Model Christie Brinkley arrived promptly, wearing a pale gray pencil skirt and matching motorcycle jacket. “We just drove in from the Hamptons right now, but it turns out everyone from out there is here!” she told the Transom. Outside on the patio, FIT museum curator Valerie Steele lit up a ciggie.

After guests were seated, Ms, Brown, her black turtleneck cinched at the waist with a leopard-print belt, clinked on a glass and said, “We all love Donatella. She is so stylish, so elegant, I don’t know how she stays looking so good and so young!”

Ms. Brown described Ms. Versace’s latest philanthropic effort, a partnership with the Whitney Museum’s Education Department, the One Foundation (an organization helping children recover from last year’s earthquake in China) and Starlight Children’s Foundation, which helps ill children in the U.S.

Quail was served. Author Jay McInerney dug purposefully into his, while the CFDA’s Fern Mallis took a more delicate approach. 

“I always meet so many fascinating people at Tina’s luncheons,” Ms. Brinkley said after petits fours. “You know I was tweeted about during lunch! Mika Brzezinski, I guess, has a large Twitter following, and she tweeted about me during lunch!” (Ms. Brinkley also revealed that she’s on Facebook.)

At the coat check, photographer Bruce Weber waited behind hotelier André Balazs. “It’s like a family reunion seeing her again,” Mr. Weber said of Ms. Versace. “We were just talking about the fun we used to have traveling together and how open people were back then and willing to take risks. I wish it was still like that.”