The Waldorf's artisanal honey is getting buzz.

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel is currently cultivating a new kind of honey for its kitchens and bars. The hotel, where President Obama stays when he is in town, is used to painstaking attention to detail and extravagance, which makes its approach to the honey all the more intriguing.

Rather than relying on what could be called the Masa Imperative of luxury, after the top-dollar sushi joint that ships in fish from the Sea of Japan and the Bay of Spain with the urgency and costliness of helicoptered transplant organs (indeed, some of the fish are carried in organ containers), the Waldorf has gone in a direction more evocative of the Brooklyn Flea Market: its honey comes from beehives it is now keeping on a 20th-floor outdoor patio.

The initiative, brainchild of executive chef David Garcelon, relies on the expertise of the city’s premier beekeeper, Andrew Coté, who sells his own neighborhood-specific honeys at the Union Square farmer’s market.

“It sounds like a Portlandia skit,” said restaurateur Taavo Somer, considered by many to be the proto-Brooklyn hipster.

Like other aristocratic brands, the Waldorf is figuring out how to embrace the wildly popular (and youthful) do-it-yourself aesthetic that has gripped broader, scruffier swaths of the market.

Refinement and crispness are suddenly handicaps. The new aesthetic is sometimes referred to as “rough luxe,” bedhead writ large.

Upper East Side stylists, personal shoppers, private concierges and boutique proprietors describe the Waldorf honey as the latest in a sea change in luxury aesthetics, which has come largely as a response to what they perceive to be over-licensed, over-distributed, over-accessible luxury brands. If the devil wears Prada and the devil wears glasses, the devil is in luck: Prada frames are available at LensCrafters. Versace is on the racks at H&M.

“Used to be you could just run up Madison Avenue and Fifth Avenue scooping up things at Louis Vuitton and you were done. Now it’s meeting the artist and having a relationship and knowing the whole story about how she made it. It’s luxury with soul,” said Aviva Stanoff, whose handmade pillows sell for up to $500 at Barneys, Fred Segal and Saks Fifth Avenue.

“The Louis Vuitton stuff—I’m picking on them, but it’s all of that: Prada, Armani, whatever—is so easy and kind of nouveau-riche. It’s obvious. It’s not interesting anymore. So now we want more of an adventure. Upper East Side women love to have almost a safari in Brooklyn, to walk through my studio and the piles of fabric and little threads or feathers clinging to their Chanel.”

Lisa Devo, whose all natural, recycled package soaps sell at C.O. Bigelow and the Kenneth Salon at the Waldorf, agreed: “They like to call and be speaking to the owner. You don’t call Diane Von Furstenberg and have Diane Von Furstenberg pick up the phone; they’ll just talk to some bored clerk and, y’know, customers get bored of bored clerks.”

Eva Jeanbart-Lorenzotti, who founded Vivre.com, a two-million-member luxe-hunting shopping site, describes a kind of big-brand boomerang.

“Paris, London, Milan, even Tokyo, it all looks the same, everything so recognizable,” she said. “Two beautiful women walk into a room. One, you can tell head-to-toe what she’s wearing. The other is a mystery. Nothing pleases a woman more than people asking, ‘I love that. Where did you get it?’”

Jesse Garza, co-founder of Visual Therapy, a luxury lifestyle consultancy, said his clients are in search of “realness, and not the kind of realness that applies to Real Housewives.”

“None of my clients want Christian Louboutin shoes anymore, because the Kardashians are clomping around in them at breakfast,” he said. “What my clients want now is that thrown-together, put-together look of Jackie Kennedy Onassis.”

Mr. Garza pointed to the recent popularity of a $3,010 heavy knit sweater that was part of Chanel’s latest spring collection, a notable departure from the brand’s classic flat jacket. At a recent show, Karl Lagerfeld, Chanel’s creative director, bragged that it took 3,000 hours—125 days—to hand-embroider a sleeveless coat.

While bespoke has always had cachet, handmade has become an obsession in fashion; witness the likes of Salvatore Ferragamo’s blousons of interwoven leather and raffia inspired “by the art of manual knotting threads and plaiting straw.”

There’s also holistic, repurposed art (at a recent check, Bergdorf Goodman’s seventh-floor curiosity shop had three wall sculptures of upholstery coils, each handmade over a six-month period in Brooklyn, ranging in price from $8,000 to $19,500), twee literary affectation (Marc Jacobs briefly sold hand-embroidered Olympia Le-Tan-designed book clutches that would look at home in Greenpoint’s Word bookstore, save for their $1,500 price tag) and foppish hobbyist whimsy (Tiffany’s $375 sterling silver harmonica, for example).

“We’re seeing more traffic on the road less traveled,” said Scott Schramm, Henri Bendel’s senior vice president in charge of general merchandise management. “It’s definitely quirkier, more independent, more imaginative. Our girl is more curious, and when you have curiosity, you have more confidence too, more uniqueness; it’s almost rediscovering that luxury is about specialty, not a uniform.”

He said buyers and customers were not only embracing brave new merchandise, but brave mixes and matches as well, specifically citing the pairing of a traditional Hermès bag with a Tom Binns cuff. Those cuffs are almost Damien Hirsts: a gold-plated shark mandible, a bejeweled oversize silver safety pin and, for 2013, a hulking gold-plated hammer-and-nail cuff.

Meanwhile, the status of a Tiffany engagement or wedding ring has been challenged by the likes of Sam Abbay, who runs a make-your-own-wedding-ring workshop in the Financial District and whose client base has shifted from Brooklyn to Manhattan in recent months.

“Tiffany’s or Harry Winston or Cartier, they’re selling rings they’ve already had designed,” said Mr. Abbay. “You can mix and match this carat or this cut or this setting, but it’s not that much variety. I mean, isn’t that how they do things at Chipotle? Lots of the city’s richest women have pretty much the exact same symbol of their husbands’ love.”

While the Waldorf eschews the exotica of Yemeni Wadi Do’an or Sidr honeys, the most expensive honeys in the world, it is doubling down on its newfound folksiness: Mr. Garcelon, its executive chef, explained plans to expand the beekeeping patio to include herbs and vegetables. But first, he plans to develop a private, locally sourced cheese label as a honey pairing.

Mr. Garcelon cast the decision as a mix of ancient tradition and modern environmentalism: “Sure, it’s great for the environment, for local pollination, for our guests to know that it is made right here. But it’s also great for me in the kitchen; any really old recipe from Europe was made with honey, not sugar. So we get to return to that real flavor: honey in soup, honey in salad dressing, honey in ice cream.”

If not for the nine-foot, two-ton, 119-year-old bronze and marble clock sounding Westminster chimes every quarter-hour behind him, the conversation could have been happening in Brooklyn’s Park Slope Food Co-op.

“The other day, an older man, the kind who wouldn’t be caught dead with Chanel because that’s too nouveau-riche for him—old-school, real true Upper East Side—was name-dropping a restaurant on Smith Street,” said Jonathan Butler, founder of Brownstoner.com and the Brooklyn Flea Market, who grew up on the Upper East Side and said he went to Brooklyn “maybe five times” before he was 21. “I was amazed that Brooklyn was even part of his universe.”

editorial@observer.com

Madison Powell and Jordan Naftalis at the International Debutante Ball. (McMullan)

Just a few flakes swirled about our toes on Saturday night, but we were nearly blinded by the white inside the Waldorf-Astoria for the 58th Anniversary International Debutante Ball.

Some remain skeptical of such affairs, because, as one gentleman noted at the coat check, it isn’t the ’50s anymore. But this year’s class was impressive. Swanning about in the traditional snow-colored dresses were a chemical engineering major, several accomplished philanthropists and a nationally ranked tennis player, among other offspring of socially prominent families.

