Alan Faena’s cocktail party in his home Sunday evening drew a usual mix of New York faces — Mia Moretti, Jordan Barrett, Chloe Wise, etc. But new to the crowd was His Highness Padmanabh Singh of Jaipur, who just moved to New York a few days before to study liberal arts at New York University.
“I’ve been looking for a place to live, which I found finally…it’s in the East Village,” Singh said, from Faena’s kitchen. “This is my first night out. I think it’s a good start.”
The 19-year-old royal was previously in the spotlight back in November, when he escorted Ava Phillippe for her debut at the Le Bal des Débutante in Paris. No surprise, his initial days in Manhattan have already been surrounded by the well-connected; over the weekend he dined at the Polo Bar with the likes of Kitty Spencer and the Manners sisters (themselves fresh from the Bottega Veneta show on Friday).
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“I’ve always been at boarding school or I’ve lived back home — I’ve never lived in a big city like New York, or any other city, on my own, in my own apartment, independently, so it’s something I wanted to go and do,” he said. “And where better than New York?”
Moving to New York has been a dream of his, though it comes at a cost to his polo-playing career.
“I’ve had a gap of two years of not studying, because I play polo professionally, so I’ve been doing that for the last two years. That’s one thing that I’m really trying to fix. They play a lot of polo down in Florida and in California, but not [in New York]…in the summer they do, but other than that, not happening it all. So I’m a bit sad about that.”
That said, “it’s a trade, you know? I was playing polo, I was doing well, I was playing for my country, I just recently played the world cup in Australia, I was going on many tours…and then there was one point where I was like you know what, I want to go live in New York and get a degree,” he said. “And here I am.
“I didn’t want to sit down and regret the fact that I never made it work. We’ll see how it works out.”
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