Harry Brant strikes a pose for the cameras at Emporio Armani's flagship store opening.

Despite that Harry Brant has barely cleared puberty, the social-buzzing, babygay spawn of model Stephanie Seymour and billionaire media/art/real estate tycoon Peter Brant, has a busy schedule that rivals those of Paris Hilton and Olivier Zahm. This past Friday at Emporio Armani’s 601 Madison Avenue boutique opening, we approached the 16-year-old high school sophomore to find why is he out socializing with Roberta Armani, Luigi Tadini, Ms. Hilton, Ricky Martin, Ryan Lochte, artist Rashaad Newsome, Anna dello Russo and Kate Lanphear, when he should probably be cracking those Algebra books.

“What have you been up to today?” we asked.

“I went to Rag & Bone. I liked it,” replied Mr. Brant, smiling profoundly.

“What are you doing at Armani?”

“I’m here for the clothes!”

“Are you going to be at any of the parties later? John Varvatos? Jason Wu?” The Observer prodded.

“Um tomorrow is Carine [Roitfeld]’s party,” he replied.

“So have you started school?” we questioned, suggesting he should be at home studying.

“Yes, today I went to Rag & Bone and then I went on a field trip to the aquarium with my school.”

“How do you balance your social schedule with school?” we asked.

“I mean, I’m pretty much like a modern-day Hannah Montana!” Mr. Brant said.

Does that mean Mr. Brant is living a double life? Is he secretly a world famous pop star? And since when did being a spoiled billionaire socialite boy constitute as a “normal teenage girl?”

Before he could clarify, a chaotic pack led by Cory Kennedy and Ms. Hilton stumbled drunkenly into the fiesta.

The Observer quickly grabbed a few glasses of water and offered them to Ms. Kennedy and her coterie, who more than needed it. Then we were off to rowdier pastures.

Couture Council Luncheon, David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, 11:30am reception, noon luncheon, event is sold out; Bright Lights Shining Stars Gala, Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 566 LaGuardia Place, cocktail reception 6pm, gala 7:30pm, after-party 9pm, tickets and information can be found at bit.ly/BrightLightsShiningStars.

Madame Mayhem. (Patrick McMullan/PatrickMcMullan.com)

“This is insane...it’s like a Fellini film,” The Observer overheard one guest murmur as we arrived at the Southampton Hospital gala last Saturday evening. The theme of the evening was Grand Prix Monaco, though many of the high-paying donors didn’t seem to have gotten the memo—or known what it meant, perhaps. Women wore colorful dresses in every conceivable hue and style, while the men ranged from casual checkered shirts to top hats and tails.

Though this was a charity event, there was a measure of self-interest on the part of the attendees: after all, the Jenny and John Paulson Emergency Department of Southampton Hospital is the only emergency room facility for 50 miles. As opposed to say, giving money to Haiti, this was clearly a cause that could potentially affect donors directly.

“This benefit is considered sort of the social benefit of the season,” gala chair Laura Lofaro Freeman told The Observer. “It’s really to update and upgrade the equipment in the emergency room, make sure it’s cutting-edge…et cetera.”

When we asked what was the most common kind of emergency they dealt with in the Hamptons—beyond the expertise of the handsome doctors in Royal Pains—Ms. Freeman ticked off a list. “Terrible car accidents, surfing accidents, bike accidents...and, you know, a lot of a heart attacks.”

Heart attacks were a prevalent theme at the gala, particularly when the president and CEO of the hospital, Robert S. Chaloner, took the stage during dinner.

“Our dream was to get 800 people in a tent, crank the heat up to 100 degrees, and hope that someone has a heart attack, knowing that our hospital is only a block away,” he joked.

To drive the point home even further, an ambulance appeared on the lawn, with its lights on, during cocktail hour. Someone had already taken a nasty spill in the grass, we were told. Despite the fact that the party was held on the hospital’s grounds on Wickapogue Road, the emergency truck was on call all evening. You know, just in case.

Of course, the costuming alone was enough to give an elderly patient a cardiac episode. Joy Marks and Leesa Rowland were in hot pink, while Archie Comics publisher Nancy Silberkleit wore construction-area neon (“I’m more of a Veronica than a Betty tonight,” she told us), a look copied by Dr. Lewis Feder. Global head of marketing and investor relations for Ares Management Suzanne Murphy went with a subtler tangerine gown. Somers Farkas chose a lighter shade of gold to accent her deep tan, while Jean Shafiroff had changed from her polo daywear of bright yellow to a white ball gown featuring lemon-colored daffodils.

Then there was the black brigade: Madame Mayhem, the Chanel-sporting goth-chic singer who was the “surprise” guest of the evening, joining bandleader Alex Donner for his 10th year at the event.

“I usually sing Lady Gaga, but I think tonight that will be Madame Mayhem,” Mr. Donner laughed. We couldn’t tell if this was a joke. Ms. Mayhem ended up performing “Mony Mony”…an unusual selection, but one that got the audience dancing (without regard for their blood pressure).

We asked Ms. Freeman about the origin of her outfit, a deceptively simple but complexly constructed bodice-and-gown affair that floated open whenever she embraced a new guest.

“The idea was to make it ethereal and fun and French…sort of like Grand Prix Monaco,” Ms. Freeman said, twirling around in a spray of baby blue.

Helpfully, Ms. Freeman kept her designer by her side. “Two things that Laura mentioned when she told me about her idea for the dress: she wanted it to open up in the wind when she walked,” Project Runway veteran Wesley Nault told The Observer, “and the other is that Laura loves construction, so she literally wanted it to stand up when she sat down. So you can sit the dress on the bed and it looks like someone’s in it.” Eerie!

Once everyone had flounced their way into the tents, we found ourselves sitting at the table of Howard Lorber, chairman of Prudential Douglas Elliman, the evening’s biggest sponsor.  (Also from the firm was top-selling broker Lisa Simonsen.) Chris Del Gatto of Circa was to our left, looking a little bit glum despite the presence of his gorgeous fiancée, model Veronica Webb. We don’t blame him: during a game at the Bridgehampton Polo Club earlier that afternoon, one of his team’s horses had died during a match against Nacho Figueras’ team.

We asked Mr. Del Gatto why polo wasn’t played at the Olympics anymore.

“You get very particular horses,” he sighed. “And the travel can be very tough on them.”

That didn’t explain why dressage is still an Olympic sport, but we decided not to press it, especially since Social Life publisher Justin Mitchell was sitting right across from us, and as it was the media sponsor of the evening, we didn’t want to speak too ill of the Sport of Kings, which the magazine covers extensively. Besides, we were here to talk about human health, not horses! (Not to mention that Peter Brandt and Stephanie Seymour were in earshot.)

The gala also featured a silent auction, in which guests could bid on a number of interesting items, including a watercolor portrait of your child, home or pet (but no snakes) by artist Katrina Vanderlip. By evening’s end, more than $1.6 million had been raised for improvements to the emergency unit.

Nevertheless, Ellesse CEO Byron Hero was still wary. “Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to get sick here,” he quipped.

dgrant@observer.com

Without further ado, here are the ten best lines, removed from their context, without commentary*:

10. Peter’s deadpan, detached demeanor contrasts with Harry's livelier, impish quality, a witty rejoinder ever ready.

9. In a pop-culture landscape that has been populated by heir heads (any entertainment produced by the Hilton sisters or the Tinsley Mortimer reality show, "High Society," which was about as classy as the skin magazine that shared its title), the Brants could certainly elevate the medium.

8. Despite their youth, the boys are omnipresent on the social scene and staples of Patrick McMullan party photographs.

7. The Brants have almost 70,000 Twitter followers, a fraction of whom appear to be their age.

6. "I'll be watching 'Mommie Dearest,' and I'll be like, 'Oh, my God, Joan Crawford is amazing.'"

5. "I have a love of opulence."

4. They are the perfect harbingers of the "It boy," young enough that it isn’t emasculating that they don't yet have jobs, and fashion-forward enough that they don’t water down their straight-from-the-runway looks.

3. "We expect them to be good human beings and to care about other things besides clothes."

2. Ever blasé, Peter tilted his head, looked at him blankly, then turned away, showing off his strong profile.

1. But this was a brief low-culture aside.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

[*With exception to the fact that the Times managed to publish a piece—written by, it should be noted, a Patrick McMullan co-photographee with "writer-about-town" and mentor figure to the Brant Brothers, Derek Blasberg—so unilaterally dedicated to the idea of perpetrating the Brant Brothers' celebrity without hesitation, that they failed to include anything that might suggest reluctance or question of the greatness of the repute of these two young men. Like the time Peter Jr. once defended a photo in which he appeared to be engaging in oedipal tendencies with his mother in an email to Gawker, and refers to himself as "fabulous and conceited." Especially when you consider his love of 'Mommy Dearest.' Gawker, who called the Brothers Brant "The World's Luckiest Teenage Homosexuals," once concluded: "The great thing is that these two are even allowed to exist."]

