"I don’t know anything about what’s happening at my magazine!" exclaimed Domino editor in chief Deborah Needleman Wednesday night at a party she was hosting for the magazine’s fashion issue at socialite and contributing editor Alison Sarofim‘s West Village townhouse.
Ah, Fashion Week. "I’m hoping it will still be there next week," she sighed.
Ms. Needleman called Ms. Sarofim’s house "the prettiest house I know. I can’t figure out how to top it." Her own Tribeca loft, which she shares with hubby Jacob Weisberg of Slate, has been featured in New York magazine. "But I don’t have any Rothkos!" she said.
Mr. Weisberg, who was chatting with actress Elizabeth Banks in the living room near where Mary Louise Parker was holed up on a couch, recently spoke to Fashion Week Daily about his wife. "We’ve been made merciless fun of," sighed Ms. Needleman. "Gawker or somebody thought it was serious, they’re like, ‘Oh, how pretentious, she reads Chekhov in the morning and metaphysical poets at night!’ That’s a joke, you moron!
"But [Jacob] got it right, I sleep a lot," she continued. "He nailed that."
Ms. