54 minute read
JUST YOUR TYPE
Books to slip in your beach bag this summer
THE PLOT
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by Jean Han Korelitz (Celadon Books)
How far would a writer go to have the perfect plot? This is the question Jean Han Korelitz, whose bestselling You Should Have Known was adapted by HBO as The Undoing, explores in her latest novel, The Plot.
After riding the wave of critical acclaim that followed his fi rst novel, Jacob Finch Bonner is stuck teaching in a mediocre MFA program. Unmoored and unmotivated, Jake spends his days encouraging new talent, including one particularly arrogant student, Evan Parker, who claims during their fi rst meeting that the novel he’s working on is “a sure thing.” Jake tries to disabuse Evan of his fantasies of grandeur, then Evan tells him the plot. When Jake discovers years later that his former student is deceased, he decides he has no choice but to write the story down.
What follows is a heart-stopping tale of greed, ambition, and murder. Upon publication of the novel, Jake is thrust into the spotlight, and inundated with fame and money, just as Evan predicted. But when a mysterious accusation comes to light—that the entire novel was stolen—Jake must decide how far he’ll go to protect his newfound glory. Book clubs take note: The Plot is a sure thing. claire gibson
UNDER THE WAVE AT WAIMEA
by Paul Theroux (Houghton Mi lin Harcourt)
“We all have a wave in our life,” the literary legend Paul Theroux told NPR recently. “We have more than one wave: unemployment, divorce, hard times. That’s a wave. And you learn to surf that wave to shore.” In his terrifi c new novel, the protagonist, a 62-year-old big wave surfer and high school dropout called Joe Sharkey, is thrown the biggest wave of his life when he runs over a man on a dark road one night while driving drunk. Sucked into the undertow of this accident, Sharkey begins a struggle with his own mortality, at one point nearly drowning at the break where he enjoyed his greatest surfi ng triumph. Theroux—who has written dozens of novels, including The Mosquito Coast, and almost as many nonfi ction books, including The Great Railway Bazaar—has made his home on the North Shore of Oahu for the past 30 years, and has a subtle understanding of surfi ng and its subculture. His portrait of an aging Hawaiian man coming undone is superb, but the most hypnotic passages of all are those on surfi ng and its transportive power. heather hodson
SECOND PLACE
by Rachel Cusk (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
“It’s a cabin in the woods, straight out of a horror story!” That’s the main thrust of Rachel Cusk’s latest novel, Second Place, which o ers a captivating, careful study on what it means to live, create art, and voyeuristically peer into the lives of others, while they do the same in return. The story begins when a woman searching for an ine able something late in life invites a famous male artist to visit her coastal home and use her small, glass-enclosed cabin as his studio. Written as a partly confessional letter to a friend, Je ers, the novel chronicles what happens next.
The artist, “L,” arrives with Brett, a stunning and opinionated young woman, and their presence upends the narrator’s quiet existence, sending her on a path toward personal catastrophe. In sentence after insightful sentence, Cusk draws us into the mind and heart of a lost soul, whose life is loosely held together, but on the verge of falling apart. What unfolds is a shimmering tale of hope, beauty, and suspense—a rumination on the terror of being, and the seductive lecherousness of the male gaze. claire gibson
THE OTHER BLACK GIRL
by Zakiya Dalila Harris (Simon & Schuster)
In Harris’s page-turning debut novel, The Other Black Girl, readers are thrust into the cutthroat world of New York publishing through the eyes of Nella Rogers, whose career is on the rise, despite her frustration that she remains the only Black employee of Wagner Books. That is, until Hazel, a Harlem-born woman with ombré locks, moves into the cubical beside hers. Charming, self-e acing, and productive, Hazel rises quickly in the estimation of the company, leaving Nella feeling adrift and confused. Hazel o ers Nella hair care tips and the occasional knowing glance at a white colleague’s tone-deaf joke. But when Nella’s career takes a sudden, uncomfortable downturn— when notes are stu ed in her desk telling her to leave wagner, she begins to suspect something more nefarious about her new colleague.
Harris’s thought-provoking thriller explores the microaggressions, slights, and dismissals that Black women often face in their careers. While exposing privilege and racism, the novel also deftly pulls readers toward its chilling climax. You’ll be guessing right to the last page. claire gibson
THE GREAT MISTAKE: A NOVEL
by Jonathan Lee (Knopf)
This fi ctionalized story about Andrew Haswell Green, the real-life city planner known as “the Father of Greater New York,” begins and ends with his murder in broad daylight on Park Avenue on a Friday the 13th. The son of a Massachusetts farmer, Green had become a towering fi gure in New York government and society by the turn of the 20th century. His shooting death at the age of 83 rocked America, with the New York World newspaper remarking at the time: “He loved New York as Dante loved Florence.” Jonathan Lee, author of the 2014 novel High Dive, gives events surrounding his death the whodunit treatment, taking us on a detective's chase around the city, with a narrative voice that blends biography and fi ction. Along the way, he reintroduces us to the best-known New York City institutions associated with Green’s civic legacy, including Central Park, the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the Bronx Zoo, and many others. mark libatique
Non ction
THE PREMONITION: A PANDEMIC STORY
by Michael Lewis (W.W. Norton) like Michael Lewis. With his latest o ering, the author of The Big Short and Liar’s Poker takes the reader behind the scenes of America’s handling of the pandemic, revealing how a disparate group of medical visionaries (he calls them “superheroes”) courageously fought to save the country from catastrophe. The story pits this group of biochemists, policy wonks, and renegade local government o cials against the combined supervillainy of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention incompetence, federal dysfunction, and White House indi erence. While we know how that turned out, Lewis’s method of stripping away abstruse details of epidemiology to focus on the characters involved makes a compulsively readable tale. Scenes such as the one in which Charity Dean, the intrepid assistant director of the California Department of Public Health, performs an autopsy in a morgue parking lot with a pair of shears while men in Hazmat suits hover in fear will surely be destined for the big screen. heather hodson
GATECRASHER
by Ben Widdicombe (Simon & Schuster)
What can one say about a memoir that’s written by your magazine’s editor-in-chief? To start with, the paperback edition of Gatecrasher, by Ben Widdicombe, is undoubtedly cheaper than the hardcover was last year. So that’s a plus. Also, it’s lighter and easier to stick in a bag for the beach, which is defi nitely the right place to enjoy this dishy recounting of his decades both as a tabloid celebrity gossip columnist, and later, a social writer for the New York Times. One might also have to acknowledge, mainly because he’s going to read this before it gets printed, that the book contains several entertaining behind-the-scenes anecdotes from events ranging from the Oscars to the Met Gala, is satisfyingly rude about rich people, and even, occasionally, competently written. Otherwise, take your chances with it. ambrose mcgaffney
WORLD TRAVEL: AN IRREVERENT GUIDE by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever (Ecco)
Television personality, renegade chef, globetrotter, social activist, chain-smoker, confessor, philosopher: Anthony Bourdain contained multitudes. Before he became famous as the host of the Food Network’s A Cook’s Tour and CNN’s Parts Unknown, Bourdain slogged it out as a cook for two decades in high-end Manhattan restaurants, places of intense pressure and combustible tempers where, after a particularly grueling ten hours searing strip steaks, a knife fi ght might break out, and drink and drugs could be rampant. He sent a no-holds-barred account of this semi-criminal subculture to The New Yorker on spec, written in his instantly recognizable and thrillingly profane prose. From that followed a best-selling memoir (Kitchen Confi dential, published in 2000), culinary books, crime novels, and a meteoric career as a television host.
Bourdain was a charismatic presence with a restless, inquiring mind and the emotional impact of his global culinary adventures, as he interviewed ordinary people and bore witness to their dreams and struggles, took viewers by surprise. At the time of his death by suicide in June 2018, his career was in orbit. Next would have been a world travel guide with his longtime assistant, Laurie Woolever, and after his death, with the blessing of his estate, she carried on writing it. The result, World Travel, covers 43 countries and includes Bourdain’s recommendations for restaurants, hotels, and other favorite spots, fl eshed out with essays by his friends and family and Woolever’s own knowledge of his tastes. “It’s a hard and lonely thing to coauthor a book about the wonders of world travel when your writing partner, that very traveler, is no longer traveling that world,” she states in the introduction. What she has produced is more precious time in the company of Anthony Bourdain, and for that we thank her. heather hodson
THE COMPLETE MEMOIRS
by Pablo Neruda (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
“The southern rain is patient and keeps falling endlessly from the gray sky,” the literary, diplomatic, and political giant Pablo Neruda writes at the beginning his masterpiece memoir. The note of deep stillness it sounds is a far cry from the cosmopolitan world the Chilean poet would eventually help shape. From there, he kicks o his account of a life in which silent meditation lived hand in hand with relentless personal upheaval and movement. First published in 1974, the year following his death, and now released with newly discovered material, this expanded version of his memoirs gives color to the tumultuous story of his life, as he morphed from political leader to international exile to returning hero who would be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971 “for a poetry that, with the action of an elemental force, brings alive a continent’s destiny and dreams.” In his memoirs, Neruda shares himself through the language of someone who spent a life thinking in poetry. From chapter to chapter, he grounds the episodes that shaped him in the intimate recollection of unforgettable people, hidden spaces, new fl avors, and secret conversations. This is the revelatory self-portrait of a man whose contemporary, Gabriel García Márquez, another legend of Latin literature, once called “the greatest poet of the 20th century in any language.” mark libatique
MARIE-MONIQUE STECKEL
The first time Marie-Monique Steckel met an American was August 25, 1944, the day Paris was liberated after four years of Nazi occupation. She was five years old, and a neighbor brought her to the Place de la Bastille to witness the arrival of Allied forces as they marched in triumph through the city. A GI smiled and handed her an orange.
“I had never seen an orange before,” she recalls. “And that chance encounter with that young American soldier became a wonderful memory.”
Nearly eight decades later, Steckel is still reveling in the encounters she has with Americans. As president of the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) since 2004, she has worked to create a deep cultural relationship between France and New York.
“I grew up on an island the Île Saint-Louis—in the heart of Paris at the edge of the Pont Marie,” she says. “Bridges were a part of my daily routine—and I didn’t know it at the time, but my life was to build bridges between France and the United States.”
For more than a century, FIAF has worked to promote the traditions, values, and language of France. Its headquarters, in a 1920s Beaux Arts building on East 60th Street, is a powerful magnet for anyone who wants to learn French, soak up French culture, celebrate young artists, or meet leading French and Francophone thinkers, cinema directors, authors, and celebrities.
Ballet star Benjamin Millepied (aka Mr. Natalie Portman) showed off his first choreography here. Actress Isabelle Adjani and dancer Germaine Acogny have performed in FIAF’s avant-garde interdisciplinary Crossing the Line festival, and the World Nomads project has celebrated artists from Francophone countries, including Haiti, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Morocco.
Before Covid, FIAF was presenting 250 cultural events and welcoming more than 100,000 visitors a year. Scholars and amateurs alike accessed its French multimedia library, the largest in the United States.
But the pandemic froze most of FIAF’s activities and initiatives. Annual revenues of $12 million—raised from language center tuitions, memberships, events, and donations—plunged significantly in 2020, and FIAF was forced to shed about 30 percent of its staff.
“The pandemic has forced many New Yorkers to live under a bell jar,” says Steckel.
But the same spirit that drove her to plunge into the dark (and polluted!) waters of the Seine for a swim when she was six years old motivates her today. “I was taking risks then, and I take risks now,” she says.
As an undergraduate at Sciences Po in Paris, Steckel looked eastward to the Soviet Union as the subject of her studies. But when her father, a French historian of Roman epigraphs, was given a visiting post at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, she spent a year at Yale, where she met an American law student who would later become her husband. She joined FIAF after a series of jobs in marketing, including as director of
MADAME PRESIDENT Marie-Monique Steckel has presided over the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) since 2004; opposite: the organization’s elegant Beaux Arts headquarters on East 60th Street.
communications for a new party created by an upand-coming politician and later French president, Jacques Chirac.
In 2004 she commenced a years-long, $20 million project to transform FIAF’s outdated headquarters into a state-of-the art center with the addition of Le Skyroom, a 1,600-square-foot multipurpose atrium.
And FIAF’s renovated Florence Gould Hall has become a prominent venue for international cinema, theater, music, and dance.
“To be sure, 2020 was a challenge which pushed us to pivot online and reimagine all of our activities,” she says. “The pandemic has given us an expanded view of our mission. It gave us time to dream, and we are dreaming as big as we can.”
Among the dreams are new online platforms and film projects, as well as outdoor concerts and theater performances. “‘Everything outdoors’ is my motto; how we use the city in a new and more human way is my challenge,” she says.
