Helena Christensen.

Kipling, the bag mostly favored by backpackers and European tourists, is upping its image via supermodel Helena Christensen. The brand, which uses a monkey as a symbol, is unveiling its debut Fashion Week ’13 collection starring model/photographer/jet-set bohemian Ms. Christensen with a fancy cocktail party on the now-warm Gramercy Park Hotel rooftop terrace. Expect Ms. Christensen’s pals like movie star Liv Tyler and Cinema Society founder Andrew Saffir to be double-kissing the Danish diva’s cheeks all night.

Gramercy Park Hotel, 2 Lexington Avenue, (212) 995-1330, 6pm-8pm, by invitation only.

The Gramercy Park Hotel's well-documented troubles came to light last May when Crain's reported that developer Aby Rosen and hotelier Ian Schrager were having trouble repaying a $140 million loan they'd taken out for the celebrity-magnet's initial development. In December, it was reported that Mr. Schrager would be unloading his stake in the Gramercy Park Hotel to Mr. Rosen for around $20 million, and that famed Manhattan restaurateur Danny Meyer--who already operated the G.P.H.'s critically acclaimed Italian dining destination Maialino--would be expanding his role in reworking the hotel's food and beverage operation.

Around the same time, Nur Kahn--who in his capacity of "artistic director" established the hotel's Rose Bar as one of the most exclusive and celebrity-packed nightlife destinations in town--also left after four years. Many nightlife writers predicted his departure would herald the end of Rose Bar's nightlife domination.   

Mr. Rosen admitted to The New York Times that the split with Mr. Schrager, while amicable, was due in no small part to a battle of clashing egos. Mr. Rosen also made news for a reported dispute with Peter Brant, a partner in the Seagram Building, who is now said to be selling his share.

Now, the Transom hears that a new battle has flared, this time with Mr. Meyer.

We're told that in light of Rose Bar's failure to bring in star-studded crowds in a post-Kahn era, Mr. Rosen has pushed Mr. Meyer to court celebrities at the restaurant as a way of raising the hotel's diminished profile. Mr. Meyer's restaurants are famously hospitality-driven and consistently hailed for their democratic accessibility in a city where a 7 p.m. reservation often seems harder to obtain than a winning lottery ticket.

Transom hears that one result of the dispute has been Maialino cocktail maestro and Gramercy Terrace general manager Kevin Denton's taking a diminishing role in G.P.H. operations to go work on other projects of Mr. Meyer's. Representitives for Mr. Rosen and Mr. Denton, the former head bartender at Tabla, did not return requests for quote on the matter. A representitive for Mr. Meyer had no comment.

fkamer@observer.com

Finally some good news for Mr. Johannesson and his stunning wife Ingibjorg Palmadottir, who have just sold his 4,235-square-foot spread at 50 Gramercy Park North to a fellow Viking after two years on the market. According to city records, Mynni Ehf (Icelandic for "Mouth Ltd.") just paid $22 million, and the deed is signed by Eyjólfur Gunnarsson, an investor who might just be the only person left in the land of Björke with any money, following the small island nation's dramatic financial collapse.

Maybe the trick to finally selling the place, which had been asking $25 million, was ditching the IKEA in the three-bedroom, three-bathroom duplex for arch-minimalist John Pawson, as that is who Corcoran's Tim Cass and Trisha Lawton list as having designed the place. Mr. Johannesson purchased two units, one in April and one in May of 2007, for $14 million total to create his home.

Read past Manhattan Transfers. >>

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

But in a sleepy chat with the Gray Lady, the typically flamboyant Mr. Rosen says, "Ninety-nine percent of our headaches are gone." Based on what what he told The Times, that seems to be true. The highlights:

--He still has lunch with former business partner Ian Schrager, despite the major clash of egos over the Gramercy Park Hotel.

--The company has bought back and reshuffled over $3.5 billion worth of notes. "In the last cycle we bought a lot of inventory," he said. "Sometimes we overpaid for something, but we believe time will catch up."

