Where else but at a New York Observer party could you find Katie Holmes posing with Mayor Bloomberg, while off by the bar Jay McInerney, Peter Stevenson and George Gurley waxed reminiscent about Candace Bushnell? Or see Spike Lee, Donald Trump, Ron Perelman, Rupert Murdoch and Rex Reed together in the same room at the Four Seasons?
As publisher Jared Kushner greeted guests with wife Ivanka Trump at the door, the history of New York’s favorite pink paper was evident in the room, with former editors Peter Kaplan and Elizabeth Spiers mingling among the crowd alongside current editor in chief Ken Kurson. Observer Media Group CEO Joseph Meyer and lovely wife Nicole Kushner Meyer took a night off from their other full-time job as new parents to meet the crowd, with president Mike Albanese rounding out the representatives of the paper’s new leadership.
In what will go down as the most illustrious party in the newspaper’s history–and in the history of newspapers, if we may be so bold–last night’s fete celebrating The New York Observer’s 25th Anniversary Issue and its list of 100 Influencers managed to corral the kings and queens of New York’s upper echelons down to earth, where they mingled with the writers past and present who had chronicled their myriad successes (and occasional not-successes). From the worlds of politics (Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who gave the opening remarks, Joel Klein, Ray Kelly, George Pataki, New Jersey’s Cory Booker) to fashion icons and tastemakers (Caroline Herrera, Melania Knauss, Joe Zee, Hilary Rhoda, Tamara Mellon, Jennifer Creel, ex-Observer writer Simon Doonan), business leaders (Mr. Trump, Mr. Perelman, Mr. Murdoch and wife Wendi Murdoch, Harvey Weinstein, Google’s Eric Schmidt, Gilt’s Kevin Ryan) and art world legends (Larry Gagosian, Chuck Close, Thelma Golden), celebrities (Katie Couric, Ms. Holmes, Padma Lakshmi, Michael Shannon, Christine Baranski, Alexa Joel) and society figures (Hannah Bronfman, Derek Blasberg, Sebastian Nicolas, jewelry designer Evan Yurman), there was not a more exciting place to be last night than with The New York Observer.