It was a busy year for Mr. Baxter and his colleagues at Jones Lang LaSalle. His four-man team comprised some of the city’s most prominent brokers of large-scale commercial office buildings, and as the Manhattan sales market’s post-recessionary thaw continues, Mr. Baxter estimated that the group had tallied an impressive $1.3 billion in deals this year.

Three days before Christmas, however, it wasn’t one particular skyscraper Mr. Baxter was bargaining over from his plum seat at Casa Lever. In a year-end rush, his group had loose ends to tie up, deals to close and transactions still in the works. And so, on this particular Thursday amid a bustling lunch crowd, Mr. Baxter was not negotiating with a buyer or a building owner, but rather one of his own assistants, whom he was asking to stay late to receive critical documents and to help get the team through the rest of the day.

Richard Baxter. (Illustration by Joao Maio Pinto

“She was going to take the train to Boston,” said Mr. Baxter, after hanging up with his assistant. “But we just booked her a flight for later this evening.”

Such are the costs of deal making in the city, much like lunching in prime and pricey spots like Casa Lever. On the way in, Mr. Baxter, along with JLL colleagues Ron Cohen and Glenn Tolchin, stopped to chat with Jon Mechanic and Sush Torgalkar, who were having lunch at a nearby table. The conversation that ensued had all the easy chatter and laughs of old acquaintances catching up, yet it wasn’t difficult to imagine how casual encounters like this can spawn business. Mr. Mechanic is the city’s top transactional real estate attorney and Mr. Torgalkar is the chief operating officer of Westbrook Partners, an active buyer and seller with holdings that include boutique asset 444 Madison Avenue.

A natural networker with a sharp wit, Mr. Baxter seems readily able to take advantage of such opportunities. Having a grasp of the industry’s personalities is helpful in brokerage, allowing a level of insight beyond the facts and figures of a transaction. To hear him tell it, simmering disputes, hidden ambitions and other underlying factors can play as much of a role in sealing a deal as an investment’s rate of return or a building’s vacancy.

Settling into what he claimed was the real estate investor Aby Rosen’s usual booth, Mr. Baxter shifted conversation to the Seagram Building, the trophy tower that sits across Park Avenue from Lever House and, like Lever, is also owned by Mr. Rosen.

Years ago, Mr. Baxter was one of the brokers who sold a stake in the property to the billionaire investor Peter Brant. Earlier this year, Mr. Brant traded that interest at a huge profit to the Blackstone Group.

Rumors in the industry circulated that the sale had as much to do with Mr. Brant’s soured relationship with Mr. Rosen as it did cashing in the stake’s big returns. According to published reports, in fact, Mr. Rosen had allegedly made insulting comments about Mr. Brant’s wife, the former supermodel Stephanie Seymour.

“A woman’s scorn,” Mr. Baxter said, acknowledging with both amusement and marvel the dramatic sequence of events that may have led to the investment’s turnover.

In a more recent deal that Mr. Baxter wasn’t involved in but that also highlighted the hidden psychology underpinning the business, SL Green, among the city’s largest commercial landlords, was rumored to have snapped up the office building 10 East 53rd Street. SL Green has been one of the city’s most active acquirers of office buildings, specially through the downturn in the market when prices sagged from record highs. But the JLL team’s assessment of the deal was more penetrating than attributing it simply to SL Green’s voracious appetite.

SL Green had likely been disappointed at not getting 510 Madison Avenue, a nearby building that the firm nearly foreclosed on last year by buying up the property’s debt. The deal had slipped away from the firm when the rival REIT Boston Properties recapitalized the property, taking control. SL Green was paid handsomely, but 10 East 53rd Street was its way of restoring a bruised ego, picking up a boutique building that can potentially compete for the same kinds of tenants that 510 Madison Avenue attracts.

What is such insight worth in a deal? Perhaps not much. But if a broker’s job is to decide who is going to have the extra oomph to fully realize a property’s potential value, perhaps a lot.

“It is a matter of marketing and finding the buyer with the right vision for the asset,” Mr. Baxter said. “Directing the buyer towards maximizing the property’s true potential enables us to obtain premium pricing for our sellers. The five to ten percent premium wins the property. That is what our team does.”