FIAF is discussing with Lincoln Center ways to use its spaces together, and hopes to present a performance of Molière’s Tartuffe in Prospect Park next spring. And it will continue to rely on the army of native French speakers who provide FIAF’s “up-close and personal” language instruction. “Human contact with teachers is our secret to success,” she says. “It’s the importance of partage—the sharing—with students. You can’t get that online or through apps.”
And of course, the other element in this recipe for success is the city itself. “There is a freedom of ideas that is unique to New York,” Steckel says. “Here, the bigger the dream, the more success you have. Theatre, dance, art—it is always such a joy to be part of what is happening in New York. New York will enjoy a renaissance, and FIAF will be a major part of it.”
Bastille Day at FIAF was traditionally a grand event closed 60th Street between Lexington and Fifth and attracted as many as 40,000 visitors. This year it will be more subdued and smaller— perhaps only half as big.
“Maybe you can celebrate liberation from the pandemic by handing out oranges,” I suggest.
“Exactement!” says Steckel “Exactement!” —ElainE Sciolino
ANGÉLIQUE KIDJO
ANGÉLIQUE KIDJO
Singer
“W hat I love about Central Park, it’s available to people and there’s music,” says Angélique Kidjo, the celebrated Beninborn singer, who moved to New York City from France in 1997. She and her husband, the French producer and musician Jean Hébrail, love to spend afternoons there together, enjoying the sights and sounds. “We watch the children discover new types of music and projects. There, you have the ability to do that,” she says.
But it’s not just the park she cherishes about New York City—it’s also the culture, shopping, and food.
“I can travel around the world to wonderful venues, but when I come back to New York, there’s a festival right outside my doorstep,” says the Park Slope resident. “I put my shoes on and boom, there I go. You can find everything in New York, you just have to know where to go.”
That could mean an afternoon of shopping in SoHo, on Fifth Avenue, or her favorite district, between 10th and 23rd Streets. “I like the fact that the boutiques are smaller and have different types of choices,” she says.
For dinner, she enjoys Indochine across from the Public Theater on Lafayette Street or grabbing a slice at Grimaldi’s at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. “It’s so fresh. I’ve tried so many times to bring it back home and eat it, and it’s not the same because there are no chemicals in it.”
Kidjo says her French-African roots also give her a feeling of kinship with the tradition of social activism in New York City. Her newest song, “Dignity,” speaks of the youth in Africa who are fighting for their rights. “What they want is no violence,” she says, drawing a connection with the peaceful protestors who took to the streets of New York last summer, marching for dignity and respect. With Nigerian singer Yemi Alade, the two penned the song’s powerful lyrics about hope for humanity and equality. “Everything that I sing about is for that change, that’s what keeps me going,” she says.—DElaina Dixon
MAÏLYS VRANKEN
President and CEO, Vranken Pommery America
MARC LEVY
“N ew York is a lively and seductive city,” Maïlys Vranken tells Avenue. “It has that je ne sais quoi, as we say in French”— that certain something. She first visited the city at age 15, and after an internship at 21, vowed to return. A marriage and two children later, she got the chance in 2012, when she became the president and CEO of Vranken Pommery America, the storied Champagne house with vineyards in Europe, and now Napa Valley.
The company name is also synonymous with arts patronage (since the days of the formidable Madame Pommery, widow of the founder, and the first woman in France to receive a state funeral), a tradition Vranken has continued in America. For the past eight years it has sponsored the Armory Show, and since 2019 has funded the Pommery Prize, which splits $20,000 between a selected artist and their exhibiting gallery.
It’s no surprise, then, that Vranken is a devotee of New York cultural institutions like the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. But she also loves that it lives up to its name as the city that never sleeps.
“There’s always something to do every night,” she says, unlike in France, where things are usually quiet on Sundays. “That’s absolutely not the case in New York. You are able, if you want, to get out and go to a restaurant.”
Her favorite thing to do when out and about? Hearing live music. “I love jazz. I want to go to a jazz club again,” she says. “I think it will be the first thing I would do after the pandemic.” —aria DarcElla
MARC LEVY
Author
In his roughly 12 years of living in New York, author Marc Levy has witnessed the city go through several history-making moments, from presidential elections to now a pandemic. It hasn’t shaken his faith in the city.
“New York can rebound from everything. I mean everything,” he says. “And I’ve been through [Hurricane] Sandy.”
Levy has written more than 20 books— including 2012’s If Only it Were True, which was adapted into the Reese Witherspoon film
Just Like Heaven—many of which are set in the
United States. But to him, New York stands apart by virtue of its diversity.
“The perception and what you learn from living there on a daily basis are quite different,” he says. “For the first two years I was reluctant to say, ‘I’m a New Yorker.’ But now I can brag in France about that: I am a New Yorker.”
Levy, who is originally from Paris, and his family settled in the West Village in 2008, after years of splitting time between New York and London. And he’s already gotten a taste of the city’s reopening— earlier this year, he took his son, a die-hard Rangers fan, to a game at Madison Square Garden.
But there’s a different sort of garden he’s yearning to get back to: Union Square’s farmers’ market. “Packed, like in the old times,” he specifies. “You were grabbing an apple and you were picking your vegetables without feeling you were contaminating everything...that’s the whole thing about going to a real market: you have this very essential relationship with food. Of course my French origin is talking, but still.”—aria DarcElla
FABRICE GRINDA
Twenty years ago, most tech entrepreneurs would head to Silicon Valley to be where the action was. Fabrice Grinda went against the grain and set up shop in New York, which he found more stimulating. Turns out, he was ahead of the curve.
“I was one of the few tech investors in New York, and now I’m one of many,” he tells Avenue. “I’m seeing more and more opportunities in New York than ever before, so that comparative disadvantage 20 years ago has actually disappeared.”
Grinda, one of the top angel investors in the world, has backed more than 650 companies globally, including Uber, Farfetch, and Alibaba.
Born in the Paris suburb of BoulogneBillancourt, Grinda graduated from Princeton and moved to New York in 1996. After consulting at McKinsey & Company, he founded several companies before finally launching FJ Labs, a venture fund and startup studio.
For someone always on the hunt for the next big thing, it comes as no surprise that Grinda identifies “curiosity” as his defining trait. Luckily, the city keeps him on his toes. “It’s the center of the universe in terms of the highest density of extremely smart, ambitious people with access to anything that might strike your fancy,” he says.
In his downtime, Grinda enjoys events like virtual reality installations, or nights at Brooklyn’s nightclub/performance venue House of Yes.
