[FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif][FONT=Verdana,Geneva,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]PALM BEACH-The first thing I do whenever I arrive in Florida is carry our Norwich terrier Liberace into the ocean and wash away any dingle berries from his most private arena. I have become quite skilled at routing them. No dingle berry can escape my detection. Just call me "the dingle-berry whisperer."
Canine hygiene aside, I am in desperate need of this long weekend sun break. I am, as the Brits say, "totally knackered," as in ready for the knackers yard. (Knackers yard: an abattoir where my ancestors would euthanize superannuated horses, cut their testicles (knackers) off and melt down their hooves to make glue. Bon appétit!) I am exhausted. Why the limpness, why now? At the risk of sounding like some pathetic debutante, I must tell you honestly that the fall social season is simply wearing me the f*ck out. Recession, schmecession! This year there have been more parties and blowouts than ever, and we have barely reached November.
So far, this season has been a memorable one, especially when viewed through the lens of footwear. The YSL p*rno pump-it's that shocker stiletto with the 36-inch heel and 9-inch-high platform-is the shoe du jour. It is so ubiquitous that it no longer looks even remotely extreme. At this point it might just as well be a Ked or a Croc.
This season's freakiest footwear award goes to New York's current reigning queen of fashion eccentricity, the incredible Daphne Guinness. The affable and lovely Ms. Guinness is inevitably to be seen hanging on to the back of a chair, jacked up on some extraordinary concoction or other. The Guinness tootsies reached a fabulous apotheosis of dementia last week at Tina Brown's lunch for Donatella Versace. The beer heiress arrived wearing the new heels-missing, gravity-defying Nina Ricci platform mega stilts. It looked as if she had strapped a silver and black mini-bar to the bottom of each foot. Everyone tried to be very cool and nonchalant about this courageous gesture of fashion daring, except me: I got down on my knees and snapped them with my iPhone.
What about my ifeet?
This fall I bought three new pairs of Gucci shoes. The style? I would best describe the theme of my purchases as "lesbian mod": We're talking Vans, a desert boot and a '70s-derivative sneaker. If I needed a little extra height-i.e., I was hosting an event and needed to be able to view the crowd over, and not through, a Lucite lectern-then I fell back on the my old standby, the Hogan sneaker, or should I say, the Hogan elevator. This miraculous midget-helper cunningly incorporates a lift of approximately two and a half inches.
Height-enhancing though they are, the sporty Hogan sneaker hardly qualifies as black tie. And neither do my Gucci Sapphic suedes and slip-ons. What to wear? I decided it was time to go hip-hop. While all my gal pals were staggering into Cipriani on spikes that even Bettie Page would wear only when she was lying on her back or tied to a chair, I skipped among their legs in a snow-white vintage-revival Rod Laver.
By mid-October I had fully embraced my sneakers-for-galas lifestyle. If Jay-Z and Kanye could do it, why not little white me? For the recent wedding of Jared Kushner (the proprietor of this paper) and Ivanka Trump, I decided to go all out. I purchased a sparkling, spanking new pair of Adidas Gazelles.
I am not authorized to write in detail about this luscious-but-private affair; however, I will tell you that it was extreme-glam, beyond-fun and wildly icon-studded-so icon-studded, in fact, that at first I thought that Jared and Ivanka had hired look-alikes. And then I realized, "No, that really is Barbara Walters/Giuliani/gay ex-governer Jim McGreevey."
Honesty compels me to admit that I was the only dude wearing sneakers. My Jonny and I were having a vibrant discussion about the merits of my shoe choice when I noticed the rabbi checking out my Gazelles with an expression that I would describe as more sympathetic than admiring: "Bunion surgery! It's the worst! Zei gesund!" it seemed to say.
Back to the beach! Barefoot and free! NYC in the AM. Time for a final dingle-berry check!
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I have to look into this...
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