--He confirms he's the buyer of 530 Park and plans to convert it from a rental into a high-end condo.

--He (or at least someone) made Orthodox Jews take back the curse because Jews weren't actually buried where his hotel is supposed to go.

lkusisto@observer.com

“You stopped me right before I could walk in and get too liquored up!” prolific restaurateur Danny Meyer told the Daily Transom as he arrived at the Central Park Conservancy's "Taste of Summer" benefit on Wednesday night, June 3.

An estimated crowd of about 1,000 had turned out to the Central Park Naumberg Bandshell--not only for the open bar--but also to sample fare from some 40 top-notch New York restaurants. (A guest at the end of the night walked out holding onto her stomach and said, “I’m not pregnant, I promise! I’m just full!”)

Mr. Meyer hosted a special VIP cafe exclusively for guests who rented a table for the night, featuring tastings from across his Union Square Hospitality Group's repertoire, including the perenially popular Gramercy Tavern and Union Square Cafe.

Though not a fan of the term "empire," Mr. Meyer only continues to expand his culinary footprint. In addition to rolling out new concessions at Citi Field in Willet's Point, he is also opening a new catering operation in Central Park called Public Fare, which he said "hopefully, will not only make it more fun to go see 'Shakespeare in the Park' but will also be open during non-theater nights, too."

He further plans to open a fancy new restaurant at Ian Schrager's posh Gramercy Park Hotel in the fall.

"This is a recession baby, this restaurant," Mr. Meyer told the Daily Transom. "The only recession baby I’ve ever had was Blue Smoke, which was born just a couple months after 9/11. And I think it’s fair to say, I want to create a restaurant--presuming that these times are going to go on for a number of years, even though we’d all like it to be over--but I’d rather make that presumption and have the kind of restaurant that somebody would wanna go to even with that, and then that means you wouldn’t want to go there just because you had a few more dollars to spend."

Mr. Meyer said he hasn't yet decided on a name for the new eatery. (How bout just calling it Recession Baby?) “But we have a chef which we just announced today! Nick Anderer," he noted.

"He’s not only an amazing chef; he’s an incredible guy, too," Mr. Meyer said. "We haven’t opened a fine dining restaurant since The Modern opened 5 years ago. Which is fine, it’s not like I have to do something every year. But you end up getting a back log of talent, whether at Gramery Tavern or Eleven Madison Park, or Tabla, or Union Square Café, or The Modern, who say ‘What about me? I want to grow.' So, we’re pretty much committed to doing everything we can to promote our own talent."

Mr. Meyer described the Gramercy Park deal as a lot more manageable than the lucrative city contract to operate Tavern on the Green, for which Union Square Hospitality ultimately declined to submit a bid. "I think we really wanted to do something that we could manage," Mr. Meyer said. "Life always presents you situations where your heart says 'yes' and your mind says 'no,' and I think Tavern on the Green was one of those. It would have been a lot of fun but it would have been a tough business to operate. We’ve got enough."

“Am I upset that we’re not doing the gig tonight? Yeah, it would’ve been really cool,” Mr. Khan told the Daily Transom. “But we’re going to shoot for something in May.”

The charismatic 42-year-old operator of the artsy Rose Bar at Ian Schrager’s posh Gramercy Park Hotel had been planning one of his “stealth gigs” on Monday, April 6, an impromptu concert featuring the former Soundgarden frontman Mr. Cornell and the British musician–turned–Calvin Klein model Jamie Burke.

But Mr. Cornell was already booked for back-to-back nights at Webster Hall and his handlers were worried about further straining his voice.

Plan B? “The Dandy Warhols are coming in tonight,” said Mr. Khan, “so maybe we’ll do a spontaneous gig with them.”

Since opening his seminal Soho bar Wax in 1995, Mr. Khan has long catered to the city’s “musically literate crowd” and has the rolodex to prove it.

“The type of music that I’ve played in my bars has attracted a lot of musicians,” said Mr. Khan, who described himself as a rock ’n’ roll fanatic.

He dresses like a rock star, sporting multiple shiny rings, a Lazaro Diaz–designed bracelet encrusted with black diamonds and his trademark black snakeskin jacket, which he proudly created himself in collaboration with the designer Michael H. (“It’s nine pythons,” he noted.)

And he rolls like one, too. Former Wax partner John Jacobson once described the guy as “an imposing figure with a reputation for getting into fights.”

“I’ve calmed down in my old days,” said Mr. Khan, also a noted martial arts enthusiast who once took kung fu lessons from Shaolin monks in China. He chalked up his past dust-ups to an overall grittier downtown vibe in the mid-to-late 1990s.

From time to time, he likes to call on his rocker buddies for favors. “I’ve developed a lot of relationships where I can make a call and have someone come in here and do a special gig without having to have a big corporate name behind me,” Mr. Khan explained. “They can come jam and then sit around the table for the rest of the night and have a good time. They know I’m going to put a good crowd around them. If someone’s got a record coming out, I can create a little buzz. The record industry’s in shambles right now. Anything we can do to help the artists and keep this place poppin’—all parties benefit.”

The gigs can be tricky. Rose Bar lacks the proper sound system for a show, so he rents one, pushes a few tables aside and sticks a small stage in front of the fireplace. “We try not to burn the drummer,” he joked.

Since opening Rose Bar in 2006, Mr. Khan has hosted such illustrious acts as Velvet Revolver, the Kooks and Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro of Jane’s Addiction fame.

On March 15, former Lemonheads frontman Evan Dando joined Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers onstage for a brief but sweet four-song set.

“You cocky-ass motherfuckers can suck my fucking dick,” Mr. Haynes told the crowd of pretty men in velvet jackets and handsome ladies in slinky black dresses, who seemed largely disinterested in the music that night. “Pay attention to Evan Dando!”

The Daily Transom spotted the filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and actor Clive Owen in the audience. “Jim is actually friends with Evan and Gibby,” Mr. Khan later noted. “Clive just happened to come in—he’s a regular.”

Eventually, Mr. Khan would like to take his Rose Bar sessions on the road, possibly doing private shows at Coachella and other music festivals in the future.

For now, he’s got a list of local shows he’s dying to do. “Wait till you see what other ones I have up my sleeve,” he said.

- Max Abelson

“My dad will cook a ham and Oltaz will make the chickens—this year, she also made some delicious risotto. My dad doesn’t eat birds,” said Vito Schnabel by phone on Dec. 11. The budding art dealer-curator was in Miami, where he had spent a week at Art Basel Miami Beach in search of the “next young artist.” “We enjoyed some wine and then jumped in the pool,” he said. “Later, we sat by the fire.”

“We talk about all kinds of things. Art, movies, people, family, everything …. I don’t know—what do you talk about with your family?” said the young Mr. Schnabel.

“There are a lot of strong personalities in the family,” he said. His sister Stella is a poet and an actress. Lola is a painter and filmmaker. The twins, well, they’re 13—but no harm in prospecting.

“My little brother Cy loves to paint. He did a great painting of his dogs that hangs about his bed,” said Vito. “Olmo is a film nut. We’ll be watching The Deer Hunter, and he’ll be able to recite the whole cast and knows the movie backwards and forwards.”

“They also like soccer,” he said.

Julian Schnabel himself came into the world—he was born in Brooklyn in 1951—wanting to play with oil paints, according to Susan Orlean’s 1995 interview with Julian’s father, Jack Schnabel. Mr. Schnabel the elder migrated to New York from Czechoslovakia at the age of 15. He was not of the art world.

“My grandpa Jack was in the meat business, but he was very supportive of my father’s art. They had very a special relationship,” said Vito of his grandfather, who died in 2004. He said that he and his dad enjoy a similar relationship today. “We’re best friends; we travel the world looking at art and buying art. I help him and he helps me.”

Mr. Schnabel splashed onto the art scene in the early 70’s with his “plate paintings”—painting on large-scale, broken porcelain plates attached to wood paneling. He has also directed films, including the critically acclaimed Before Night Falls.

“Basically, I’m an artist. Whatever tool it is, whether it’s a camera or it’s a paintbrush, I’m kind of, I guess, expressing something and trying to find the right tool,” Mr. Schnabel told the press at a screening for the film.

Trend-forecaster Ian Schrager tapped Mr. Schnabel to handle the interior for his $200 million sprucing-up of the Gramercy Park Hotel. The hotel is now lathered in Schnabel originals: paintings, sculptures and furniture.

“I think my father taught me to not be influenced by other people,” said Stella Schnabel, who described herself as the “loner” of the family. She has had minor roles in her dad’s films—Basquiat as well as Before Night Falls.

Stella is taking acting classes and helping her father with the music for his new film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Mr. Schnabel’s oldest, Lola, has published a book of her drawings and photographs, Remember Me. She has also designed a high-end T-shirt line. Currently, she’s working on putting together her first gallery show, and she recently directed a “fashion video” featuring her friend Zac Posen’s resort line for Style.com.

And Vito has curated several well-received shows, including a retrospective of Ron Gorchov—an artist he’s credited with resurrecting—last June at P.S. 1.

The fashion-plate Schnabel sisters, who have long since outgrown being compared to the Hiltons, have dated in a certain demimonde. (Chalk up a Viggo Mortensen for Lola and a Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist, John Frusciante, for Stella.) Vito, for his part, has been photographed lately with models dripping off each shoulder.

“There is no downside to being a Schnabel,” he said.

If you're in the market for a $10 million Ian Schrager apartment, you'll be sad to know that Icelandic billionaire Jon Asgeir Johannesson has snatched up the second-to-top floor at the Gramercy Park Hotel. (Click on the floorplan above to enlarge.)

According to the GPH Web site, the floor-through apartment has 2,988 square feet (there are also 738 feet outdoors). The library/bedroom and dining room both face the park--and there's a wood-burning fireplace in the former so that Mr. Johannesson can laughingly incinerate his extra cash.

He made that cash as a European supermarket-and-retail tycoon, but he may lose some of it to some big scandals: Click here for more.

This summer, a Wall Street Journal profile mentioned that he'd bought an apartment in the neighborhood, but didn't mention the price. According to city records, he paid the round sum of $10,360,693.75, closing earlier this month.

- Max Abelson

Ready or not, he’s back.

This weekend, the former President will be dining and drinking to 60 years with some of world’s deepest-pocketed donors at a series of glamorous events around Manhattan, beginning Friday evening and ending with a cocktail party on Gramercy Park in the wee hours Sunday night.

The price of entry for the weekend’s festivities is a gaudy reminder of slushier times in the 1990’s. With money going toward a growing endowment for the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, donors will have to cough up $60,000 if they want to want to see Mick Jagger sing at the Beacon Theatre and at least $100,000 for poached eggs and mimosas with Bill and Hillary at Pastis.

The exclusive list of event “hosts” includes the names of historically top-ranked Democratic donors like longtime Clinton contributor Ron Burkle and S. Daniel Abraham, the former owner of Slim Fast Foods, who was ranked in 2000 as the No. 1 donor to the Democratic Party.

Steve Bing, the real-estate heir and film producer who is the father of Elizabeth Hurley’s son, is listed as a co-host. As is Haim Saban, the former owner of the Fox Family Network and a former member of Mr. Clinton’s export council.

Also attending will be Chicago media mogul Fred Eychaner; Lebanese businessman Gilbert Chagoury; Alison Lawton and gold tycoon Frank Giustra; Gateway founder Ted Waitt; West Coast entertainment executive Casey Wasserman and his wife, Laura; and longtime Clinton friends Susan and Mark Weiner.

The hefty price tag will have the effect of shutting out some of the New York political types normally seen at Clinton events.

