Junior League
Music class at 11… benefits screening at 4… then dinner with Shrek at the Plaza. For New York’s children of privilege the fun never ever stops. By Aaron Gell
It’s so heavy I can’t pick it up!” groans five-year-old Serena Bancroft, hefting an overloaded shopping bag toward a waiting car idling just outside FAO Schwarz’s Madison Avenue exit. It’s a crisp evening in early March, and the annual Bunny Hop, a baby bacchanal of sweets, toys and entertainment benefiting the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, is just winding down after two very long hours. Serena, wearing a slightly dazed expression and a snow-white faux-fur Marie-Chantal vest, looks a bit like a Paleolithic warrior-in-training who’s just bagged one of her first big kills. Which, in a way, she has.
Serena’s haul this evening is a standard-issue “girl Bunny Bag” with a retail value topping $250, packed with enough toys trinkets and accessories to choke a purple dinosaur, including a PVC painting smock from Petit Patapon, a Rugrats in Paris CD, a sample of Bulgari Petits et Mamans eau sans alcohol, an assortment of Swarovski body tattoos and a child’s-size umbrella decorated with cartoon BMWs.
Sponsored by Sloan-Kettering’s Associates Committee, the Bunny Hop follows the dictum of grown-up giving that nothing succeeds like excess. Given the run of the store, young attendees nibble on peanut butter-and-jelly brioche garnished with marshmallow Peeps, decorate their own cookies (and, in some cases, their hand-smocked Anthea Moore Ede dresses as well), boogie to the dance floor stylings of DJ Mikey Mike, string Gummy Lifesavers and Froot Loops onto cherry licorice laces, gape at Magic Al’s sleight-of-hand routine, pose for photos with Barbie and studiously ignore the waiters toting asparagus and hollandaise sauce. Most important, they also get a glimpse of the social whirl that so preoccupies their mothers.
“It’s just so wonderful to be able to bring them along to something,” says Debbie Bancroft, Serena’s mom. “I mean, usually you know what it’s like: ‘Aww, you’re going out again?’ But honestly, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be with.”
”This is their dream come true,” Tory Burch notes, clutching a handful of candy necklaces, while her lederhosen-clad son Nicholas, his face painted to resemble a ghoul, whines for her to check his makeup. “You just have to know when to leave….”
For New York’s most affluent children, such dreams have been coming true with potentially numbing frequency lately. “New York seems very kidcentric right now,” observes publicist Elizabeth Harrison, mother of a three-year-old, Charlotte, and a newborn, Georgie. “A lot of designers have brought out kids’ lines, and there’s this whole generation of us that used to go out to nightclubs and parties, and now we’re in the second stage, mommyhood, and everyone’s emphasis is changing in terms of what they want to do.”
”There really is a discernible shift toward wanting to do things with family,” agrees Patricia Duff, accompanying seven-year-old daughter Caleigh to the Penguin Encounter, a gathering at the Central Park Zoo a few weeks later. Duff is asked what she thinks the trend is about, but before she can reply, Caleigh (who, it will be remembered, was at the center of a bitter custody battle following Duff’s divorce from Ronald Perelman), pipes up: “It’s about saving the children!”
That’s debatable. But whatever the reason, it does seem that New York’s social scene suddenly revolves around partygoers better acquainted with the Olsen twins than the Hilton sisters. Just two days before the Bunny Hop, for instance, the junior juniors came out in force for an invitation-only premiere of The Ice Age, followed by a private skating party at Rockefeller Center with the film’s stars. Then came the launch party for Burberry’s Baby Touch perfume, featuring a pair of live sheep, followed by Kids in Candyland, a benefit for the Lenox Hill House, at which four-year-old Elliot De Niro, son of Robert, posed gamely for paparazzi for a minute or so before holding a little palm toward the lenses and announcing “No more pictures!” A busy May brought the Kids for Kids Pediatric AIDS Foundation benefit, the Attack of the Clones Children’s Aid Society fete, the American Ballet Theatre Family Day, the Diller-Quaile School of Music Family Fun Jamboree, the Carnegie Hall Spring Luncheon and Children’s Concert and the Wildlife Conservation Society’s annual Explorers Party, not to mention springtime festivities for most of the city’s top-flight private schools.
And now, with much of the Upper East Side relocated to points east for the summer, the fun has taken on a still more frenzied pace. (The next not-to-be-missed event is Super Saturday 5, a benefit for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund on July 27 in Water Mill.)