“The beauty of New York is that new things keep coming up all the time,” he explains. “It’s an ever-renewing slew of offerings in every category.” —aria DarcElla A Togolese-born New York media entrepreneur who was educated in Paris, London, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his first act was as founder of Trace, a hip-hop magazine, in the 1990s. Its success introduced him to contacts including the former Citigroup and Time Warner honcho Dick Parsons. Today, Grunitzky is CEO of the Equity Alliance, whose mission is to expand venture capital access to women and people of color, which he cofounded with Parsons and fellow business titans Ronald S. Lauder, Kenneth and Ben Lerer, and Eric Zinterhofer, among others.
No wonder the meteoric career of this onetime freelance journalist has been published as a case study by the Harvard Business Review.
“New York is the one city that you can come into as an immigrant, with the hope it will be the land of opportunity, and where people don’t necessarily care about your country of origin,” Grunitzky told Avenue. “If you’re really good at
CLAUDE GRUNITZKY
Equity entrepreneur
what you do, and you work very hard and you’re very astute, New York is a place where things can accelerate really quickly.”
For a taste of home, he visits the African restaurants of Harlem. And to speak the languages of Togo, he heads to Times Square, where pre-pandemic many of his countrymen were employed selling Broadway tickets.
Grunitzky himself survived a bout with Covid, and his hope for the post-pandemic city is that it will once again become affordable for the creative class.
“I just hope the conversations will not necessarily always be about real estate, but be a bit more about creativity and rebuilding the city based on new values,” he says, adding that those values are baked into the Equity Alliance.
“I came to New York as a penniless immigrant who was really able to do all these things as a young man with the support of these great institutions and these wonderful people believed in me. And now, I see myself as a conduit to helping the next generation of really talented entrepreneurs.”—BEn WiDDicomBE
MATTHIAS DANDOIS
BMX Athlete
For someone who has made his career on a bicycle, New York City’s shutdown provided a unique opportunity. “It was crazy,” says Matthias Dandois, an eight-time BMX flatland world champion. “I had New York literally for myself...like in Vanilla
Sky, when [Tom Cruise] is by himself in Times
Square—it was exactly the same.”
In flatland, unlike other forms of BMX that include ramps and jumps, riders come up with creative, freestyle tricks and choreography on a completely level surface. The sport has taken the
Paris native across the globe. He only recently settled in New York, where he has several French friends, a few years ago.
“Moving to New York City was kind of a brain opener because something different is happening every day,” he says. “Especially riding BMX in the street, you [always] meet someone different, interesting, crazy.”
Dandois (who has had the “I ♥ NY” logo mixed with “BMX” tattooed on his inner wrist for about 20 years) is a resident of TriBeCa, and enjoys lower Manhattan features like Battery Park and the volleyball courts along the Hudson River. But if there’s one thing he and his girlfriend—model Constance Jablonski, another French expat who has called New York home for 12 years— particularly enjoy, it’s stand-up comedy.
“We spend a lot of time at the comedy club,” he says with a smile. “Right now it’s closed. But I can’t wait for it to open and come back. Hearing those guys cracking jokes...we will need that.” —aria DarcElla
LAËTITIA ROUABAH
Chef
New York’s restaurant scene is notoriously competitive, but Laëtitia Rouabah, the executive chef at Benoit—the American flagship of chef and restaurateur Alain Ducasse—isn’t one to back down from a challenge.
The city is “always moving, always new restaurants, always new things coming out,” she says. “If you’re a restaurant like Benoit, you need to be creative more and more, and always finding the new thing that will make a difference. Why will our guests want to come to Benoit? Now we are doing this, and next month we are doing another thing.”
When the city slowed during lockdown, Benoit was obliged to focus on delivery, and the menu was adjusted to only feature its classic and most popular dishes.
Rouabah has spent much of her career working under Ducasse. She has held top positions at several of his French restaurants, and even helped open his eatery at The Dorchester, in London, before moving to New York in 2016.
She has since been bowled over by the city’s diversity. Not just in its citizens (“there are many people mixed all together, it’s perfect”) and its culinary scene (“there is a restaurant every two meters”), but also by its geography.
“New York is a huge city,” she says. “You can go to the sea, and the day after can go to the snow. Everything is really, really close.”—aria DarcElla
ARIANE DAGUIN, SARAH WILMER; EMMANUEL PERROTIN IN JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL’S EXHIBITION “DARK MATTERS”, PERROTIN NEW YORK, 2018. PHOTOGRAPHER: GUILLAUME ZICCARELLI, COURTESY OF OTHONIEL STUDIO AND PERROTIN. ©JEAN-MICHEL OTHONIEL / ADAGP, PARIS & ARS, NEW YORK, 2021 ARIANE DAGUIN
Chef, D’Artagnan Foods founder
Back when nightlife in the city was in full swing, French friends of Ariane Daguin were in for a treat. The chef and founder of D’Artagnan Foods is a fan of speakeasies, and bar hopping is one of her favorite things to do with visitors.
“I rent a car with a driver. If possible, a stretch limo, because they’ve never seen that in France,” she says. “It’s fun because you have to have the password, or know the secret passage before you arrive...that’s something they can do in New York that they cannot do anywhere in the world.”
Of course, Daguin, a native of Gascony, has had decades to get to know the city intimately, since she first arrived in 1979 to attend Columbia
University. She took some time to adjust.
“I couldn’t find good chicken, I couldn’t find good cheese,” she says of the city’s food options at the time. “It was the very beginning of the
Union Square [farmers’] market, where people were very enthusiastic, but their goods were not really up to snuff, which has changed a lot.
“Today it’s pretty amazing how you go to any cheese maker at the farmers market in New York, which are several now, and they are amazing,” she says. “It’s as good as in Europe.”
It wasn’t just food products that have grown— she has also watched the entire restaurant scene evolve. French restaurants modernized their menus; chefs began embracing the limelight; bartenders became mixologists; and diners started religiously following food critics to keep up. “It was like all of a sudden people discovered that food is not just something to survive.”
But one major difference remains. “In France we have no ‘snacks.’ We have a goûter,” she explains. “So when you come here, you’re surprised because people are snacking all day long.” —aria DarcElla
EMMANUEL PERROTIN
Gallerist
“There is a certain energy and excitement here that can’t be matched anywhere else, and that is especially true for the Lower East Side,” says Emmanuel Perrotin, who opened his first New York gallery on the Upper East Side in 2013, only to move down to Orchard Street four years later.
