“My visit to New York was short,” said Denise Hale of the San Francisco Hales. “I’d just come back from Europe and Jordan where I went to see Petra as a guest of the young Queen Rania. And then I went to Belgrade with Nancy and Zubin [Mehta] where Zubin conducted the first concert after the Revolution with the new president and his wife in the audience. Now I’m off to Bangkok and Angkor-Wat for the New Year.” Is that all?
Not to hurt her little feelings but some of her simply dozens and dozens of New York friends were thrilled her latest visit was a short one, mainly because she leaves big-time exhaustion in her wake. The spin she’s in when she’s here has come to be known as Hale (pronounced Hell) Week — lunches, dinners, dinners, lunches non-stop — where she shows up in her latest numbers — clothes that are so Denise — almost all of them designed by her pal, Gianfranco Ferre. At the lunch she gave for 24 at Le Cirque (Deeda Blair, Cecile Zilkha, Carolina and Reinaldo Herrera, Graydon Carter, Gale Hayman, Judy Taubman, Judy Ney, Pat Patterson, Pauline Pitt, Doda Voridis, like that) she wore a purple silk jacket lined with sable and her signature flannel pants. Not to be missed.
At Gale Hayman and Bill Haseltine’s dinner for her at Swifty’s (Martha Stewart, Kenneth Jay Lane, Bob Hormats of Goldman Sachs International, Peter Bacanovic, the Taubmans), she wore a midnight-blue broadtail coat, blue silk pants and a diamante choker that more or less lit up the room.
At Khalil Rizk’s dinner in her honor at his practically 100 percent marble townhouse (Prince Pierre d’Arenberg, Lee Thaw, Deeda and Bill Blair of Washington, Marina Cicogna, Pete Hathaway, Mary McFadden, Iole Rizk, Mario Buatta, Pierre Durand, Boaz Mazor, Johnny Galliher) our heroine was all in dark gray silk with dazzling buttons, and at Douglas Cramer’s spread for her in his sky-high, art-filled dining room (Ahmet and Mica Ertegun, Cecile and Ezra Zilkha, Francesca Stanfill, Georgette Mosbacher, Nick Dunne, Richard Nye, etc.) the one in the wine-colored jacket and short, jeweled skirt was Denise. Of course, it was the same skirt and jacket she wore to Jackie and Paul Desmarais’s big lunch in Montreal, so, my God, she does wear the same thing twice.
Related Articles
You May Also Like
Mrs. Hale was done up in burgundy satin at Connie and Randy Jones’s divertissement where the hostess wore Oscar de la Renta’s long red dinner dress; Joan Rivers wore strapless blue satin and sapphires; Brooke Hayward and Peter Duchin were in fine fettle; Nancy Holmes wore red satin, and C.Z. Guest wore red taffeta. And that is more than enough of that.
Oh, and Pauline Pitt and Jamie Niven have just been visiting La Hale at her picturesque ranch in Northern California where the natives were glad to see them, and John Traina gave a dinner for Pauline at the Traina Vineyards in Napa Valley and another one in San Francisco at the new Ghirardelli Square restaurant owned by Don Johnson and friends. Are Pauline and Jamie an item? Well, yes and no. Ask them.
Who are not an item, not even a couple, after years of clinging to a stormy marriage, are Cristina and Gerald Goldsmith of Palm Beach. Absolutely no one is surprised.
May we take a minute from the royals in Great Britain to chuck the royals of Scandinavia under the chin? In Sweden, the royal realtors, otherwise known as the Ministry of Justice, are busy looking for a new castle so that their adored Crown Princess Victoria can live on her own when she returns to Stockholm after finishing her studies at Brown. Of course, it’s possible she could find a pied-a-terre among the 600 rooms mummy and daddy have in their castle, but darling, dimpled Victoria is so popular she can get anything she wants when she wants it. Also, one day she’ll be running Sweden, you understand. Oh, and she’s in love, and one likes to have a private place to entertain one’s beau without a king and queen skulking about. Meanwhile, in neighboring Oslo, there will be two extra stockings on the royal Norwegian fireplace this year because Crown Prince Haakon is bringing his newly-betrothed Mette-Marit Tjessem and her little son, Marius, to share Christmas with the family — never mind that she is an unwed mother. As for Denmark, they only wish their Crown Prince Frederick would bring home a potential princess, no matter what her past. He and Prince Albert of Monaco persist in dragging their feet, which reminds me of an article in The New York Times a year ago. A reporter asked a Scandinavian woman how she felt about sexual freedom in her country and Scandinavian men in general. “I’d trade them all for five minutes with an Italian,” said she. So much for hot love in cold countries.
Industry insiders, whoever they are, are saying Kevin Costner’s performance in New Line’s “Thirteen Days,” the story of the Cuban missile crisis, is Oscar caliber and Kevin’s big comeback flick. He plays Kenneth O’Donnell, Bruce Greenwood is JFK and Steven Culp is RFK with Kevin co-producing. It opens Christmas Day in New York. Next up is “Fifteen Minutes” starring Robert DeNiro and Edward Burns with DeNiro playing a superstar New York City homicide detective and Burns playing a talented New York City Fire Department arson investigator. For that one you’ll have to wait until February. I can if you can.