SUZY
Byline: Aileen Mehle
It’s hot in Aspen, even though the powder is 16 feet high and the skiing is as good as it’s been in the last 20 years. Hot, because all the hot people are there, all trying to have a hot time in the old town tonight and every night.
By this time, you all should have heard that billionaire David Koch and pretty Julia Flesher are now engaged — just as I wrote they would — with the help of a large diamond ring that once belonged to David’s mother. (Scrutinizing the sparkler, Julia, the dear, down-to-earth girl, said, “I really need to get out my toothbrush and give it a good wash.” Is she the best?
It’s not news that David’s New Year’s Eve party was the party of Aspen parties. Who else would water and feed 400 guests, as many as he could cram into his cranberry silk tent where several thousand red rose topiary trees decorated the surroundings, and there was a golden bell at each place to ring in the New Year? Julia wore an elegant, strapless red dress to dinner and changed afterward into something short, sexy, semi-see-thorough and black. It’s the only way, really.
Diana Ross, under pounds of glossy hair, was at the party, as was Charles Evans, the New York entrepreneur, who hurt his back skiing and had to be brought down the mountain on a toboggan. It takes more than that to keep a true party animal away from a good time. As for Nancy Davis, daughter of billionaire Martin and Barbara Davis of Beverly Hills, she swept into the tent in a full-length chinchilla over black bugle beads, as good a way as any to usher in the New Year — without getting yourself arrested. As for the ubiquitous Couri Hay, who was everywhere at once in Aspen — isn’t that what ubiquitous means? — was last seen chatting at the Koch party with Virginia Warner, billionaire Paul Mellon’s granddaughter. What a lucky way to start out the New Year, chatting up an heiress! Hold the collard greens and black-eyed peas, and never mind the ham hocks.
Kate Moss and Johnny Depp were in Aspen together. So were Jennifer Anniston of “Friends” and Barry Josephson. Sally Field was there, and so was Dean Cain of “Superman” with his entire family. The lady he was dancing with at the Caribou Club was his mother, sigh, sob, blow. Naomi Campbell stopped traffic at the Sundeck restaurant in a silver mylar parka and wine-colored pants by Isaac Mizrahi. Then there were the Kennedy brother and sister, Rory and Max, and Agneta and Brownleigh Currie’s son Christopher and his pretty wife, Ashley, who is expecting a baby.
The Caribou Club continues to be the hottest spot to be seen at in Aspen, but Bonnie’s is also popular with skiers and for its apple strudel. Another funfunfun place is the Pine Tree Cookhouse, which can be reached either by skiing there cross-country, by snowmobile or by a horse-drawn sleigh, hold the jingle bells.
Related Galleries
Linda and Paul McCartney of the extremely rich and longtime-married-while-their-rocker-peers-multidivorce-and-fool-around McCartneys spent the holidays at Round Hill, the picturesque Jamaica enclave in Montego Bay. Their children were with them, and Linda ate all her vegetables. The McCartneys spend every holiday at Round Hill where this year, you’ll be tickled to hear, the weather was glorious and there were big lunches on the beach and big parties every night at the Round Hill Club. Wish you were there? Oh, OK — so be that way.
Another famous couple, Ricky and Ralph Lauren of the extremely rich and longtime-married-while-their-fashion-peers-fool-around Laurens were luxuriating in the beachy pleasures of Round Hill. Their children were with them, all snug in the Laurens’ big-time house overlooking the Caribbean, ostensibly wearing snappy Polo togs, splendid examples that the family that plays together stays together. Also at Round Hill were the movie producer Robert Zemeckis enjoying his holiday house, and Prince Pier Francesco and Princess Maria Gracia Borghese enjoying their villa. If you have to ask the difference between a holiday house and a villa, you can’t afford either one of them.
In Palm Beach, the new Poinciana Club was packed night and day during the holidays. Gen. Alexander Haig, one of the club’s first members, and Art Modell, the Cleveland football owner, were at the Bob Jennys’ (of Houston, Newport, etc.) big dinner at the Poinciana where just about every time you looked up those mad nights you saw the likes of the Nelson Doubledays, Barry van Gerbig, Betsy and Michael Kaiser with their New York house guest Kenneth Jay Lane, Chessy Patcevitch, Bill Pitt, Ann Downey, who decorated the Poinciana, and Terry and Irwin Kramer, who have just moved into their new villa (aha!), reckoned by many to be the grandest in all Palm Beach. You will be thrilled to hear that as the cleaning people arrived on New Year’s morning, the last of the New Year’s Eve guests were just leaving. Oh, and just last night, Jean Tailer of the social swim gave a dinner at the Poinciana’s Papaya Room. It’s all been so hectic and marvelous, you wonder how anyone would ever have the nerve to continue to refer to Palm Beach as God’s Waiting Room, the cheeky things!
In Millbrook in upstate New York, the snow was heavy on the ground, and everywhere you looked you saw a real-life picture postcard. That’s where Blaine and Robert Trump spent the holidays, as did Cari and Matthew Modine, Libby and Basil Mavroleon and Cece and Barry Kieselstein-Cord, whose beautiful young daughter Elizabeth, dressed in a short black satin flapper dress and a big black ribbon wrapped around her head like a flapper’s cloche and tied in a bow, went off to a New Year’s Eve party looking like a movie star should.
The international architect and designer Peter Marino and his wife, Jane Trapnell Marino (not Jane Trahey Marino, as she was referred to in a recent slip of the column), live in one of the most spectacular apartments in New York, and it was there that the renowned pianist Misha Dichter gave a marvelous semi-concert for the 50 dinner guests of the Marinos and co-host Sean Driscoll. Listening raptly before ascending to a Glorious Food repast served on the second floor gallery on two long tables centered with fruit, vegetables and flowers in a botanical setting by Robert Isabell were such music lovers as Larry Lovett, Doda Voridis, Frayda and George Lindemann, Janice Levin, Jocelyn Kress, Cipo Dichter, Blaine Trump, Thierry Millerand and Cari Modine in a fire-engine red silk ballgown by Isaac Mizrahi, the showstoppers’ showstopper. The full skirt and what there was of a top were simply divine. Jane Marino’s gray and dark purple evening dress by Valentino was another star. Peter was one of the chairmen of the New York Public Library Table of Contents Dinner, which reportedly helped nicely fill that establishment’s coffers or a portion thereof.