When we spotted Olympic swim team doctor Dr. Scott Rodeo, we couldn’t help asking if he’d trust unofficial bachelor of the year Ryan Lochte with his debutante daughter, Sarah. “Absolutely!” was the surprising answer, “Ryan’s a great guy. Have you met him?” We have, and Sarah, we think you could do better. 

The first stop for the 24-karat guests was the receiving line in The Astor Room, where one man with a spectacularly waxed mustache—after suffering blows by several bustles, trains and furs—quipped, “it’s just like prom, isn’t it?!” Forty-seven quick, gloved handshakes later, the guests, in tails and taffeta, were swept to cocktail hour while the debutantes posed for portraits.

Historically, each lady has been escorted by a civilian and a military academy gent in formal uniform, bused in from West Point, the Naval Academy or the Citadel. But this year was different: annoyed partygoers said military lawyers had decided to enforce a long-ignored rule against wearing uniforms to certain types of events. Naval midshipmen rented tuxes, West Pointers sat out the affair altogether, and Citadel students were allowed to wear their uniforms because they’re not directly affiliated with the U.S. military.

“They said the debutante ball is considered a beauty pageant and escort service,” explained one midshipman wearing a tux, as his date, Elizabeth Galbraith, erupted into giggles.

Later in the night, another Naval Academy student, Steve Jaenke, opined that he had to pay $200 to rent a tux in place of his uniform. “But honestly, I’m just glad we came,” he said.

Christine Schott, whose daughter Whitney sported one of the loveliest gowns of the evening, designed by Pippa Middleton favorite Misha Nonoo (Amanda Seyfried wore a shorter version of the dress to the Les Misérables premiere), cleared up the confusion for West Point’s lawyers.

“It’s not at all like a pageant,” she told us. “There’s one moment of the night when they’re up on stage, but otherwise it’s about teaching them networking, etiquette and diplomacy.” Ms. Schott herself came out in the Waldorf’s ballroom, and she hopes her younger daughter will follow suit.

Meanwhile, the civilian escorts were unsure of their duties. It’s hard to find anyone more commitment-phobic than a teenage boy, and the irony of escorting a woman in a white ball gown down an aisle of friends and family was not lost on them. At the cocktail hour, escort Michael Rolla admitted that his debutante girlfriend’s stress about the ceremony had rubbed off on him. Not so for his pal William Pierrepont, who had met his date that night. We asked if he was nervous. “Nope!” he replied and leaned back in his gilded parlor chair.

The escort of the evening was Hon. Iona Murray’s brother, who came in full formal kilt and argyle regalia to walk his sister, the daughter of Viscount and Viscountess Stormont of Scotland. Talk of his charm was whispered throughout the cocktail hour, and when we asked a group of mothers what the buzz was about, one replied, “Have you met the girl from Scotland’s escort? He’s so handsome, and sweet!” No peeking, ladies!

After a dinner of lobster rolls, grilled tournedos of beef and arugula salad with caramelized pears—Dr. Christine Frissora, gastroenterologist and mother of aforementioned debutante Sarah Rodeo, told us that ending a meal with the salad course is ideal for digestion—the ceremony began.

Polite applause and the occasional hoot welcomed each girl, her escort and her military escort. Country by country and state by state, they paraded through the glittering red and green ballroom and up the carpeted staircase, the silver-coated petals in their bouquets trembling as they curtsied in platform heels. Jazzy, state-appropriate entry songs got laughs (“Yankee Doodle Dandy”) and cheers (“Sweet Home Alabama”).

Anticipation for the famed Texas Dip, the dramatic floor-grazing swan-dive curtsy of Texan tradition, reached a near-frenzy when the state was announced, proving that in the event of secession, Texas would have plenty of loyal, low-bowing patriots.

