My Review of the September T&C

Last month I expressed my excitement about getting several magazines in the mail. Among those magazines was the September issue of Town & County, which was full of really great articles.

One article that popped out at me was in the “Manners & Misdemeanors” column, which this month was written by Ali Wentworth, the beautiful wife of George Stephanopoulos.

Her article, entitled “Confessions of a Bag Lady”, was a comical look at the idea of goodie bags, which are given away at charity dinners, book parties, film festivals, etc. Ali states, “A quick primer: A goodie bag is the reward one gets for donating money to a cause and sitting through heart-breaking stories about disease, famine, or dolphins while picking at a mass-produced salad plated the day before.”

Her takes on her conversations with George about taking more than one goodie bag when, “It’s one per family”, and how George felt that “the book itself would suffice” as a give-away rather than “goodie bags filled with chocolate coins and mini Monopoly sets.”

“I believe the bring chemical emitted upon sight of a goodie bag is the same as the one elicited by finding a Gucci sweater at Century 21 for $45,” Ali said. “It’s all about the get.”

She says she would peruse the photos of Golden Globe goodie bag contents each year. “All these excessive trinkets wasted on women who already had them in spades,” said said.

She said that many “socialites” say they don’t care about swag, but that they snatch a gift bag on the way out of an event. “The urge is as human as it gets, but in the name of dignity we must try to squash it,” said said.

Then she ended by telling how she and George attended a party at the American Museum of the Moving Image and she spied the “large, shiny, pearlescent white” goodie bags. In order to confront her addiction, she decided to simply walk past the goodie bags, but as her husband held the door to the taxi open, Ali quickly turned back around, ran up the stone steps and grabbed two!

Ali’s humor is priceless, and her article reads as if she were telling these funny stories to me and a group of friends over dinner. If I ever had the opportunity to be at an event where there were goodie bags, I’d take two as well!

Another article I enjoyed was the interview of Aerin Lauder by Stellene Volandes. Aerin is the granddaughter of Estee Lauder. Aerin’s flawless beauty was captured beautifully by photographer Jonathan Becker. Ms. Volandes began her article by saying that there’s a photo of Aerin dressed in her grandmother’s clothes: “A big straw hat, gold heels, long white cloves a blue chiffon scarf.”

Recently Aerin launched her own line of makeup, Aerin  Beauty “that signals the debut of her own lifestyle brand,” wrote Stellene Volandes.

In the article, Aerin said she had considered using her entire name on the beauty products, but she said that “the single word Aerin looked better across the packaging.”

“Some have said that understatement is Lauder’s M.O. It might also prove to be the secret to her success,” said Volandes. “There were no blue-hair teenage episodes in the Lauder household. Aerin has never even pierced her ears.”

Aerin was photographed in several locations, including the Marrakech house of Xavier Guerrand-Hermes, the Verger de l’Etoile Filante (Orchard of the Shooting Star), and the gardens of the Beldi Country Club. In one photo, she and her father (dressed in an A. Caraceni tuxedo) were photographed in the Moroccan desert.

The photo of Aerin on the grounds of La Pause, a retreat in the Agafay Hills outside of Marrakech, was breathtaking. The photo caption stated that La Pause “has no electricity and is illuminated instead by 150 oil lamps.”

I would relish the opportunity to get a tour of Marrakech from Aerin Lauder. To see that beauty in person would be remarkable and unforgettable!

I also enjoyed reading an excerpt from Ashley Prentice Norton’s first novel, The Chocolate Money. Norton says that one outre party scene detailed in the book is “eighty percent fiction, 20 percent truth.” Norton is the great-great-granddaughter of John D. Rockerfeller and she grew up in Chicago.

Richard McGill Murphy wrote about King’s Academy, a coed boarding school modeled on Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Mass. King’s Academy was founded by Jordan’s King Abdullah II, who is a 1980 graduate of Deerfield Academy. Murphy wrote that King Abdullah “founded King’s Academy with the explicit goal of recreating his East Coast boarding school experience on the East Bank of Jordan.” Murphy’s article was thoroughly informative and insightful, full of great photos (taken by Simon Watson) of the campus and some of it’s students.

And finally, Alexandra Styron’s interview with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward’s daughters – Nell, Clea, and Lissy – was fascinating.

Styron briefly details Newman and Woodward’s romance. “Watching these two magnificent creatures transit from youth to old age – all the while teasing, flirting, squabbling, and falling into each other’s arms – is as deeply romantic a cinematic experience as I can imagine,” she wrote.

As Lissy explained to Styron, “They were inexorably tied to each other by every molecule of their being. The good, the bad, and the ugly. They were stuck together.”

Styron easily details each of the daughter’s life as it is now – Lissy is a volunteer in an arts program; Clea is the director of Development at Giant Steps; and Nell is the co-founder and president of Newman’s Own Organics.

When Paul Newman was asked to mass produce his popular salad dressing, he agreed only if all of the profits went to charity. Styron states that at the time she wrote her article, the Newman’s Own Foundation “has given $350 million to causes as disparate as disaster relief, land preservation, public broadcasting, special needs education, and life-threatening illnesses affecting children.”

One cool fact: Newman received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Academy Awards in 1994, but he refused to accept any awards after the Hersholt. When Newman was 70, Styron wrote, he “burned all of his tuxedos in a ceremony” on the front lawn of his Westport, Conn., home.

Some might say that Town & Country is a bit “high-brow”, but I really enjoy reading it and seeing how the wealthy and privileged live and play… or as I like to say, “I like seeing how the other half live.”

I hope everyone had a safe Labor Day weekend!

Have a great day!