Mr. Baxter and his team’s grasp of the industry’s players has paid off in the deals they have arranged in recent months. This year, the group sold both 737 Park Avenue and 150 East 72nd Street, for $360 million and $70 million respectively, to Harry Macklowe. Mr. Macklowe, once the prince of Manhattan’s real estate industry, took a precipitous and publicized fall during the recession. Though few doubted that Mr. Macklowe was still well-heeled enough to compete for major assets in the city, the acquisitions marked a surprising comeback and earned Mr. Baxter and his team accolades for identifying Mr. Macklowe as a buyer with resilience when many others had counted him out.

Mr. Baxter began his career during the early 1980s in sales brokerage at Newmark, where he and Mr. Cohen first became brokerage partners. The pair shifted to the Edward S. Gordon Company by the 1990s, at the time one of the city’s major real estate firms. ESG, as the firm’s name was abbreviated, eventually was acquired, first by Insignia, and later by the world’s biggest real estate services firm, CBRE.

CBRE, however, already had a powerful brokerage duo in place: Darcy Stacom and William Shanahan, who had a contractual right at the company to broker its deals in the city, said Mr. Baxter and Mr. Cohen. With a bustling business of their own, the pair proposed merging into a four-member group to defuse a potential rivalry and allow everyone to operate within Manhattan.

“It got complicated,” Mr. Baxter said about the talks then to join the teams, preferring not to go into the details of what those complications entailed.

Soon after, the pair ended up departing for Cushman & Wakefield, where they met Scott Latham and Jon Caplan, two sales executives at the firm. The two groups quickly merged and have been negotiating deals together ever since, although they have their specialties.

Mr. Cohen, for instance, has focused on recruiting foreign buyers and sellers into the team’s pipeline of contacts and deals, especially from Israel, where he is from and where investors have been active in the New York commercial real estate market in recent years. The four-man team’s time at C&W proved successful: In 2007, the group brokered the $1.8 billion sale of 666 Fifth Avenue, then the biggest commercial office sale in Manhattan, to the real estate investor, and Commercial Observer owner, Jared Kushner.

Last year, however, Mr. Baxter and his colleagues took a gamble, leaving Cushman for the rival brokerage firm Jones Lang LaSalle. The move, one of the biggest shakeups in the city’s investment sales industry in years, was a clear victory for JLL, whose lack of a competitive sales team was becoming increasingly conspicuous in the eyes of many real estate observers, not least of all those at the dominant brokerage firm CBRE.

For a time, the team seemed to lose ground to competitors like Ms. Stacom and Mr. Shanahan, who in 2010 appeared to re-energize the investment sales market by scoring a string of prominent sales, not least among them 340 Madison Avenue, 125 Park Avenue and 600 Lexington Avenue.

But Baxter and the team have regained ground. Aside from prominent deals like the pair of residential buildings the group sold to Mr. Macklowe, the team has sold smaller but still-lucrative assets, like 15 Little West 12th Street, which the group traded to investor Steve Elghanayan for $70 million in May. In June, they sold 70 Pine Street to Metro Loft for $205 million.

Heading into 2012, meanwhile, the group has even bigger deals in the pipeline. Indeed, the team will be hitting the market in the upcoming quarter with two prominent assets—one of them in Midtown, the other in Midtown South—that Mr. Baxter expects will trade for $600 million and $300 million respectively. “New York is a huge market and the way we look at it, there’s room enough for everyone,” Mr. Baxter said.

Mr. Baxter, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Tolchin were clearly in a hurry to leave Casa Lever. With so much to do, they had ordered a car to meet out front and shuttle them back to the office. By then, Mr. Mechanic and

Mr. Torgalkar had left, but in their place was Andrew Mathias, president of SL Green and the man in charge of overseeing acquisitions at the firm. Mr. Baxter and his team exchanged hellos and slid in to catch up.

The sense of urgency to leave was suddenly gone. The office could wait.

dgeiger@observer.com

Peter Brant II is a Designer, Art Collector, Socialite, and Model, and the eldest son of Supermodel Stephanie Seymour and Newsprint Billionare [sic] Peter Brant I

Well then! But besides the breaking news that he's picked up his 1000th Facebook fan (He thanked only Peter Brant II, and does so because he thinks himself so "conceited and fabulous") why write about this scion of wealth, industry and prowess on the polo pitch? It turns out that a nosy paparazzi snapped some photos of Peter Brant II and his mother in amorous poses, igniting something of a media firestorm. The excitement is understandable -- Brant and Seymour's divorce proceedings were deliciously bitchy on both ends until the couple made up in happy and shocking fashion. So, even though no one really thinks there's really an Sophocles-style love triangle going on, it's hard to resist toying with the idea. Mom was, after all, the capital-B Babe in the "November Rain" video.

