried to hit on me.
Rick Miramontez, Broadway ringmaster
In the early years our after-hours Tony parties were confined to one glamorously large suite at the Carlyle Hotel. When we outgrew it, we started taking over the hotel’s public spaces, like Bemelmans Bar and the Café Carlyle. Every year the challenge is how to make the downstairs spaces as exciting and sexy as the suite. So when we were planning our 2018 party, I asked Andrew Lloyd Webber (a Tony recipient that night) if he’d be willing to DJ the Café. Andrew sometimes hosts these legendary music nights at his country estate, Sydmonton, for everyone from Queen Elizabeth to Dame Shirley Bassey. On wilder nights he’ll get behind the turntables and spin until all hours, so I knew he wasn’t a novice. He graciously agreed, and people went nuts for it! At one point he started playing the old Brian Hyland tune “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini,” and I saw Nathan Lane grab his Tony and Glenda Jackson by the arm and rush her to the dance floor, and I remember thinking, This is the greatest party ever!
Carolyne Roehm, decorator
Every bit of Malcolm Forbes’s 70th birthday in Morocco was memorable. We got to this hotel that had just been opened for the party, and there was no air conditioning. You wouldn’t believe it: You’d walk around the halls and see Barbara Walters, Bill Buckley, Gianni Agnelli, and we were all just perspiring! Henry [Kravis] went out to try to find some fans, and then we had this idea to get a big chunk of ice and put the fan against the ice—they do that in India, you know. I could tell this was going to be one of the best parties of my life, but, oh, the assortment of people you saw stripped almost down to their knickers because they were so hot!
Bob Colacello, journalist
The most extravagant party I’ve ever been to—and I’ve been to a few major ones—was Prince Johannes von Thurn und Taxis’s three-day 60th birthday bash in 1986 at his 500-room schloss in Regensburg, Bavaria. The theme was 18th-century. Princess Gloria wore one of Marie Antoinette’s tiaras, Alfred Taubman and John Gutfreund looked like dukes in their powdered wigs, and Lamia and Nabila Khashoggi’s gowns were so huge that they got stuck in a turn of the staircase and had to be wedged out by their bare-chested attendants. The weekend got off to a wild start with an afternoon cruise down the Danube, during which a birthday cake topped by 60 marzipan phalluses was wheeled out as Mick Jagger sang “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Politically correct it was not.
George Wayne, author
The most fabulous party ever? I don’t even have to ponder the question. In 1992 Barbara Davis and her L.A. billionaire husband Marvin threw the grandest charity gala in America, the Carousel Ball. I’ll never forget it, because it was my first time in the presence of a FLOTUS, and because I will always remember Nancy Reagan’s bemused expression when we caught sight of jeweler Kenneth Jay Lane literally fingering the caviar bowl for its very last egg.
Cameron Silver, founder of Decades
I don’t know if it was the pulsating music of Mark Ronson’s DJ set, the abundance of tequila, or the sweaty international art crowd gyrating under a tent in Mexico City at midnight, but Eugenio López’s Museo Jumex opening in 2013 is my pick for the greatest party ever. I wore a papier-maché devil mask on my forehead from the Frida Kahlo museum that never made it home with me. I may not have gone to Studio 54, but Eugenio made me feel as if Bianca Jagger could come in on a white horse at any moment.
Geordon Nicol and Leigh Lezark, DJs
When you’re in the business of parties, it’s difficult to choose just one, but one of the greatest of all time was when Madonna stopped by our party, the MisShapes at Luke & Leroy in the West Village [since closed]. It was 2005, smartphones weren’t everywhere, social media hadn’t ruined nightlife, and Madonna’s appearance was unannounced. She performed “Burning Up” and “Into the Groove” and DJ’d with her producer Stuart Price for a club with a capacity of less than 300. It was very personal, very old New York, and probably the closest we’ll ever get to Studio 54. Spontaneous moments like that are few and far between.
Bevy Smith, radio host
In 2012, I threw a dinner for Pharrell in the biggest bungalow at Chateau Marmont. It was the year he was doing the music for the Oscars, and the guest list was awesome: Cameron Diaz, Charlize Theron, Usher, Ellen Pompeo. During Oscar season there are so many parties, and there were even other parties happening at the Chateau that night. Chanel had a party that night, and there was another one for The Artist. André Balazs and Chelsea Handler came in and said, “This party is fun, we’re going to stay!” I told them they couldn’t, and Chelsea said, “He owns the joint,” and I had to tell her that he might, but it was rented to us for the night. They ended up coming in, but I didn’t have a seat for them at the table. What made it really beautiful was that people didn’t want to leave. Everyone came saying they’d probably have to go early, but they didn’t. It was such a great night.
Susan Gutfreund, decorator
For Valentino’s 45th anniversary in 2007, the festivities in Rome included two memorable nights of galas. The first was at the Temple of Venus, where we dined while acrobats performed above us and fireworks filled the sky. The second night was in the gardens of the Villa -Borghese, where we were serenaded by -Annie Lennox. It was an unbelievable mix of royalty and movie stars and all the great designers.
Joey Jalleo, events guru
It was 2010, and there hadn’t been an unofficial Met Ball afterparty since Bungalow 8 shuttered four years earlier. I got permission to open the Boom Boom Room at the Standard, where I was special projects director, and sent about 20 emails to friends who would be at the gala. I don’t know who said what to whom, but my phone quickly started blowing up. By midnight the room was too packed to move. I can’t name names, but I’ll tell you what I saw: sex in the bathroom, gowns getting trampled on the dance floor, and an A-list fight at the corner table overlooking the Hudson. Nights like that make you shudder—OMG, what have I done?!—but that’s not always a bad thing.