“As in Paris, I love that you can find bits of history just by walking around the streets of New York. My gallery is a prime example. It is in a beautiful three-story building that used to be a Beckenstein fabric factory. I actually kept the original signage because it is part of the building’s history and it has a special charm.”
With galleries in Paris, Hong King, Seoul, Tokyo, and Shanghai, Perrotin has built formidable reputations for the artists he represents, including Takashi Murakami, Maurizio Cattelan, Sophie Calle, Xavier Veilhan, Daniel Arsham, Jean-Michel Othoniel, and JR, just to name a few.
“At the moment, I am excited about so many projects—among them the debut of JR’s documentary film, Paper & Glue, at the Tribeca Film Festival in June. The Paris-born artist works with local communities to create large-scale public murals that capture underrepresented stories. Later this summer, we will be presenting a recent project that he carried out at a maximum-security prison in Tehachapi, California. He is such a fantastic artist, who continually inspires me and challenges my perspective.
“Whenever I get free time away from the gallery, which is not often, I love walking around the city, especially to visit other galleries. This is one of the only cities in the US where you can be a pedestrian without looking out of place. There is a stereotype that New Yorkers are not friendly, but I have found that within each neighborhood there is a strong sense of community.”
And, if there has been a silver lining in the surreal times we have all been through in the city, he says, it is the Paris-style proliferation of outdoor dining options. “Outdoor patios have appeared everywhere. Let’s hope we keep them.”
As for how he defines luxury, Perrotin says, the most important aspect is to have time. “This past year, we had much more time, and we had the responsibility to make good use of it. It is also important to be daring. When we dare, we are often wrong. When we don’t dare, we are always wrong. Luxury is all about taking risks.” —anGEla m.H. ScHUSTEr
CHLOÉ MENDEL
Designer, Maison Atia
Faux fur label Maison Atia recently added another fake feather to its cap: the cruelty-free line is now completely sustainable. “Last year we were about 60 to 70 percent [wastefree], and this year we finally reached our goal with 100 percent,” explains designer Chloé Mendel.
Fashion is in her blood: she is a sixth-generation member of the family behind J. Mendel, the celeb-friendly brand currently helmed by her father, Gilles.
Though Mendel is a first-generation American, fond memories of family dinners at Upper
East Side mainstays like Le Bilboquet and La
Goulue have defined her experience of New York’s
French community.
“We would go every Friday night,” she said, noting that her father knew the owner. “This is something normal for French people. Now there’s a Le Bilboquet in Miami, they’re everywhere, but it wasn’t the case when we were growing up. It was just your neighborhood French restaurant where everyone knew everyone, and everyone spoke French.”
The designer cofounded Maison Atia in 2017 with her fellow Franco–New Yorker, Gustave Maisonrouge. In addition to their signature coats, the duo’s vision for animal-friendly luxury has led to partnerships, including one with the Baccarat Hotel on West 53rd street, crafting faux versions of its previously fur-covered salon armchairs.
“In the last 20 years, yes, I’ve seen lots of change,” Mendel says of the city. “But there’s still great food, there’s still great people, there’s still a lot of culture compared to other cities in the USA, and I don’t think there’s anything else like it.” —aria DarcElla
JEAN RENO
Actor
“W hat I missed is the movement of the people. Before the pandemic, people were all over New York moving and doing things, and during the pandemic everything stopped,” says the actor Jean Reno over the phone in his instantly recognizable, ursine baritone.
“The entire world became a ghost town, like the Rolling Stones song. I’m happy now because I see restaurants opening again and I see life going to the street.”
Though Reno has been to New York many times over the course of his career, he didn’t make the move permanent until 14 years ago. It
was entirely for personal reasons: it’s where his now wife, Zofia Borucka Moreno, lived.
“I was working all over America—Los Angeles, Dallas, Texas, and New York. I had been traveling for many, many, many years,” he explains. “And then I met my wife here while I was shooting The Pink Panther with Steve Martin. So, it led me to live here.”
Being all over the place is something of a recurring theme in Reno’s life story.
Born Juan Moreno y Herrera-Jiménez in Morocco to Spanish parents, Reno moved to France when he was 17. After a short stint in the French army (required for citizenship) he became an actor, using a Frenchified version of his name.
He eventually started nabbing international roles, including in blockbusters like Godzilla and Mission: Impossible, as well as cult favorites like Léon: The Professional. While the Hollywood machine has labeled him “French” ever since, he doesn’t consider himself to be.
“I live in the world. I don’t consider myself French, Spanish, or American, you know? That doesn’t interest me,” he says. “I work as an actor in French, Spanish, Italian, and English, so I have a connection with all the cultures, I think.”
One thing the pandemic didn’t change for Reno was work. He and his family were in Spain for part of 2020 while he was filming—although his job now includes getting Covid tests three times a week.
Despite his busy career—he has a Spanish TV show airing later this year, and two other projects currently in production—his thoughts never stray too far from home.
“[Whenever] I’m away, far from New York, I like to think that I’ll be back one day,” he says.
“Here I have the impression that everything is possible. It is a city that gives you that hope,” he adds. “New York gives you strength and magic—some magic impression in your mind every morning.”—aria DarcElla
ALEXANDRE ASSOULINE
Publisher
ALEXANDRE ASSOULINE, EMILIA BRANDÃO “Ilove the contagious energy of New York City. It makes you so much more open-minded, as it’s a wonderful hub of so many incredible cultures,” says second-generation luxury publisher Alexandre “Alex” Assouline. “One is not only exposed to a variety of backgrounds, but also to many different influences from around the world—whether it be in the art realm, cuisine, fashion…the list goes on.”
The Paris-born second son of Prosper and Martine Assouline, who moved to Manhattan along with his parents 14 years ago, has since forged his own path within the family firm. Starting out as a graphic designer, he soon took on the role of digital and marketing director, and now serves as global vice president for the publishing house. In addition to being charged with expanding business development—overseeing an umbrella of key departments, including marketing, communications, wholesale, retail, logistics, and digital development—Alex inaugurated a curated library service, in which he closely works with Assouline clients to visualize, design, and curate bespoke libraries.
“When it comes to the books we publish, it is all about luxury, which, for me, is all about representing culture as an essential element of true and unparalleled style.”
Off hours, he can be found enjoying a cocktail at Odeon, steak frites at Lucien, or taking in a game of le football at Félix in SoHo. “Every French person in New York meets here, and the energy is amazing,” he says.