“There are such big fish in their camp, I don’t really count for much,” one longtime Democratic and Clinton donor told The Observer.

Not that all of them are exactly clamoring for entry.

“They’ve overdone things in September and October,” said another Clinton contributor who was invited to take part in the weekend of activities. “I think it’s a lot of out-of-towners who are coming to this, anyway. I don’t play golf and I don’t go to Rolling Stones concerts, so I’ll just go to one of the dinners.”

Others, citing a planned $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser on Oct. 26 for Hillary Clinton at Tavern on the Green, are complaining of a form of Clinton fatigue.

“I’m on Clinton overload,” said one contributor. “I’m not really wanting to do this. I’ve been tight with the Clintons for many years, but I’m beginning to feel used.”

All of the weekend’s invitees received letters from either Chelsea Clinton or Terry McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

The wording of the two invitations is largely the same, with small tweaks. In Chelsea’s version, the party honors a “very special person” who needs donations to “advance the work he has done throughout his life—solving problems, empowering people and even saving lives.” Mr. McAuliffe’s letter says that Mr. Clinton is a “truly extraordinary person” and that a donation is needed to “advance the principles he has stood for all his life—solving problems, saving lives and empowering people.”

Exactly who is taking credit for the weekend?. Mr. McAuliffe says the weekend-long celebration will be co-hosted by “Chelsea and I”; Chelsea wrote, “My mother and I are planning” the events.

Chelsea’s invite is heavy on policy and statistics, while Mr. McAuliffe’s tone is more emotive, writing that the weekend will celebrate all baby boomers and the two “greatest products of that generation: Bill Clinton and the legendary Rolling Stones.”

Those coming to the weekend birthday extravaganza will take over reserved blocs of rooms at both the Gramercy Park Hotel and the St. Regis.

The partying kicks off on Friday evening at the Gramercy Park Hotel with cocktails and a reception. The hotel’s event planners wouldn’t confirm where the event on Friday is taking place or which prized chef will serve dinner (their menu list includes Tom Colicchio of Craft, Mario Batali of Babbo, Geoffrey Zakarian of Country, Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson of Balthazar, Alfred Portale of Gotham Bar and Grill, and Nobuyuki Matsuhisa of Nobu.)

On Saturday morning, starting at 10 a.m., the Clintons will have brunch at Pastis, the downtown French eatery. Only donors who offer more than $100,000 and raise $250,000 will be invited, with four seats reserved for each at the bistro.

On Saturday night, there will be a reception and dinner from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. at the Museum of Natural History. All of the donors will be invited to this—but again, there will be distinctions made between big donors and really big donors. The $100,000-level supporters will be given four tickets to the dinner at the museum and “platinum” seating, as opposed to “gold seats”—the up-market Clinton version of the nosebleed section at Madison Square Garden.

Sunday morning, there will be a round at the Bayonne Golf Club, a Scottish-style links course located on a former PSE&G industrial-waste site in New Jersey, but equipped with a floating dock, a helicopter landing pad and a winning view of lower Manhattan. Those who contribute $500,000 or raise $250,000 will be allowed to bring one player.

In the afternoon, the Clintons will head to Central Park for cocktails and dinner at the far more plebian and very exposed Boathouse restaurant at East 72nd Street. The menu is a secret. (The catering director, Peter Bishof, said that at “an event of this variety, these people deserve their privacy.”)

And then, Sunday night, the biggest party of all: the Rolling Stones concert at the 2,800-seat Beacon Theater. All donors will be invited to the concert, but a gift of more than $500,000 includes a “backstage pass” for dinner and a photograph with Mr. Clinton.

In addition, as advertised in Chelsea’s invitation, donors should “please note that this performance will be taped for an upcoming Martin Scorsese film.” The film is reportedly a documentary on the Rolling Stones, and Mr. Scorsese will be filming the band all weekend.

After the concert, sometime past midnight, the whirlwind weekend will conclude with an after-party at the Gramercy Park Hotel.

And then it’s over.