Another Fashion Reunion Party!

Summer may have begun on June 21, but things were really hot a couple of days earlier in New York City, and I'm not talking about the weather.  Yes, I attended yet another fashion reunion party hosted by model Nancy Donahue and hairdresser Harry King, a party not just for models and hairdressers but also for photographers, modeling agents, magazine editors, and . . . me.  I got invited, as always, because of my diligent work in preserving the work of the models of the 1970s and 1980s on my beautiful-women picture blog, which a couple of these models somehow managed to discover back in the waning days of the two thousand zeroes.  Nancy and I have been friends on Facebook since December 2009, making my friendship with her one of my longest of any model I've connected with online. :-)

And here she is with two of her peers, both of whom I met for the first time at her 2018 party, my sixth.  (In fact, I saw a lot of people I'd never met before at this party, and I enjoyed meeting all of them.)

Nancy is joined here by Barbara Neumann, at left, and and Joy Bell, both models themselves. Barbara Neumann was a top model in the late seventies and worked a lot in Paris, and she's since worked as managing modeling agencies, serving as a director of the men's divisions of the Ford and Wilhelmina agencies in Florida.  Joy Bell worked in Italy, France, England the the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s, working with photographers like Irving Penn and doing editorials for many fashion magazines.  She took a break from modeling before returning to the profession to do assignments aimed at women of her generation.  One of those assignments was for a Time cover article on - wait for it - female midlife crises.   I met both of them, and they are very nice women.  Joy Bell has a personality as bright and clear as her name. :-)

The party was well attended, no doubt in thanks to the new location - the Soho Grand Hotel on West Broadway in Lower Manhattan.  The room appeared to be bigger than the space in the old Parlor nightclub, which meant more room for dancing for these veterans of the 1970s and '80s fashion scene to the music of their time, courtesy of a DJ named Delphine Blue - which meant lots of Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Ha ha!  I am kidding, of course, as no one who liked Zep and Skynyrd back in the day would have been considered cool enough to hang out with models, fashion photographers, hairdressers and makeup artists.  But of course, even though this was a '70s and '80s fashion party, fashion icons from other periods were welcome too.   

The evergreen Linda Morand, who's been modeling since the sixties, was also there, and I was happy to see her.  We actually managed to exchange words - hard to do when there's a combination of a din and loud music! :-D - and she was pleased to see me again.  A seventies model who was also pleased to see me again was Jany Tomba (below), whom I got a picture of while she was posing for someone else.  It was that kind of party.    

A familiar and familiarly beautiful face I am always glad to see at these parties is that of Yasmine Sokal Guenancia, whose auburn hair made for a stunning and arresting presence in ads and editorials in the fashion magazines of the late 1970s.  Here she is below - still looking stunning and arresting in a black dress - with Bonnie Pfeifer Evans.

And who, you may ask, is Bonnie Pfeifer Evans?  She's a one-time model who has also worked as a fundraising consultant in New York, specializing in charities fighting AIDS.  I've seen her at many of Nancy and Harry's other parties, but I found out a little more about her that blew my mind.  She was married to New York businessman Charles Evans until his death in 2007.  And while that name may not sound familiar to you, perhaps you've heard of his brother - film producer Robert Evans.

So, Bonnie was, or is, Robert Evans's sister-in-law.   But her tireless work in the fight against acquired immune deficiency syndrome - a disease that is not, in fact, in decline - ought to make it clear that she deserves to be identified as someone other than a wife, widow or in-law.  She's doing very well carving out a distinguished identity on her own.

And then there was one of my all-time favorite models, Beverly Lee, who has a very formidable persona herself, having been the first major American model of Asian origin.

Beverly Lee remains as exotically beautiful as ever, and she's become a regular at Nancy and Harry's annual party.  She even looks great in horn-rimmed glasses! Here she is talking and laughing with Alva Chinn, another pioneering model of color and a dear friend of mine, while Bev's husband Robert Muscovite checks his smartphone.  

And here's Beverly Lee with makeup artist Pam Geiger, the two of them somehow managing to have a conversation while DJ Delphine Blue spins some platters in the background.  ("Funk #49" by the James Gang, maybe?  What do you think? :D )  

And while Madame Blue went over her request list (my request for "Green Grass and High Tides" by the Outlaws was denied), Bev chatted with a model I'd never heard of before I met her at this party.  Shailah Edmonds (above) is a veteran of the New York and Paris fashion scene, having done numerous assignments that took her all over the world.  She is now pursuing her career as a jazz vocalist, and she also coaches young models who are making their way in the business.  Both she and Beverly Lee are alumni of Ford Models, which is the premier modeling agency in the world of fashion and beauty. 

So you would have to assume that Ms. Lee and Ms. Edmonds look even more lovely in person, yes?  Absolutely. :-)

Of course, when I got to the Soho Grand, I was hoping to stay as long as possible so I could still be there WHEN DAWN ARRIVED!  No, I don't mean I hoped to stay until 5:30 in the morning.  New York fashion parties, legendary as they are, don't last that long.  I mean Dawn Gallagher, of course.

Dawn Gallagher is a nice Irish girl from Buffalo who was discovered by a fashion photographer in The City That Never Thaws and given his business card, which she promptly . . . put in her desk drawer and forgot about.  That is, until she later saw his name in a photo credit in a fashion magazine and realized he was legitimate.  And that's when she called the number on the card, and the rest is history. To think . . . she could have just as easily never seen this photographer's name in a fashion magazine and never known he was for real, then she never would have called him and become a top model . . . and then she would have missed the pleasure of meeting me! And she would have also missed the pleasure of posing for me in the picture above. :-)

And then I would have never gotten this picture.

Here's Dawn, dancing to Molly Hatchet's 1979 classic "Flirtin' With Disaster."  Ha ha, I caught you - no, Delphine Blue wouldn't have played those lead-foot stompers either, and I don't remember what was playing at this particular moment, but Dawn probably was dancing to a song from 1979 . . . just not the kind of song I could play air guitar to.

I don't dance. Fortunately, my dear friend Shanti Patty Owen - whose new memoir you already know about - does, and that I'm grateful for, because it produced this wonderful action shot! :-)

She liked this shot too. :-)

I'd gotten tipsy on Scotch and Coke without the Scotch, so I was a little taken aback when someone out of nowhere recognized me as she arrived; I didn't know I was that popular! :-D It was Kim Charlton, the lovely blonde model from the early 1980s who's now a real estate agent.  Also as happy to see her as I was was Joey Hunter, a legendary modeling agent who now works for a company providing software services to the modeling profession.  Kim couldn't help but go soft on him at the party.

Some guys have all the luck.

I mean, what could be better than to be kissed by a beautiful woman and greeted with a smile like that? 

I stole a couple of hugs and kisses from many a lovely lass at the Soho Grand. Who?  Sorry, I don't kiss, hug and tell. ;-)

But I can tell you this: Geoffrey Saunders, Nancy Donahue's public-relations man, got this photo of me standing next to one of Delphine Blue's speakers, which was not playing Deep Purple's "Highway Star." :-D  

Okay, Steve, you're asking me now, how do we know you were even there?  How do we know that all those other pictures are yours?  There aren't any pictures of you with a beautiful model or anything.

You asked for it. :-D

Yes, that's me with Beverly Lee, whom I had developed a crush on back when I was a teenager.  I don't know what prompted her to offer me to pose with her - and of course I said yes without hesitation - but it might have been because I'd taken all those pictures of her. :-)  After we looked at the photo on her smartphone, she turned to me and said, "You're very photogenic!"  

Oh my God, one of the most beautiful women of all time called me photogenic!  I was so floored - I don't think I could have possibly thanked her adequately for that compliment! 

There were several other famous faces at Nancy and Harry's get-together, including French model Anne Bezamat, who I regrettably missed this time - I think she got there after I had to leave to get the bus home.  But, as you can see from the image above, I don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. :-)  And posing with Beverly Lee was very good indeed. :-) 

As with ever other fashion reunion party I have attended, it was a night to remember, even if the music was to be forgotten. ("Got To Be Real"?  Get real!)  Okay, Delphine Blue did play the Rolling Stones from the Some Girls / Tattoo You era, so I really can't complain.

I was with beautiful women.  Do you hear me complaining? Until next time, of course. :-)

(And I was only kidding about requesting a record from the Outlaws.) 

How About Another Fashion Reunion Party?

For the fifth time in a row, this past month, I attended the annual spring soirée hosted for veterans of the fashion world by top model Nancy Donahue and hairdresser Harry King, at a club in Lower Manhattan.  And at least one blogger documenting models of that period was also invited - that would be me.