“As we move into the new normal in the months ahead, I’m very excited to be able to reconnect with my past relationships and see how businesses and people have evolved or learned from this past year. Personally, I have re-shifted my priorities, and I think it really helped my own growth.”—anGEla m.H. ScHUSTEr
AS A NEW BOOK ILLUSTRATES, DIOR’S MARIA GRAZIA CHIURI IS REVOLUTIONIZING FASHION ONE FEMINIST IMAGE AT A TIME
Liberté, Égalité, Féminité
J’ADORING! Her Dior: Maria Grazia Chiuri’s New Voice includes photographs by fashion-world darlings Coco Capitán, this page, and Julia Hetta, opposite.
Maria Grazia Chiuri, who became the first female creative director of the house of Dior in 2016, wears her feminism on her sleeve—and, in the case of her debut collection, famously splashes it on
T-shirts, with stirring messages sampled from the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
It’s a stance that extends to collaborations with pioneering artists such as Judy Chicago, Bianca Pucciarelli Menna, and Mickalene Thomas, and clothing collections inspired by the likes of
Jacqueline Lamba and Leonora Carrington.
It is also palpable in Her Dior: Maria Grazia
Chiuri’s New Voice (Rizzoli; $95), an anthology featuring 33 women photographers whom she has worked with over the years, including a pantheon of greats (Sarah Moon, Nan Goldin, Brigitte
Lacombe) and relative newcomers such as Coco
Capitán, Zoë Ghertner, and Harley Weir—previewed here in Avenue.
An homage to female creativity, diversity, and the enduring codes of the venerable house, this collection of portraits and interior shots, many of them previously shot for the label’s namesake magazine, o ers a window into the complex theatre of female personae and reclaims the female gaze.
CLOSE COMFORT In images by Nan Goldin, this page, and Zoë Ghertner, opposite, Chiuri proposes a photographic intimacy that is never cloying.
“Women dressing women, looking at them, taking their portraits, talking about them,” Chiuri explains in a Q&A interview in the book. “The naturalness of this ‘female conversation’ ” is what I want to celebrate.”
Like many a fashion show, the wildly incongruent images by this “creative sorority,” as the designer refers to her unalike collaborators, pose more questions than they answer. But Chiuri wouldn’t have it any other way. Her idée fi xe—femininity, and where it intersects with the culture and society at large—is many things, reworked like so much toile in the atelier, but never obvious or one-note. “It is not one idea, but a multitude of ideas on femininity,” Chiuri says, adding that the label o ers her a laboratory for bringing her polyphonic vision to life. “It is the ideal terrain for defining the two-way relationship between fashion and feminism in the broadest sense.” —horacio silva
OPEN-DIOR POLICY Diversity, celebrated in photos by Katerina Jebb, above, and Sarah Moon, opposite, courses through the pages of Her Dior, left.
Saddle Up!
IN A RESTAURANT AROUND THE CORNER
FROM HER UPTOWN APARTMENT, AHEAD OF THE HAMPTON CLASSIC HORSE SHOW, CHAMPION EQUESTRIENNE GEORGINA BLOOMBERG MET MIKE ALBO FOR DRINKS AND DISH
I’m waiting outside a neighborhood restaurant on the Upper West Side for Georgina Bloomberg. Officially Pfizered, it will be my first indoor dining experience in a year, and I am having it with an heir to a $59 billion fortune.
Rushing down the street, she approaches with a strong-thighed power gait. “I’m so sorry I’m late. It’s because I live around the corner. It’s that typical New York thing—if we met downtown, I would be early.” She asks the host if we can dine in the back room, mindful that I get a good recording. We sit between plexiglass partitions at a table. No one else is there.
She’s in the city just for a little bit before heading back down to Wellington,
Florida (her tertiary home), to pack her things, her son, and her horses, and return north to her apartment here, but mainly to the house in North Salem and its barn and facilities. The horse show circuit is planning a full post-Covid comeback, and Bloomberg is a champion jumper.
She orders a black bean soup, chopped salad with shrimp, and a skinny margarita, which thrills me because now I can order a chardonnay and not feel judged. It’s been a long lockdown.
HI HO, PAOLA! Bloomberg and her trusty steed, Paola 233, placed second at the 2018 Longines Global Champions Tour stop in Miami Beach.
She asks the waiter to bring a container so she can save half her soup. “Don’t judge me. I’ve become my mother. We had this conversation at dinner last night about taking food home. My boyfriend [investment adviser Justin Waterman] has two half sisters. Their dad, who passed away a couple years ago, used to never let anybody in the family take food home because apparently it was very tacky. My mother—her father was in the Royal Air Force, so they were moving around a lot and they had no money. If somebody put something in front of you, you’re lucky to have it and you eat it. There’s no such thing as leaving food on your plate.”
“Totally!” I manage to reply between sips.
“I speak fast and I am repetitive” she warns. “Whenever I am interviewed, they’re like, can you slow down?”
I have been stuck inside for a year. My Zoompale skin hungers for the vitamin D of human contact. Not just any contact, but the “meet me for martinis and let’s gossip” kind. And who better for that than the impeccable, boldface Ms. Bloomberg?
The excuse to gossip—I mean, do journalism—is the Hampton Classic horse show, which returns in late August after having been canceled in 2020 for the first time in its nearly 50-year history. Bloomberg, who is on the Classic’s board, has already proven herself as a jumper—garnering top prizes, and appearing on the covers of fancy horse mags like Equestrian Living and Noëlle Floyd. Her philanthropic work continues unabated—including The Rider’s Closet, a venture she started 15 years ago, at age 23, to provide riding clothing to competitors in need (it’s an expensive sport, natch). Her young adult novels, including her debut The A Circuit, have been out for a couple years. Even the chatter about her having a child, unmarried, with her then-boyfriend-now-justfriend Argentine show jumper Ramiro Quintana, has died down. Her son Jasper is seven now.
There is a new photo book by Jim Dratfield coming out—Her Horse—about the relationship between girls and horses for which she wrote the foreword. The publicist asked that I mention her sponsorship with TechnoGym—a pricey line of home gym equipment she uses (when she isn’t squeezing a Pilates ball between her legs to strengthen the muscles needed to grip a saddle); she likes the Kinesis machine because “it’s very important for a horse jumper to be fit all over”). But Bloomberg didn’t really push any of that on me.