Haley Anderson, whose grandfather Jerry Jones owns the Dallas Cowboys, was up first, and sunk to the ground with grace, rising to a standing ovation. Only one Texan faltered, garnering gasps and oohs from the crowd. But a rapid recovery and one final procession later, the dance party began. And prom-like it was!

Just as one debutante was leaning in to tell us that once one has come out, one should act more “like a lady,” “Gangnam Style” pumped through the speakers, and one deb climbed unceremoniously onto the stage, her escorts in tow, leading the crowd in the horseback-riding pantomime.

By 1:30 a.m., debutantes and their families were just beginning to find their ways to the coat check, and revelers were still unstably gyrating to top 40 hits, their coifs now topped with the multicolored, pom-pommed bucket hats of the renowned Lester Lanin Band. Auspicious debuts indeed.

At a gathering of the Frankfurt Banking Conference, German Bundesbank president and European Central Bank Governing Council member Jens Weidmann said on Friday that “the economic costs of any form of monetary financing of public debts and deficits outweigh its benefits so clearly that it will not help to stabilize the current situation.”

Sam Chandan.

Dr. Weidmann declined to comment when asked if the bank had furtively adopted limits on its weekly purchases of eurozone members’ government bonds. The meeting’s air of ambivalence in addressing the continent’s crisis coincided with concessions on the growth outlook. In his first public address as ECB president, Mario Draghi opened his remarks by stating that “downside risks to the economic outlook have increased.”

The positions emerging from their most recent meeting suggest that Europe’s leadership is ultimately unwilling to install a credible backstop should the crisis engulf other nations. The significance of the European threat for the global outlook is reflected in the reactivity of equity indices in the United States, where markets have been whipsawed by daily shifts in the tenor of news emerging from across the pond. After resuming a measure of normalcy, the VIX spiked during the 11th hour of the summer’s budget debate in Washington and has been elevated ever since.

Somewhat brighter economic data have not mollified investor skittishness. Over the next days and weeks, attention will also be focused on domestic affairs and the seeming incapacity of congressional leaders to achieve compromise. While debt talks remain fluid and the true state of discussions remain wittingly hidden from the voting public, it is increasingly likely that the goals set for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction in August will be abandoned.

The utter failure of America’s divided leadership is unconscionable, as is the continuing pretense of well-functioning democratic institutions. And yet, while the domestic scenario bears an uncomfortable resemblance to diegeses in the nations we condescend to instruct in governance, the market mechanisms that are critical to disciplining the latter are loathe to rebuke the United States for its shockingly myopic behavior. As the relatively safest harbor during a time of exaggerated risk and risk aversion, our markets have seen an influx of capital even though some of the most far-reaching sources of instability are rooted here. The 10-year Treasury closed the week at a yield of just over 2 percent. Meanwhile, the TED spread, which proxies for risk aversion, has risen to its highest level since mid-2010.

The desirability of American assets is not limited to the practically risk-free obligations of the Treasury. In the shadow of macro developments, core property investment and credit flows are rather robust. Investors’ determination that current prices reflect a discount on long-term cash flow and appreciation has been readily apparent over just the past two weeks. The Wall Street Journal reported last Wednesday that Equity Residential had taken the pole position in bidding for a majority stake in Archstone. The former’s $2.5 bid values Archstone at $4.7 billion—just $61,250 per unit—in a reflection of corporate structure and debt encumbrance issues that weigh on the underlying real estate. On a smaller and more idiosyncratic scale, Equity Group and Hilton’s Waldorf Astoria were reported last week to have acquired Chicago’s Elysian Hotel for approximately $95 million.