But, Peter Brant II had to prolong this otherwise dead story by penning -- with his publicist, natch -- a letter to Gawker defending the mother-son affection.

I would just like to say that these pictures have been taken completely out of context, my mother and i are very close as she is with all her children. she often hugs and kisses me and my siblings in an manner that is intimate, any mother in the world does the same. that day on the beach we walked around with each other completely aware of the presence of photographers there. We have nothing to hide and with that in mind I would like to say that I am openly gay. At my age my mother and I are almost like friends and I feel open to talk to her about anything (and yes our relationship may be different because of my sexuality).

Fine, Peter Brant The Second, Son of Newsprint Billionare [sic] Peter Brant The First, you're off the hook for potential forbidden love. But we could do without anecdotes of how much Cristal you drank on New Year's or reasons why St. Barths is "really the only suitably Fashionable/ Entertaining island in the Caribbean." There's no need to be gauche.

nfreeman at observer.com |@nfreeman1234

Click for Scandal Report: And Then The Model At Diddy's Party Burst Into Flames

Brant and Seymour have apparently reconciled their nasty, thievery-inducing breakup and are back to being happily betrothed. But this can't be too comforting for them: Gatecrasher reports that a picture of "Stephanie" will be gracing the cover of the Nov. 8 art sale catalogue "Carte Blanche" put out by the Phillips de Pury & Company. Cattelan made three casts of the statue — Brant still has the commissioned one — and a version is being put up for auction. The statue could sell for more than $1.5 million.

A source "close to Brant and Seymour" told Gatecrasher "They were well aware that there was more than one piece being made when they commissioned the artwork."

Cattelan made a splash last month when a statue of his entitled "L.O.V.E." was placed in front of the Milan Stock Exchange. "L.O.V.E." is an enormous hand giving its onlookers the middle finger.

nfreeman@observer.com

Twitter: @NFreeman1234

The decision to direct such a blunt gesture toward Italy's financial headquarters has drawn criticism, but Massimiliano Finazzer Flory — the splendidly named Milanese commissioner for culture — defends Cattelan's works, telling Reuters that they "call our times into question, offering themselves as a mirror, however cracked, of our present."

Cattelan's most well-known work may be "La Nona Hora," which depicts Pope John Paul II getting smashed in by a meteorite. He also was commissioned by Interview publisher Peter Brant to make a bust of his off-again on-again supermodel wife Stephanie Seymour naked and clutching her breasts. The sculpture — nicknamed "Trophy Wife" — will be sold in an auction by Phillips, de Pury & Co. on Nov. 8. 

Of the "L.O.V.E." sculpture, Cattelan has said that "it is mainly about imagination" — interesting, because an enormous hand flicking off a stock exchange doesn't exactly leave much to the imagination. 

The Post brings us the flimsiest of flimsy trend stores with the obligatory two divorce lawyers and a marriage counselor who say that couples can't afford to make one household into two. “These days, the negative financial consequences for couples to get divorced can really outweigh the limitations on their freedom,” said Joseph Cilona, a Manhattan psychologist who has counseled all of two clients who called off their divorces for monetary reasons. “It’s a different landscape out there since the economy has tanked.”

We decided to wade into the age-old question of whether additional financial pressures or the difficulty of selling a home in the current market has led couples to hold off on splitting, only to discover it's a bit of a swamp. The number of divorces in New York State did, indeed, decline sharply in 2008, the most recent year for which data is available. Experts say that's surprising, since usually divorce rates spike due to the financial stress, and that it could be because this time around it's couples can't sell their homes.

But, in the end, of course, the heart wants what it wants. “There’s an old joke,” said divorce lawyer Randall M. Kessler. “Why is a divorce so expensive? Because it’s worth it. Now it better really be worth it.”

lkusisto@observer.com

The biggest issue at stake here is whether or not Mr. Brant can find adequate chaps to play polo with as he resides in this concrete jungle. How will the one-time high-ranked amateur player cope with the lack of pitches in Manhattan? Oh, right: he still has his homes in the Hamptons, Palm Beach and Greenwich.