MAY 8TH, 2007

They say “Blondes have more fun” but I’m not buying that after a week of hitting the party circuit and seeing my brunette and red haired sisters in high cotton indeed – and for such great causes! Nicole Miller celebrated her 25th - not birthday you sillies – though I’m sure she wishes it were – but the anniversary of her eponymous fashion line. Nicole took over Josh Pickard and John McDonald’s Chinatown Brasserie for a lovely dim sum dinner party for 200 of her nearest and dearest that was more like a 1980s high school reunion with so many, many friends of Nicole’s from over the last two decades. Lest you think this was a room filled with AARP members remember Nicole was just a kid when she started so the crowd was heavy on hip mid lifers with folks like Miss “Sex and the City” Candace Bushnell, author Jay McInerney, hotelier Andre Balazs, Zac Posen, Jane Krakowski, Tama Janowitz, Interview Magazine legend Paige Powell (she flew in from Portland for the party), the always fashionably bespectacled Kim Hastreiter of Paper Magazine, Ross Bleckner and art dealer Mary Boone, and a swarm of models including Cindy Crawford, Shalom Harlow, and Michelle Hicks. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an old friend from their Shelter Island days, was there to cheer on Nicole and her husband Tim Taipale as well as to deliver a few little eco-friendly words. Bobby Jr., knowing that Nicole has long been a champion of environmental causes - in 1992 she developed fleece for outerwear from recycled soda bottles, announced that a generous donation in her name had been made to the RiverKeeper Foundation which he heads up. Super hot red carpet favorite designer Zac Posen shared stories of apprenticing with Nicole and learning “to perfect her signature” quickly adding it was not for checks but her prints. In keeping with her long commitment to a greener world, Nicole sent everyone home with an unusual gift bag – tiny Colorado Spruce and Austrian pine trees to plant! Then I jumped from Soho casual to Waldorf=Astoria high glam for Evelyn Lauder’s annual Hot Pink Party for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation which she founded. Mrs. Lauder, as in Senior VP of Estee Lauder is my ideal, brainy and beautiful and not about to apologize for either. Over 1,000 of New York’s fashion and beauty movers and shakers, moved and shook to the music of Sheryl Crowe (a breast cancer survivor), arranged by Sir Elton John in the Grand Ballroom awash in brilliant pink clad beauties. The evening brought out three generations of Lauders: Leonard, Chairman of the Board of Estee Lauder Company escorting wife Evelyn and their son William with his daughter Rachel on his arm. Hundreds of the family’s friends including: Elizabeth Hurley just back from her honeymoon (so gorgeous in a pink couture Dior designed by John Galliano for her wedding – we just love her thrift!), Bobbi Brown fresh from her Dress for Success honors, Vanessa Minnillo who’s launching her Flirt cosmetics line with Lauder, Vera Wang, Leslie and Chuck Close, Elizabeth Berkley, Rosario Dawson, Martha Stewart, Margherita Missoni, and on and on wer also at the fete. It was a glorious night that raised $4.5 million for the foundation’s vital work. I’m also cheering for our new found friend from last summer Rene Syler who has been quietly, until now, battling her own health issues for some time while her former CBS bosses were preparing to cut her loose from The Early Show on which she sparkled in the near daylight hours. Just as the brass at the “Tiffany Network” were easing her out the door, Rene, who has had four breast cancer scares, several lumpectomies and lost both her parents to cancer, made a decision that every woman dreads - a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy. All this as she was preparing for a major media tour to promote her new book on her own version of child rearing, “Good Enough Mother: The Perfectly Imperfect Book of Parenting”. Several days after telling her children, she learned her son told everyone at school, “My mom got fired and got implants.” In her typically optimistic style, Rene reportedly joked, “I'm like, OK, see, but you need to tell the rest of the story, otherwise I sound like I'm having some mid-life crisis." That’s what I call making lemonade out of lemons and sensible parenting. Rene we’re behind you al
