Cougars, Pumas, & Ex-Mrs. Hedgefunds

A hundred women with perfect highlights, but not a pot of bleach in sight. The Frederic Fekkai salon was filled with ladies in waiting, but not for a trademark Fekkai bob. Instead they gathered for Jill Kargman's John Hancock last night, in celebration for the release of her newest novel, The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund. Steak tartare and white wine sated the elegant mob, such as Meredith Melling-Burke and Sylvana Soto-Ward as well as the hosting committee, which included Allison Aston, actress Byrdie Bell, alice + olivia's Stacey Bendet Eisner, and Shoshanna Lonstein Gruss. Gentlemen in attendance took notice of the well-heeled crowd. "This place is filled with cougars and pumas," one dapper fellow noted.

Cougars in Frederic Fekkai Fifth isn’t such a long shot, I countered, but what exactly is a puma? “It’s a younger cougar, one that hasn’t learned her lesson yet and is still looking to be a future ex-Mrs. Hedgefund,” he informed me matter-of-factly. But to me the crowd looked far more interested in speaking with the delightful, insightful author, who was busy entertaining her daughter Sadie along with her husband Harry, dad Arie Kopelman (who promised me he was Jill’s ghostwriter, but is really the president of Chanel), and mother Coco. Jill didn’t think of her female followers as Pumas on the prowl either. “I think everyone has gotten a wake-up call; people are finding a more meaningful existence than simply being a part of this machine.”

Kargman, a soothsayer of sorts, predicted an economic downturn in 2006, back when she wrote The Ex-Mrs. Hedgefund. “It was just the law of gravity,” she laments in the familiar excited-girlish tone that mirrors much of her writing. “I mean, when some of her friend’s birthday parties (she points to her daughter Sadie, currently signing books in her place) were being held in hotel ballrooms, you know this lifestyle ideal has gotten far too extreme.” Not that the economic crisis was deserved; instead, her seventh novel is “recent historical fiction of happier times.”

“A lot of people are maybe happier now knowing that some things don’t last, and there are certain things you can’t make a trade for, like your relationship,” she says, drifting back to the puma talk. “I married my best friend, so I was lucky. I’m glad he is more entrepreneurial and not part of this ‘machine,’ because that’s just not who he is.”