The roots of the new youth movement were born a few years ago, after Madonna became the Maternal Girl for the first time and celebrities began spawning in droves. Before long, infants were appearing in runway shows and invading fashion ads, and a babe-in-arms (preferably a smiling babe, without a drop of spit-up on his Bill Amberg hand-stitched leather and sheepskin papoose) was everywhere being declared the latest must-have fashion accessory—“this season’s pashmina,” as Talk magazine had it. Underneath the veneer of Swiftian humor lay a sense that the self absorption of the Nineties was due for a correction, and that parenthood offered a necessary anchor. And much in the way a young trophy wife had long demonstrated a man’s sexual power and status, a baby broadcast a woman’s sexual power and have-it-all contentment. (The obligatory coup de grace: an instantaneous return to one’s prepregnancy physique.)
The mania for conspicuous conception may have peaked—Kate Moss will no doubt make a fine mother anyway—but rather than be consigned to the back of the closet like so many baby backpacks and baby Ts, real babies have grown and prospered, becoming toddlers and schoolchildren. With needs.
Chief among these would seem to be distraction, including not only the aforementioned glitzy social affairs but a copious array of stridently enriching extracurricular activities. In addition to the ever-popular Diller-Quaile and Ballet Academy East, the Barclay and Knickerbocker social dancing cotillions and the Cavaliers sports program, children are lining up for such newcomers as Broadway Babies, in which a cast of professional musical-theater performers—some of whom are Broadway regulars—belt out classic show tunes for toddlers, and Art Farm, a “mommy-and-me” class featuring an exotic petting zoo (leopard geckos, Siamese fighting fish, a chinchilla) in a building on East 91st Street. Factor in private tutors and play dates—to say nothing of school—and it’s a wonder anyone can find the time for hide-and-seek, much less see-and-be-seen.
But they manage well enough. Even a simple afternoon at the movies has taken on a degree of social importance, what with splashy blowouts accompanying most G-rated releases. “Premieres are about the only time my daughter gets to see movies,” admits Helen Schifter, whose seven-year-old, Storey, is a regular on the scene.
Peggy Siegal, the queen bee of party publicists, is the gatekeeper of many such events, and a place on her “kids’ list” is perhaps as coveted an indication of a youngster’s future success as a preschool slot at All Souls (particularly since many of those who make the cut will find their way onto Siegal’s “hot young things” list after college).
Those lucky enough to he included might wish to take note of a few unwritten ground rules: “I am personally offended when someone sends a nanny and doesn’t come,” Siegal says firmly. “I treat this like a dinner party at my home. I invite you and your family, and it’s a nontransferable situation. What we also encourage is, no strollers.”
In addition to the usual army of kiddie foods—chicken fingers, mini burgers, small juice boxes (“Because they take one sip and throw it out,” Siegal explains)—the premieres usually feature red-carpet appearances by the film’s furry characters. “That’s the photo op,” she says. “What you do is get some beleaguered junior publicist with a Polaroid to shoot every kid.”
No doubt mindful of such competition, the Sloan-Kettering Associates Committee came up with a new twist for this year’s Bunny Hop: the Bunny Hop preparty, which offered Very Important Little Persons the sort of access usually parceled out at a political fund-raiser. At this intimate soiree, held at the Plaza, offspring of the most beneficent donors (the so-called Big Bunnies, forking over $2,500 per family) received a full hour of face time with the same costumed characters—Shrek, Miffy the Rabbit, Snoopy, Winnie the Pooh, Raggedy Ann and Andy, Peter Rabbit and Pikachu—that would later be mobbed by the rabble.
For some mothers, it’s all become a bit much. “I think it’s absolutely surreal, these social events for tiny little kids,” says Princess Marie-Chantal of Greece, whose children Marie-Olympia, Konstantine and Achilleas are five, three and 21 months, respectively “New York is very competitive. The people have aggressive tendencies and they start these kids out very, very young.”
One mother who skipped the Bunny Hop this year was even more critical. “Yes, it’s fun for the children,” she admits, “but the mothers are so busy chatting, like, ‘Oh, look, there’s Aerin!’ and stepping all over each other to have their picture taken. Every child winds up having a meltdown. It’s great and it’s fun and their eyes bug out of their heads, sure, but I think it’s much too overwhelming.”
Evelyn Goldstein, a personal shopper at FAO Schwarz, known for her ability to snag the season’s most coveted toys well before they hit the shelves, begs to differ. “Overwhelming? Please. These kids?” she says. “Their outfits cost what I earn in a month. These are the rich kids. They’re used to the froufrou life, and they’re accustomed to being treated a certain way The Bunny Hop is like Old Home Week for some of them, seriously.”