It's always a guess as to who shows up when you arrive at one of Nancy and Harry's parties.  In fact, the only guarantee is that Nancy and Harry will be there.  I was hoping for a big surprise, like when Anne Bezamat showed up in 2016.  I got one when I saw the tall and lovely brunette Catherine Roberts walk into the club.  I took this picture of Catherine shortly after she arrived.  (I took every other photo from the party in this blog entry except for two of them.)

The dim lighting in the above photo of Catherine has an effect similar to that in many of her late-seventies Charles of the Ritz cosmetics ads.

Here's Catherine with Geoffrey Beene model Liz Lee.

And here's Catherine with makeup artist/hair stylist and photographer Joseph Boggess.

Gee, you think I have a thing for Catherine?

Yes, and the thing is this.  Catherine Roberts was and remains one of the most beautiful and one of the most astonishing models in the business.  Her lovely face and her classy demeanor have long made her one of the most sought-after models for advertisements for not just fashion and beauty products but for accessories and even beverages.  Sadly, she's better known by sight than by name, as she's done little editorial work and thus rarely gets an identifying credit.  Also, Catherine was one of the first models to discover my blog and befriend me on social media. She is a very sweet and engaging woman, and I greatly appreciate my friendship with her.  And, because she doesn't  live in the New York area, I hadn't seen her in person in four years.  That's why I was so glad to see her and why I am eager to sing her praises here.  

Of course, there were several other models at Nancy and Harry's party, many of whom are my friends as well.  One of them is Bhavaja Kat, who posed with me for this picture.

Bhavaja and I have a shared history in that we both grew up in the same part of New Jersey, though we didn't know each other then.  While she still looks stylish, she now pursues another profession, and that is all I'm going to say about that, because it's none of your business.  

I can say this . . . she knows Beverly Lee, the groundbreaking Asian-American model from the 1970s and 1980s.  They were happy to pose together for me.

Ms. Lee, still the beautiful woman who made me sigh when I was a teenager, was a favorite of the designer Hubert de Givenchy.  She and Kat worked together a lot.

I also got this great picture of model Dawn Gallagher, another dear friend of mine, with some friends of hers that I regrettably (and ironically) cannot identify.

Of course, how could I not get a picture of the always lovely Nancy Donahue, the hostess with the mostest? Nancy was the first top model I ever met in person, I having met her when she was doing a promotional event for her body-buffer product at Bergdorf Goodman in Midtown Manhattan, and she's gotten more beautiful since then.  And she always dresses to impress.  Here she is in a stunning red and green evening dress with Dawn Gallagher and two gentlemen - photographer Hamid Bechiri (in hat) and L.J. Kirby, who used to work at Studio 54.

Ah yes, Studio 54, the disco nightspot popular in the 1970s among the many people who attended this year's fashion reunion party, though I was too young to frequent 54 back in the day - not that I would ever have been let in, as they would have sized me up as a Jethro Tull fan.  Jethro Tull records there were not, obviously, among the records played at this year's spring fashion party, but there were plenty of records from Donna Summer, the Silver Convention, and Gloria Gaynor, and although I prefer the Cars' "Let's Go," which revolves around the lyric "I like the night life, baby," I had to put up with Alicia Bridges singing "I Love the Night Life" instead.  However, I can honestly say that I would rather hear Carol Douglas sing "Doctor's Orders" (which I heard at the party) than hear Carl Douglas sing "Kung Fu Fighting" (which I didn't).  But some classic rock did make its way into the soundtrack - the Beatles ("I Saw Her Standing There," appropriate for a setting with so many beautiful women), the Rolling Stones ("[I Can't Get No] Satisfaction"), and Sly and the Family Stone ("Dance To the Music," of course).  

And Nancy can dance to all of it. :-)

She sure can cut a rug . . . or could have if there had been a rug on the floor.

Yours truly got in the picture more than once, such as in this photo of me with model Asia Dyrkacz, taken by my pal Fred DeVito . . .

. . . and in this selfie.  Recognize the lovely lady in the background? ;-)

It was another night to remember fondly, made sweeter by Catherine Roberts' surprise appearance. As someone I've known longer than anyone else at the festivities - even Nancy - she obviously holds a special place in my life, and, well, I'll leave it at that.  To those who still ask me how iconic and how distinguished she is as a model, well, I need only show you one of her Charles of the Ritz ads from the late 1970s.

One picture is worth a thousand words. :-)