Apart from the recent litany of transactions priced above $100 million, a broader range of sales and development activity is supported by commercial mortgage lenders eager to see their resources deployed. At the extreme, Simon Property Group this month offered $1.2 billion in senior unsecured notes. The notes due in 2017 carry a $2.8 percent coupon, less than 200 basis points over the comparably termed 5-year Treasury and barely 80 basis points over the 10-year rate. The secured debt market trends are reflected in several recent originations, including a $360 million, 4.6 percent refinancing by MetLife for the Park Meadows shopping center just outside Dallas. Favorable financing is not the sole purview of the largest assets. The retired debt carried an interest rate of just less than 6 percent. In Cambridge, Mass., Marcone Capital arranged Cambridge Savings Bank’s $16 million financing for the Porter Square Galleria at just 4 percent. At 4.25 percent, JP Morgan Chase provided $6.5 million to refinance a four-building industrial asset in Burbank, in greater Los Angeles.

Property investors and lenders are necessarily assuming a degree of risk in their current activities. These risks relate to the interest rate environment and potential for inflation. While the latter may be internalized by properties with healthy fundamentals, the debt market will struggle to cope with higher interest rates should global or domestic conditions require higher baseline yields on U.S. debt. In the multifamily sector in particular, going-in spreads are no longer wide by historical standards. Apart from these capital and credit market issues, the broader threats to the economic recovery cannot be ruled out as challenges to still-fragile absorption trends. That should be cause for concern among credit risk officers and cycle-minded investment strategists, since an acceleration of fundamentals underpin the renewed tolerance for risk-taking and investors’ increasingly frequent fits of bravado.
dsc@chandan.com

Sam Chandan, Ph.D., is president and chief economist of Chandan Economics and an adjunct professor at the Wharton School.

According to the docket, the building hopes to “install a marquee and alter the motor court,” changes which would alter the hotel’s famed art deco façade.

According to renderings not yet made public but photographed by DNAinfo at a Community Board meeting last week, the single marquee which currently covers the building’s entrance would be replaced by three smaller glass canopies, one for each of the doors at the hotel’s Park Avenue entrance.

Architecture firm BBG-BBGM is currently working on the project, but refused to comment, citing a strict contract with the Waldorf Astoria.

eknutsen@observer.com

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mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Mr. Thomson had missed the hour of standing around and drinking. He was there to deliver the evening's keynote address.

"Journalism is a contact sport," he told The Observer before anyone had come in for dinner.

We were talking about Mr. Thomson's battle with The New York Times.

Last week The Times threatened Mr. Thomson's paper with legal action for copyright infringement. New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson also accused The Journal of heavily discounting ad space.

"I'm not in the ad department, but the suggestion that we're giving ads away or somehow padding the paper—they know that's not true," Mr. Thomson said.

Ms. Robinson said last week that The Times has not lost any readers to The Journal since the launch of its Greater New York section.

"I'm sure that [Ms. Robinson] wouldn't have said anything that would in any way be interpreted as misleading given the stringent requirements of the S.E.C. disclosure regulations," Mr. Thomson said grinning.

Zing! Argy-bargy!

Mr. Thomson also took exception with the idea that The Journal would ever copy The Times.

"If you look at the paper, The New York Times, historically it was very vertical," he said.

He was talking about his rival's front-page layout.

"Go back and look at the last two weeks' front pages. You'll see they're increasingly becoming horizontal," Mr. Thomson said.

So The Times is copying The Journal?

"That's what you think, maybe that's what I think," he said. "We'll let people reach their own conclusions about that."

O.K.!

Mr. Thomson also had some good news to deliver.

"The most recent figures are that weekday sales, retail is up 13 percent and Saturday is up 18 percent, which are pretty good numbers in a retail market that's best described as challenging," he said.

"At The New York Times it's the hour of dour most of the day, so they're a little leaden-footed in the way they dance around the boxing ring," Mr. Thomson continued.

We wondered if Mr. Thomson was happy with Sarah Ellison's War at the Wall Street Journal, which came out in May to excellent reviews.

Ms. Ellison thanked Mr. Thomson for "his wit" in the acknowledgements.

"I've read bits and pieces," he said. "I think a book that has large chunks of reported, quoted speech—" he paused. "It's just not accurate."

"It's non-non-fiction," he said.