Naturally, birthday parties must also be quite lavish to compete in such an environment. In certain circles, a 45-minute show by magician Arnie Kolodner, who weaves his illusions into comedic fairy-tale productions, is de rigueur. The basic show begins at $650, but with extras, the price can easily hit $1,500. Kolodner, who got his first paying magic gig at age eight, also enjoyed a successful career as an Off Broadway actor, starring in Vampire Lesbians of Sodom, among other plays by Charles Busch. He gave up the stage when he discovered he could make, as he puts it, “the same amount with one magic show as eight performances.”
For Serena Bancroft, however, Kolodner is old news. Her sixth-birthday party called for something a bit more adult. “She’s kind of an edgy kid,” Debbie Bancroft explains. “She’s not into magic shows or baby animals anymore, so it’s not so easy at this age.”
So mother and daughter decided on a dance party, at RSVP on Lexington Avenue, where, amid a cloud of glitter, Serena and some 20 Episcopal school classmates and friends shook their groove things to the music of Britney Spears, ‘NSync, Daft Punk and ABBA. The whole soiree had a decidedly grown-up feel, except for the occasional cascade of Silly String—“Not in the eyes!” one mother scolded a young media-company scion—and the surprise appearance of an enormous Hello Kitty.
As these things go, however, the whole affair was really quite understated. “Most of the parties these days cannot be more elaborate!” observes interior decorator Muriel Brandolini, mother of Brando, nine, and Filippa, seven. ‘When I was a little girl, a birthday party was just me and my sister, and that was it. Now you have it in a ‘party place,’ where you have an orchestra or a million clowns and the most expensive cake. It’s just a little overboard, I think.”
There are, however, some signs of a return to pin-the-tail tradition. Hostess of the moment Rena Sindi admits to having gone a little “over the top” for her daughter Leana’s first-birthday party, which had a Mickey Mouse theme and was held in the ballroom of the Hotel Pierre. “I ended up buying giant Mickey and Minnies, just because of the scale of the room,” she recalls. “The invitations were stuffed animals with a card tied on with ribbon, and—oh, I went crazy. It was my first experience doing a kids’ party, and my first child, and I was really overwhelmed with excitement.” In subsequent years, Sindi has exercised more restraint. “That kind of flash is not the right thing,” she says now. “It’s showing off to your friends, and what you learn is the kids don’t know the difference. They enjoy the simple stuff like paper plates, although they’re not the most aesthetic thing.”
One mother points out that hostesses need not provide an adult buffet at all, since “half the people that show up are the nannies, and New York girls don’t eat anyway.”
Schifter has also sought to host more simple gatherings in recent years. “With her second birthday I starred wanting to have great parties, and they escalate,” she says of daughter Storey. “Now it’s going in reverse. For her seventh, which was at Dylan’s Candy Bar, we didn’t invite her whole class. Instead of going all out, we took her to Paris.”
One area where mothers haven’t cut back is fashion. FAO Schwarz created a 10,000-square-foot baby department not long ago; Henri Bendel has just reentered the infantwear business after more than a decade (in addition to opening a Liz Lange maternity boutique), and Suzy Hilfiger’s kiddie emporium, Best & Co., recently took up residence in Bergdorf Goodman. Fashion-conscious moms can now outfit their youngsters in pieces by Gucci, Michael Kors, Dolce & Gabbana, DKNY, Nicole Miller, Burberry, Hermes and Prada, among others. “The kids need something to wear to all these events,” notes Harrison.
Those seeking more exclusive items shop at invitation-only trunk shows. At one recent event for Papo D’Ango, by designer Catherine Connor (the sister-in-law of Marina Rust), held in a suite at the Stanhope hotel, a line of chic young mothers, including Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer, Sloan Barnett and Hilary Dick, began forming nearly an hour before the doors opened, eager to fill gaps in their children’s spring wardrobes and place advance orders for fall.
”If you wait until August to try finding a coat for your child, they’re all gone,” one shopper explained. “That’s the mommy mentality here. It’s so competitive on every level.”
”Mothers are going out and buying entire collections for their children, believe it or not,” reports Marie-Chantal, whose two-year-old children’s wear collection has become a particular favorite of Park Avenue moms, some 40 of whom, including Barnett, Sindi, Brandolini, Alexandra Von Furstenberg, Kate Betts and Lilian Wang von Stauffenberg, made the trek to SoHo for a luncheon in May celebrating the opening of the designer’s new atelier and showroom. “They’ll buy the whole thing. It’s just shocking. But I understand the impulse as a mother. If I go out and buy something for myself, I have terrible guilt, but if I buy for my children, there’s just no limit. I just love it—braiding my little daughter’s hair, putting on the bows, getting the outfit, the shoes, the sweater, the jacket. It’s so sweet. Hey, we all grow up dressing our dolls, so it’s kind of the same.”