Maureen Dowd, columnist
Sue Mengers was a portal back to the fun, sexy, glamorous Holly-wood I loved. She would pull one of her “funny cigarettes” from a silver box and give a hilarious, sultry, vulgar, extremely un-PC performance for the “twinklies” she had gathered. The first woman to become the Man among Hollywood superagents was a genie who could summon up a breath-taking cascade of stars: Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, Angie Dickinson, Lorne Michaels, Tim Robbins, Tina Fey, Tom Ford. She often started with tales of stars she had slept with, just to get the ball rolling.
Susan Fales-Hill, writer/producer
In 2005, it was former U.S. ambassador to Denmark (and my father’s college roommate) John Loeb’s 75th birthday, and his now wife, Sharon, arranged a party at Blenheim Palace. We all met in front of Claridge’s in London, and these beautiful buses—almost Popemobiles—drove us, and as we arrived Handel’s Water Music started playing. We weren’t in horse-drawn carriages, but it felt close. After a four-course meal in the Long Library, we repaired to the Great Hall to dance the night away. It was a trip back to what Blenheim must have been in the days of Consuelo Vanderbilt, when it was the site of extraordinary parties. The next morning there was a brunch at the home of the Earl of Dartmouth—a great treat, especially for those who might have been just a bit hungover.
Nell Campbell, actress and club owner
The Nell’s years—so ripe with adventure. Stars were careful about behaving wickedly in public, so all that was reserved for my office. Stevie Wonder drank Dom with orange juice, and Peter Beard was surrounded by young women.
Tama Janowitz, literary it girl
The most magical party I’ve ever been to was in 1987, when Andy Warhol died, and it was like a star, a part of the city, just vanishing or exploding. Crowds gathered in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral for his memorial, ogling the celebrities who were dressed for the Oscars. You might have been at the funeral of Maria Callas or Anna Magnani, there was such a sense of glamour. After the memorial, Andy’s closest friend, Paige Powell, and his business associate Fred Hughes organized a party held at Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe, a nightclub long out of existence. I think it dated back to the 1940s, and it was virtually unchanged. You went down a sweeping circular staircase leading underground, and you could have been on a movie set with an aura of decayed glamour from an earlier era of Manhattan. The people inside were the most recognizable on the planet: pop stars, royalty, the fabulously wealthy, movie stars, politicians. You couldn’t believe you were in a room with all these people all at the same time—it made no sense. But all of them were friends with this modest man who wore a white wig because he was embarrassed about being bald.
Anna Shay, star of Bling Empire:
I always like to say thank you to the designers who send me invitations during Paris Fashion Week. People will say if you spend so much, you get an invitation, but anyone can spend money; for me it’s about thinking about the designers as artists. So, every time I’m in Paris for Fashion Week, I have an amazing dinner—if I do say so myself—to thank them. I always try to find someplace different. One time, we did it at a house that was converted into a restaurant, so each room was different. It turns out, it had been a brothel! At first I thought no, we can’t possibly but then I decided, how fun! The people we have for dinner aren’t stuffy; we just have a good time.
A lot of people didn’t know, even the French. There was a mirror in every room, and you could see all of these scratches on them. I was wondering why they didn’t just replace the mirrors but was told it was part of the restaurant; the men would give the women who worked there gifts, sometimes diamonds, so they’d scratch the mirrors to make sure they were real.
April Hunt, DJ
One of the best parties is ironically the last that I deejayed IRL, days before NYC went into quarantine. It was a freezing downtown night during Armory Week, in celebration of the artist Nate Lewis’ first solo show at Fridman Gallery on Bowery. It was one of those parties where the energy was so right. Everyone was dancing. Derrick Adams, Darío Calmese, and my girlfriend were battling it out on the dance floor as I played Zebra Katz and Baltimore club. You could feel the bass.
We had a surprise performance by the amazing London-based vocalist Cosima that took everyone’s breath away. I believe that was her first performance of that scale in NY. As she was performing, there was this collector standing next to me by the DJ booth while I was holding one of her Pomeranian puppies. The pups were in Gucci regalia just like her—only in New York. The magic in that room was palpable, from Nate’s soulful drawings that surrounded us to everyone’s free-spirited energy. It’s as if we knew this would be our last hoorah (in this way) for quite some time. The cherry on top, for me, was that my girlfriend proposed to me that same night.”
Andy Warhol
Wednesday, April 13, 1977: I was going up for cocktails and then dinner for Jean Stein at her sister Susan Shiva’s apartment in the Dakota. I thought it couldn’t be anything great, so I was 45 minutes late. The first person I saw when I walked in the door was Jackie O., looking beautiful. Then Norman Mailer…
Sue Mengers was there, and she came over to me and said her knees were buckling, that she’d never been to a party like this. Babe Paley and her chairman-of-CBS husband went by, and later when I saw Sue and Paley sitting together I remembered that Sue had told me in California that the only job she ever wanted was Paley’s…
Renata Adler, who writes for the New Yorker, was there with Avedon. She said she’s going to law school now at Yale, but she thinks she’ll maybe drop out. She says it’s so hard, and that she can’t remember anything. I had the first really nice talk with Jackie O., but I don’t remember too much what it was about. Dennis Hopper told me he’s directing Junkie, the William Burroughs bio, and I made a faux pas by telling him he should use Mick for the star because then Dennis said that he was the star.—From The Andy Warhol Diaries
A version of this story appears in the April 2021 issue of Town & Country.
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