BlackBook Magazine

Our favorite girl about town is, well very about town these days. With Vanity Fair naming Lydia Hearst the leading social lady under the age of 30, Frost (a film in which she appears) generated buzz at the Tribeca Film Festival, and her upcoming cameo on Gossip Girl this Monday, the multitasker just nabbed Model of the Year at Wednesday night’s Michael Awards. Hearst joins the ranks of winners Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell, and Christy Turlington before her. Like she told Spencer Morgan last November, “I started at the top. My first job was the cover of Italian Vogue, which is the equivalent essentially of winning an Academy Award. So, there was nowhere else to go from there.” Apparently there was.

Like so many nights before, the ever innocent “after work cocktail” slides into pre-show tequila shots with a band, crashing an awards ceremony, and the notion of staying in and getting caught up with Gossip Girl is somehow replaced by the thump of bass and the clink of glasses. GG will have to wait. Last night I came to the Highline Ballroom to do what we writers call "work." I was interviewing the buzzy band Bitter:Sweet, whose albums have been securing a lot of airtime on shows like Grey’s Anatomy, not to mention the theme song for Lipstick Jungle. I’m instructed prior to the interview that I cannot actually stay for the show, as it’s a “private engagement.” I take it in stride, drinking a bottle of water as I sit through Bitter:Sweet’s sound check, which is quite entertaining in itself.

The typical scene at The Bitter End: a bubbling mass of pastel polos, edged against girls in flip flops and flipped hair, fresh scrubbed college kids pretending to be interested in whatever band is on stage, forcing an occasional head-bop or toe-tap between swigs of Bud Light. Last night, however, was not typical. Transformed in part by the likes of Lydia Hearst, Richie Rich, Traver Rains, and Leven Rambin, The Bitter End housed a crowd eager to cheer on musician Joe Barney.

Moby. Hula Hoops. Julia Stiles. A burlesque dancer fellates a wine bottle. The stuff dreams are made of? Well, yes, if you’re into that sort of thing. Otherwise, it’s just another night at The Box.

“Follow the hip-looking kids,” says I, as we navigate a maze of escalators and booby-trapped hallways (marked down Chanel can be quite a snare). “I feel like we are about to see Tiffany,” my plus-one replies, descending the escalator at Bloomingdale’s. Donald Cumming of the Virgins, oddly enough, feels the same way: “I feel like we’re Tiffany up here.”

The Smiths are on the speakers. Kids are posing up against the walls for party-hopping photographer Bronques. This must be a new Tuesday night party. An unlikely location, party advocate Mike DeGuzman explains that’s part of its charm, as I see a collection of scenesters toe-tapping curbside in the heart of the meatpacking on Little West 12th. They filter into some slick Canadian gastropub. Gastropub? Had it not been for the trust fund jerks cat-calling from a nearby cab, I could have sworn I was on the L.E.S. Charming.

I’m walking up to the door of Marquee, and between the hipster club kids that glide right in and the shiny Guido’s yelling from the line, I can’t help but feel that combination of indignation and excitement that only nightclubs can provoke. Lately, I have been feeling quite domestic—induced, no doubt, by the freezing temperature—but seeing doorman Wass orchestrating the event in slick leather reminds me that nightlife is better spent bar-hopping on the buzzing streets than between the sheets.

Confession: I have always had an ardent love affair with the ever-popular Marquee, despite the constant condemnation by friends who wouldn’t be caught dead in a setting that didn’t pose the possibility of seeing an Olsen twin. I have also had a relatively similar love for pop star Ashlee Simpson, despite the fact that no assemblage of leather jackets or stringy hair will ever make her an Olsen twin. 

It’s true that New York is known for its parties—fabulous nights of dressing to impress, followed immediately by staring at one another over a glass of branded vodka while acting thoroughly unimpressed (or in some cases, thoroughly overly impressed) by another’s outfit/name/nose job. Which is why I always like to take a nightlife retreat to a concert venue, a curated event consisting of both socialites and social-lowers who look impressed or unimpressed with good reason. Last night, my music-themed outing took me to the cavernous Terminal 5 to gauge an impression of the U.K. band Switches. The band opened for veteran outfit The Bravery, and brought out a rather eclectic mix of admirers. The Wall Street crew got off just in time to down vodka tonics and mix with skinny teen boys with better hair than me. A few girls in braces debated the authenticity of a writer’s Chloé bag before relinquishing their argument to ear-piercing screams as Switches took the stage. (Their carefully worded verdict, last I heard: “Faker than Blake Lively’s dye job”).

Our nightlife columnist Holly GoNightly closes the bar at the Opening Ceremony party.

For more party pics, click here!

Scene queen Sophia Lamar at last night’s Opening Ceremony celebration.

People everywhere—and by people, I mean bloggers—keep announcing that this is going to be one of the best Fashion Week weeks ever, and it has nothing to do with the clothes. The writers strike may have struck the Golden Globes, but it promises to leave New Yorkers star-struck. The glitterati have so few lines to memorize these days that they’ve come to flood the tents and fêtes with their shiny Hollywood presence.

Photography courtesy StyleSightings.com

One of these partygoers has to get something off her chest.

It’s Wednesday night and the Lower East Side is filled with its usual group of guys and dolls wandering about as if they had nowhere to go. I shuffle past the wallflowers on Orchard Street, pretty boys in skinny jeans and stovepipe hats, pretty girls that look like boys leaning against brick walls as part of the usual weeknight fashion show. I debate whether to join in the impromptu parade, but I am already late for Flaunt magazine’s Revolution No. 9 Issue Release Party.