the way! Talking about parenting brings me to another talented East End redhead, the triple threat Actor/writer/director Kate Mueth whom many of you know through her stage work at Guild Hall, Bay Street Theater, and scores of venues in the area. Kate is very happily married to Josh Gladstone, Artistic Director of The John Drew Theater at Guild Hall. She’s also mom to this season’s youngest Broadway star 6 year-old August Gladstone who’s featured in the critically acclaimed “The Coast of Utopia” and of course at his age needed her presence, no small task. Now she is getting to stretch her limbs a bit on the stage herself this season. Kate will be doing a staged reading “In the Room with Molly Bloom”, XXX-cerpts from James Joyce’s Ulysses at Manhattan Theatre Source on Macdougal Street in Greenwich Village on June 25 and 26. Given the, shall I say, salty language of Joyce it’s unlikely that young August will be in the audience but you can bet the Joyce fans and they are legion will be out in full force to catch Mueth in her milieu. Since I’m celebrating one lass, I shouldn’t leave out Long Island’s most famous, at least this week, Irish-American, Commack’s own Rosie O’Donnell. I know, I know I wasn’t going to address her or The Donald for a good spell but I just can’t hold back and have to give you my Quarter’s worth! By now you have heard that Rosie has announced that she’ll be departing The View come June, leaving the show with higher ratings than it’s had for many a season but without a rudder. Every pundit has been weighing in on this one – some blame it on her on going feud with Trump (that only helped both their ratings), some say it was her crotch grabbing, foul mouthed hosting of The Matrix Awards that had Barbara Walters holding her head in hands and old pal Nora Ephron squirming and some say that ABC simply had enough. Wrong on all counts – it was simply show business as usual, except the protagonist is a woman and a gay woman at that, and no one is looking at the simple facts. Rosie is hot again and every network realizes what a, pardon the expression, cash cow she is. In her six years with Warner Brothers (who picked her up when Oprah owners King World passed on her brand of show), she added hundreds of millions to their bottom line. Ditto at ABC. Sure her magazine folded in might be called an incendiary collapse and Taboo cost her a bundle but Rosie did it her way. And her way is comedy and the ability to bring disparate groups of people together on stage and off. Inside buzz is that she will hold out for a late night slot but only one in which she has complete producing and artistic control. Why not? Ever heard of Desilu Productions? 50 years ago the TV industry thought comedic genius Lucille Ball was off the beam when she said she and hubby Desi Arnaz wanted not just a bite but the whole enchilada paving the way for thousands to get royalties on re-runs and be able to own their creative output. Would you expect to have Picasso give it away? More Long Island Tube news – Alec Baldwin is said to be willing to quit 30 Rock which has been enjoying moderate success and growing steadily as a result of his efforts, so that he can address his parenting issues. He might be encouraged by Rene Syler’s book and learn that some Mom’s hem their daughter’s skirts with a stapler and yes even yell at them. Though they generally stop at the use of the term pig, unless it means eating the last Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. I may be in the majority here but I remember being yelled out for not following through – what worries me here more than little Ireland being hollered at, is a mom who would release such private father to child communication to the media. What’s up with that, Kim? Last rant of the day. I promise. Two weeks ago when I was tipped that the darling Drew Barrymore whom I have known since her club days (she started early) had inked a big, I mean BIG deal with Cover Girl to be their new face for both existing products and new lines. That’s a coup. But get this, she’s also been offered the role of co-creative director on the ad campaign and she’ll be able to shape the product’s look both in front of and behind the camera. Wouldn’t you kill for that kind of control of your image!? Then please explain the disconnect here of Miss Drew posing on the cover of the recent People Magazine’s special without their make-up issue – wearing, uhh, no make-up. Rosario Dawson, Eva Longoria, Rihanna, and the Jessicas – Simpson, Alba and Biel – all without make-up. Am I missing something?