“I had a doctor’s appointment the other day, and I thought, oh, I’m near Bloomingdale’s! I went to the sixth-floor bedding department to the man that I always deal with, and I bought Italian cotton sheets, and he said, ‘You know, we’re doing all this Italian stuff,’” the sensational Christine Baranski tells me, standing in a corner at 63rd Street’s Academy Mansion. “I said, ‘I know! I’m one of the hostesses for your Italian event!”
Dressed in black and gold and punctuated with a stellar ancient Roman gold-coin necklace of black onyx beads—she promised her publicist would send me the designer’s name ASAP (“The Times wants to know too!” she says)—Baranski was lapping up the La Dolce Vita atmosphere of the night.
In one corner, Isabella Rossellini was in fine form, entertaining party pals with storytelling that required both hands. In another, artful blocks that looked like contemporary sculptures revealed themselves to be skewers of mozzarella, tomatoes, and green olives—the work of Laila Gohar of LG Studio. (With more bites from Sant Ambroeus). Over in the Academy Mansion’s inner courtyard—a four-story mansion built back in 1920—a couple of opera performances took place. From a balcony overlooking the courtyard crawling with vines, Soprano Erin Morley and Tenor Jamez McCorckle serenaded the crowd with Puccini classics in honor of the centenary of the composer’s death. (In between the operatic bursts was a steady stream of tunes from DJ Stretch Armstrong.)
“But everybody loves Italy. Who doesn’t love Italy?,” Baranski adds.
At 7:00 p.m., guests arrived at the event, which was hosted by Bloomingdale’s in honor of their 59th Street store’s Italian takeover dubbed “From Italy, With Love,” which is dressed like an emporium of Italia. New brands like La DoubleJ, Fendi, and Etro now feature in the mix of labels and there’s a stellar collaboration with the Milanese design fair Salone del Mobile in the homeware department, among other things. The event was co-hosted by Bloomingdale’s CEO Olivier Bron and Air Mail’s Graydon Carter. It was a Dolce Vita meets “Gilded Age” night, given that both Baranski (who is nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actress In A Drama Series for the HBO show, The Gilded Age) and Morgan Spector, who was just two blocks away from his onscreen digs on East 61st Street, were also co-hosts.
Among the guests were Tiffany Haddish (divine in a yellow satin number), director Paul Feig, Nicky Hilton Rothschild, Nasanin Nuri, Georgia Fowler, JJ Martin, Amy Fine Collins, and Alexandra O’Neill.
On the eve of NYFW (during which Ralph Lauren’s “Ralph Hampton” Americana extravaganza show was on the Upper East Side), the evening allowed guests to stretch their summer holidays just a bit before. It was an amusing way to soften the blow of reality, given all these New Yorkers likely just returned back from an Italian holiday, I posed to Bron, who admitted that that was a highly unique scenario. “Maybe the Air Mail reader, yes!”