I was told initially not to ask about her father, or to talk about her accidents (she has fractured her back twice, exacerbated by reconstructive surgery for a curvature of the spine), but she didn’t hold back. She recovered from the surgery doped up on painkillers for three months, bingeing Toddlers & Tiaras (“It’s amazing, I’m totally
NEIGH SAYER Bloomberg with the handsome Quibelle in Wellington, Florida. Above right: The equestrienne poses with her father, former mayor Michael Bloomberg, and son, Jasper, in Bridgehampton in 2018.
addicted.”) And as proud as she is of her father’s political work, she can’t forget how he announced his run for mayor the day she graduated from high school. “I was like: ‘that one day?’” she says with a sigh.
She does talk fast. Maybe she was also desperate for a lunch and some dish like we all had in the before-times? (Heiresses—they’re just like us!)
Unlike older sister Emma, who secretly got divorced from first husband Christopher Frissora and then married Jeremiah Kittredge just last February, Georgina isn’t media shy—she’s Wikipediable, with a healthy Instagram. She can be seen frolicking with her boyfriend on vacation in the Dominican Republic, and, like most proud moms, delights in posting her son’s pony riding achievements. With a face that a beauty blog would classify as a perfect circle, she is photogenic and petite, but exudes strength in person. In a kidnap thriller, she would do a roundhouse kick, break down the door, and escape way before Liam Neeson ever arrived.
But—oh yes—we’re here to talk about the Hampton Classic. (Waiter? Another chardonnay, please.)
Bloomberg has been a competitive rider since she was four years old. The athletic sport (and it is athletic, she will remind you) became her world. No matter how she tried to pursue other things—fashion design at Parsons; photography and painting at
New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study—it kept calling her back.
That may be because, unlike subjective pursuits such as art, no one can say Daddy bought her jumping trophies. Bloomberg explains that horse shows consist of two divisions: hunters and jumpers. Hunters is focused on technique, scored by judges much like figure skating. Jumpers is essentially a race. “It’s just purely competition. If you clear the jump and you’re the fastest, you’re going to win. Nobody can say, ‘Oh, she won because the judge liked her.’”
Jumping is also one of the few mixed-gender sports out there. Bloomberg could compete against a muscular six-foot man, or a younger woman in her twenties (she is 38). But, she stresses, what matters is the match between horse and rider, and the rider’s dedication to that connection. Unlike the racing world, horse jumping takes months of preparation with the animal. “You’re getting to know them at home, you’re not just jumping on and going.”
Sure, money can buy the time at the barn, but, like figure skating, talent has no class. “I think of the top riders right now, and none of them come from money,” she says.
Bloomberg has put in her time. As a teenager, dating and relationships came mostly from the horse circuit. “I was just like, stay away from the New York City type of guy,” she says. In her twenties, she saw friends settling down, families starting. When the baby itch hit, she chose to have a child without the wedding ring and prenup. “I am, in my opinion, a single mom, but I’m very grateful that Jasper knows who his dad is, and that he’s a friend of mine. When I was pregnant, when Jasper was younger, I envied all my friends who were happily married. Now I have friends who are going through these horrible custody battles where they won’t speak to each other.”
She wants more kids. But that comes with a sacrifice. Unsurprisingly, there is gender disparity in the horse show world. There may be a special connection between girls and horses, but at the top level, females fall away. “There’s never been a female Olympic gold medalist” in the sport, she says.
That’s because jumping is one of the few sports where riders peak later in life, in their thirties and forties. For women, the choice of family or sport becomes stark.
“You have to face a life decision as to whether you want to have children and have a family, or whether you want to pursue this. When I look at the top, and I see the time they put in, and the sacrifices they make and what their family situation is, what their lifestyle is—I don’t want to be them. I want to have their level of success, but I know what it takes to have their level of success, and I don’t want to do that. I’ve seen what it takes, and men get let off easy that way.”
Still, she isn’t ready to give up on competing. “To me, when I go to barn, it’s not for pleasure. It’s because I’m preparing for the next competition. I’m supercompetitive. Don’t play me in Scattergories.”
The check comes. I make a feeble gesture to pay (later, my re-creation of this moment with friends will become comedy gold), but Bloomberg immediately pulls out her card. We walk out, her holding her black bean soup and rushing over to her son’s class at the American Museum of Natural History, me putting on my mask and taking the A train downtown, believing, once more, that the city is fun again.
Sitting in her cramped isolation cell in Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center, it is possible to imagine Ghislaine Maxwell’s mind is elsewhere.
She’s not thinking about the unforgiving prison lights, which are kept on around the clock, because correction officers fear she is at risk of committing suicide. She’s not thinking about the inedible jailhouse food, which has caused her weight to plummet; the mice and other vermin that notoriously infest the East Building in which she is held; or even the stench from leaking toilets on the floor above.
No, she is dreaming of a life outside jail, back in some luxurious quarter of Manhattan. And perhaps even—this would be ultimate—returning to the sophisticated social circles where she once rubbed shoulders with princes and presidents.
Because, as we know from her attorney’s multiple filings, each one laying out more detailed conditions under which the onetime socialite might be granted bail and be sprung from prison,
Ghislaine Maxwell has a comeback plan.
Like so much about her, it is stunningly audacious. The question is, could she possibly pull it off?
The former lover and longtime companion of Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in July 2020 on multiple charges related to the trafficking and sexual abuse of women and young girls. She was shocked—shocked—by the accusations, denying culpability in statements and pleading not guilty to each of the charges.
At the original arraignment, her attorneys proposed she be released on bail and held under house arrest in a luxury Manhattan hotel. This comes after she was apprehended at her home in New
Hampshire after evading the FBI for weeks, with passports from three countries in her possession and $20 million in assets linked to her. That offer was denied because she was deemed a flight risk.
In December, her second application for bail came with more offers—home confinement at a friend’s New York City residence enforced by electronic monitoring. Her close ties to the United States, including husband, tech CEO Scott Borgerson, would keep her there, her lawyers argued. And she would foot the bill for private security guards to monitor her whereabouts. Denied.
March brought a third request for bail with the offer of a $28.5 million bail package put up by herself, her husband, and various wealthy associates. Under this plan, she would also renounce her British and French citizenships, and move most of her and her husband’s assets into an account monitored by a retired federal judge. Denied.
April’s appeal of her third request came because her lawyer said guards in her Brooklyn jail were keeping her awake at night to ensure she does not commit suicide. She appeared with an unexplained bruise under her left eye and was reticent to explain how she got it. She reportedly told lawyers the bruise could be from shielding her eyes from the cell’s bright lights. Also denied.
