Natalie y Gael * Buying the Cow * Midnight Train to Georgia
Natalie Portman and Gael García Bernal, the star of “Y Tu Mamá También,” have moved in together in Natalie’s downtown digs. Mexican-born GGB is muy caliente, a coverboy (Interview) who is being gobbled up by filmmakers for one movie after another. Natalie has been out of the country lately and Bernal goes back to Mexico from time to time, but for the moment, that’s what’s going on with the two cuties.
What to give a boyfriend who has everything including the richest girl in the world: Athena Roussel, who turned 18 last January and who now controls the vast $7 billion Onassis shipping empire, bought her Brazilian boyfriend, Alvaro Alfonso de Miranda Neto, a cow at a São Paulo cattle auction. Before you laugh too hard, you have to know that the animal has a championship pedigree and costs $350,000. Its value will multiply many times as it becomes a part of the breeding stock on Alvaro’s cattle ranch. That is if it lives up to its name, Esperança, which is Portuguese for “hope.”
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The London social season continues to glitter, filled as it is with the little niceties that make England so very very English. Roger Moore checked into the Ritz and was greeted by the staff as Mr. Moore, but when he left last week, they called him Sir Roger because during his stay there, he was knighted by the Queen. Sir Roger also celebrated his 76th birthday during his visit with his family, including his wife, Kiki, and son, Geoffrey, who owns the trendy West End restaurant, Hush. Also passing through the Ritz’s revolving doors recently were King Constantine of Greece and his sister, Queen Sofia of Spain, who booked a table for 10 for lunch with their families. At different tables in the Ritz restaurant were such as Princess Michael of Kent, who will be in New York next week to lecture at the Metropolitan Museum, Lady Thatcher and a host of others, if not just like them, close enough.
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Beautiful Princess Arriana von Hohenlohe flew to London from Palm Beach where she and her husband, Dixon Boardman, have just bought a house on a golf course. Arriana will keep her horses, Baby and Gatsby, at nearby Wellington. The reason for Arriana’s London trip was the wedding of Elizabeth Esteve, the lovely young Brazilian heiress known to her friends as “Beannie,” to Pyrros Vardinoyannis, a scion of the Greek shipping family, at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Aghia Sophia. Arriana, one of Beannie’s witnesses, was her roommate in Paris during their school years, so you know she just had to be there.
Among those filling the pews in couture day dresses and spectacular hats were Arriana’s mother, Princess Jackie zu Hohenlohe, who recently moved to Marbella; Sally Aga Khan, who was divorced from the Aga Khan in 1994 after 25 years of marriage; Barbara de Portago, dressed by Givenchy; Wendy Stark of the Hollywood and Beverly Hills Starks; American designer Alexandra Lind, and Barbara Learyin a blue tweed suit by Chanel.
Arriana, wearing a cocoa-colored Valentino suit and a chocolate-colored hat with a little feather shooting out of the brim, called Beannie’s dress “quite possibly the prettiest wedding dress in the history of wedding dresses.” Spoken like a true ex-roommate. This off-the-shoulder Snow White confection was nipped in to show off the bride’s tiny waist and had a perfectly fitted little jacket with an Elizabethan collar. Her lace veil and seemingly endless train and the gown were all designed by Julien Macdonald for Givenchy.
That night, the Queen’s cousin, Lady Elizabeth Anson, London’s top party planner, organized a sumptuous seated dinner and ball for 500 bright young things and their parents at Wycombe Park, the 18th-century Palladian mansion seen in the movie, “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Among those all thrilled over the fireworks extravaganza and dancing to the Gold Singers until breakfast and beyond were Prince Pierre and Sylvia D’Aremberg; Arriana’s stepmother, Princess Ira von Furstenberg, in Chanel; Arriana’s brother, Prince Hubertus zu Hohenlohe; Daphne Guinness; the fashion maven, Isabella Blow; the Brazilian plastic surgeon, Yvo Pintanguy; Tamara Beckwith and on and on and on. The groom gave the bride a blinding diamond necklace for a wedding present — blinding, maybe, but she could see it all right — and whisked her off on their honeymoon in a black Bentley. “Only Pyrros knows where we’re going,” Beannie laughed as she glided off with pink and white rose petals fluttering all around her. It’s the only way, really.
Just when it seems the brilliant dancers of American Ballet Theatre cannot possibly dazzle anymore than they already do, they do. The company’s opening-night fall gala at City Center was a triumph with the ever magical stars, Paloma Herrara, Gillian Murphy, Jose Manuel Carreño, Irina Dvorovenko, Maxim Beloserkovsky and Angel Corella, and the corps de ballet performing on wings for the delectation of 400 fans. The chairmen of the evening were Muffie Potter Aston and Dr. Sherrell Aston, Julia and David Koch and Chris and Grace Meigher. The evening was underwritten by Akris, the German fashion giant with a new store on Fifth Avenue.
After the show, the guests went on to the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza for supper. You would have loved the all-done-up crowd. Nan Kempner was there, all in white. Wendy Vanderbilt wore one of her collection of beautiful jackets and one of her collection of beautiful necklaces. Susan Fales-Hill, always one of the most beautifully turned out women in New York, wore a vintage black skirt embroidered in silver. And Blaine Trump wore a black va-va-voom vintage number fringed at the hem and showing off quite a lot of the famous Trump legs. Grace Meigher showed off her tan all over in bronzy brown chiffon. Also celebrating were ABT’s famous artistic Kevin McKenzie and his wife, Martine van Hamel; Barbie Bancroft; Jill and Walter Fischer (he is the chairman of Rolex); Ellen and Ian Graham; the Lyden twins, Dr. David and Peter of ABT; Peg and Lew Rainieri, the big man at ABT; Dr. Aaron Hill; Peter Bacanovic; Alex Hitz; Nancy Zeckendorf; Fernanda Kellogg and Kirk Henckels; George McNeely, and Judy and Sam Peabody — darling Judy was ABT’s 2003 woman of the year.
Her clients come to her looking for good taste, style and discretion, and her good works are legion. No wonder Carolina Herrera is the guest of honor at the South Bronx Educational Foundation’s annual benefit at the Roosevelt Hotel on Nov. 4. The Foundation is particularly excited to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Rosedale Achievement Center for Women, which has a long history of working with young women who face economic and social obstacles. Carolina will be front and center in all her glory.
Savannah’s fifth annual Film Festival starts tomorrow and the crowds from Hollywood, New York and London headed there include director Arthur Penn, who will get a lifetime achievement award; Army Archerd, celebrating his 50th year as a columnist at Daily Variety; Alec Baldwin, whose Las Vegas-based film, “The Cooler,” will be screened; Thora Birch; Paul Morrissey, who directed Andy Warhol’s movies; George Segal; Debra Winger; Rosanna Arquette, and Sony Classics co-presidents Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, who have three new movies in the festival. The festivities will open with Miramax’s new movie, “The Barbarian Invasions,” and close with Fox Searchlight’s new Jim Sheridan movie, “In America.”
The pièce de résistance at the festival each year is the Halloween night candlelit dinner in Bonaventure Cemetery, where a lot of the action in “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” takes place.