“Wintering in Florida just doesn’t feel like Christmas,” a young lad in a velvet suit jacket gushed to his date, feasting his eyes upon the train display chugging through the New York Botanical Gardens.
The Gardens were filled Friday night for the annual Winter Wonderland Ball, with A-lister Anne Hathaway, fashion folk Timo Weiland and Dennis Basso and social swans Georgina Bloomberg, Ariana Rockefeller, Kick Kennedy and one Tinsley Mortimer, back on the scene after a five-year Palm Beach retreat.
“I’m a chairman with my friend Georgina Bloomberg and my friend Natalie Bloomingdale, so we kind of took over this year,” Rockefeller said.
For the holidays, she and her family are “going to Maine, which we always do. It’s so great. We drive, we have a little whole road trip. We always stop for a little lobster roll, and do some Christmas shopping, and go to L.L. Bean. The town where we go is really seasonal, so in the summer it’s like Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard, very hopping, but winter is so lovely because it’s so quiet. There are no other cars — it feels like a winter wonderland, it’s so cozy.”
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By New Years the family will be in Palm Beach, along with the rest of New York society. “It’s like tropical New York, in Palm Beach,” Rockefeller said. “It’s a migration.”
Hathaway, or “Annie,” as she introduced herself, was at the winter ball for the first time, accompanying her friend Justin Conner, a publicist behind the evening. “This whole thing is unicorn colored,” she said, looking around the wintery pastel tent. “I have to give mad props to the speakers, like, blending in.”
The Oscar winner is in town filming “Ocean’s Eight,” with Rihanna and Cate Blanchett. “I‘m here on a film, and I used to live here full-time, and my husband and I are getting very thoroughly seduced,” she said, between bites of the red meat-substitute, ravioli. “This night is doing a very good job. And we have a new baby, so we might be back full-time — we don’t know. Who knows, but this is an absolutely lovely, lovely night.”
Earlier in the week, paparazzi shots surfaced of her and Rihanna filming the upcoming movie, showing Hathaway in a “green snakeskin Burberry coat — it was fabulous,” she said. “I was so happy when it showed up. My character is ridiculous — these are her nails,” lifting up her hands to show off sets of long French-manicured fake talons. “As Justin said, ‘What’s with the squared-off acrylics?’ And I was like, ‘They’re for my character!’ They’re very Jersey. I’m playing a movie star, she’s from Tampa. She wears a lot of expensive things, and has fake nails.”
She looked around her table, which included celebrity stylist Micaela Erlanger. “These girls are all beautiful and wearing very expensive things — not a fake nail in sight.”