While plotting her next bail offer and awaiting her trial, chances are good she’s also formulating how she will reclaim her reputation and status as the mysterious socialite who was welcomed to dinners and events up and down Park Avenue.
It’s probably not unlike the future Epstein envisioned for himself after he pleaded guilty in Florida state court to two felony prostitution charges in 2008 and served a 13-month sentence. While he served his time at the Palm Beach County Stockade, instead of the usual state prison, he received all kinds of extra services, like a cushy work-release program where he was able to use his own driver to be taken to his office and appointments.
Given that treatment, it’s not surprising he expected to be welcomed back into his social circles.
“No one really knew that much about Epstein’s legal troubles in Florida,” says Frederick Anderson, a fashion designer, who is extremely NYC–Palm Beach social. “Even in Palm Beach. He had a lot of friends and they kept it very quiet.”
Epstein even had meetings to strategize his return to social acceptance. R. Couri Hay, a seasoned society publicist, prepared a multistep road map that would refresh and restore Epstein’s reputation. Although Epstein never hired the adviser, the plan included a stint in rehab for sex addition; spiritual counseling from a rabbi; committing to Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates’s Giving Pledge to donate the bulk of his wealth to good causes; and, of course, a splashy sit-down interview with a sympathetic journalist.
In the context of other former social pariahs, who did their time and were then welcomed back into New York society, it didn’t seem like such a crazy idea.
Martha Stewart went to jail in 2004 for lying to the Feds and emerged to lead her company to financial comeback. It doesn’t matter that she’s now nearly 80—she’s as hot as ever especially with the cannabis cred she gained from her party show, Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party.
Michael Milken’s run as a real-life Gordon Gekko ended in 1989 when he pleaded guilty to securities and reporting violations; he went to prison in 1990, and his name became internationally synonymous with financial wrongdoing. Upon his release, receiving a diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer proved to be a lemon he turned into lemonade. Now he is regarded as a leading philanthropist, having raised tens of millions for medical research, and is a Hamptons mainstay with his foundation’s annual fundraiser.
VICTORIA’S SECRET SHOWS.”
FREDERICK ANDERSON
THEY’RE BAAAACK!
In 2004, Martha Stewart received a fi ve-month jail sentence and $30,000 fi ne for insider trading. She survived the media fi restorm and came out more famous than ever.
Michael Milken
became known as the “junk bond king” and in 1989 was indicted on 98 counts of fraud and racketeering. Diagnosed with prostate cancer the very month after his release from prison in 1993, he was inspired to devote his life to medical philanthropy. In 2014, George Washington University renamed its public health school after him, and he received a presidential pardon in 2020.
Disgraced restaurateur Josh Woodward made the gossip columns this spring for being out with his wife and friends in Palm Beach, following jail time for secretly dosing his pregnant ex-mistress with an abortion-inducing drug. Grotesque crimes don’t prevent anyone from getting a table on Worth Avenue, apparently.
Stephanie Winston
Wolko , the statuesque New York City social fi xer who became a senior advisor to former First Lady Melania Trump, spectacularly torched the relationship in a 2020 tell-all. Melania was so angry that she sicced the Department of Justice onto her ex-pal, alleging she violated a nondisclosure agreement; the lawsuit was later dropped by the Biden administration. But the public break served its purpose, with Wolkoff distancing herself from the controversies of the Trump era, and returning relatively unscathed to Manhattan.
EUAN RELLIE
A. Alfred Taubman, a convicted price fi xer between Christie’s and Sotheby’s, served jail time in 2002. He also doubled down on philanthropy as a way back into society’s good graces, donating enormous sums to the University of Michigan, Brown University, Harvard University, Lawrence Technological University, and the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.
Should Maxwell emerge from this legal trouble unscathed, is it possible she could return to the cocktail circuit around which she once swanned? She does have a long history and vast social network, which could work to her advantage.
“Ghislaine always had a bit of mystery about her,” says Euan Rellie, investment banker, English ex-pat, man-about-town and host of many dinners, who ran in the same social circles as Maxwell. “In the old days, people liked that, that her dad [media mogul Robert Maxwell] was faintly disreputable. People like colorful, fl awed, and roguish, and will even accept a little bit of dishonesty, socially.
“Her father’s death was so tragic [the elder Maxwell died under mysterious circumstances in 1991]. We all felt sorry for her. She was always popping in and popping out,” says Anderson. “My friends would get excited when ‘Ghislaine’s in town’ and she’d come to dinner.”
There was an unsavory undercurrent to her interactions, Anderson admits, which was a red fl ag for him. “She was always trying to get her friends to apply for passports from that island they had [Little Saint James in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which was owned by Epstein]. If they had enough citizens, they could claim it was a territory,” he explains. “I did always think it weird that she was the go-to girl if you wanted tickets to Victoria’s Secret shows.”
It would be a hard sell, “for her to come back,” Anderson theorizes. “There would have to be an anchor—someone to stand up for her. She would have to confess or do something spectacular and repent.” He added, “The way she’s complaining about things in jail—she has no way back,” as it smacks of entitlement, not contrition.
“America, and New York especially, is a very forgiving place, with generosity and openness,” Rellie explains. “I think what Maxwell has [allegedly] done are things that won’t easily be forgiven. I think the #MeToo movement is causing a serious long-term social realignment…. Anyone taking advantage of young women is a social crime, and it’s cast in a very diff erent light today.”
He added, “We all know fi nanciers who have skirted close to the law. One financial crime can be forgiven. But we won’t accept predatory behavior—that’s my thinking.”
Calls seeking comment to Bobbi Sternheim, Maxwell’s attorney, were not returned.
Even as Maxwell’s return to Upper East Side society seems unlikely, others who have recently had their reputations singed for various (noncriminal) reasons are quietly slipping back onto the circuit.
One prominent example is Stephanie Winston Wolkoff , who spilled secrets about her disastrous working relationship with the Trump White House in her book Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady. When the book fi rst appeared, many wondered if such a detailed kiss-and-tell would be social suicide, or a lifeline from Washington’s “swamp” back to New York.
“She told way too many secrets,” Anderson says, “because with these people, mum’s always the word.” But, he added, “Stephanie is solid. She’s not a criminal and she has plenty of friends. There are no hurt feelings with her. She will ease her way back in.”
For a certain inmate currently moldering inside the MDC in Sunset Park, such a controlled social reentry must seem like a shining road map. Add that to the plan.