“Parents don’t question cost at all,” says Michael Bishop, a veteran Burberry salesman, adjusting a $375 cashmere teddy bear done entirely in the company’s pastel Baby Touch check, at the 57th Street store. “This is the best in life, and you want to give them a taste of things to come. Some of these little girls really pick up on the plaid, too. It registers, like Big Bird.”
Indeed, some children have developed quite the discerning eye when it comes to top designers. “I had to take Storey when I went to the Paris couture,” Schifter says, “and we liked all the same things at Ungaro.” Sandra Chollet, manager of the children’s department at Barneys, admits to being stunned by “very young little girls coming in and saying, ‘Oh, Mom, that looks so Fendi!’”
You won’t find many smocked dresses at Barneys, where the stock leans toward a “hip and trendy, mini-me style,” Chollet says. “You generally like your own taste, and you find it extraordinarily cute when it’s, like, 10 sizes smaller.”
One unintended consequence of the kiddie-couture trend, however, has been that posh preschoolers are sometimes forced to grapple with challenges their less-well-to-do peers never face. As child-development expert Ilene Sackier Lefcourt, who counts a number of Park Avenue families among her clientele, puts it, ‘When women who are very into fashion and social stuff have young children, they get confronted with the question of what’s more important: their little girl wearing the beautiful dress from wherever it is, or being able to crawl. Sometimes, literally, that’s the choice: Is the child going to the playground in something she can climb to the top of the monkey bars in, or something she can’t? Are they wearing clothes they can get paint on, or not? Nobody has disposable Gucci.”
Fortunately, she adds, most opt for the developmentally sound course. (Toilet training is a different story, however. Local parents have become so indulgent, Lefcourt reports, that “the typical age for toilet training in New York City has moved from around two to around four.” With any luck, Phillipe Starck’s chic new potty, the so-called Gold Pot, available at Target, will slow this trend before the nannies all stage a diaper strike.)
These days, Lefcourt’s parenting classes are so in demand that many mothers put their names on the waiting list while their future progeny are still in utero. Noting that she works only with ages three and under, Lefcourt points out, “There’s only a short window It’s not like an Hermes bag.”
The fashion analogy is nevertheless apt, since the same insistence on exclusivity—in matters of education, clothing and social life—is increasingly coming to define the affluent childhood. Take for example the Young Plaza Ambassadors, a group for guests of the hotel and other dues-paying members, which offers classes in dining etiquette as well as discounts on limos, merchandise and activities around town. It’s not for nothing that the organization’s Web site boasts, “When. you show [your YPA ID badge], it’s like saying ‘Me first’…. You’ll get to go to the front of the line if there is a bunch of people waiting to get in.”
This mind-set can lead to trouble, however, as was demonstrated during the Central Park Zoo’s Penguin Encounter on April 10. The event was organized by Alison Stern, co-chair of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s event committee, who invited a number of friends and their children to take a backstage tour of the Penguin House. Publicized by R. Couri Hay, the to-do brought out Grace Hightower, Patricia Duff, Nicole Miller and a number of other “yummy mummies” on a beautiful early spring day. But the turnout proved greater than expected, and in order to maintain the temperature inside the Penguin House, the organizers were forced to make what one irritated zoo employee called “some unpopular choices.” (“This is not a Great Adventure,” the employee added with a tight grin. “It’s a conservation facility.”)
So, as the group munched chocolate-chip cookies and watched the birds’ antics from the public observation area, a handful of selected mothers and children were separated from the others and quietly escorted through an unmarked door, prompting one of the fortunate few to remark, “Great, my daughter just had to lose her little friends. How do I tell them it’s because you’re with your baby-sitter and not your glamorous mom?”
In the end, about half of the attendees were lucky enough to climb the concrete steps to the Penguin Commissary and then pass in small groups through the meat-locker portal to spend a minute or so in the cool air of the Penguin House. The experience drew mixed reviews.
Caleigh Perelman pronounced the birds “kind of cool,” adding, “If I could get, like, a pet that was a penguin I’d…get it and I’d…name it Fluffer.”
Parker Brooke, four, was less impressed. “They don’t have umbrellas,” he observed, no doubt thinking of the Batman villain. “And they’re not nice.”
Even so, the Penguin Encounter was clearly about as exclusive as a day at the zoo can be. As Hay remarked, “This is the toughest door I’ve ever cracked—and that includes the upstairs room at Studio.”
Which helps explain why, a few minutes earlier, when the zookeeper had informed those in attendance that everyone entering Penguin House would first have to step into a tray of soapy water to make sure no dangerous microbes entered the birds’ habitat, one after another, without hesitation, the mothers dutifully plunged their Jimmy Choos and Manolos into the suds.
They were doing it for the kids, after all.
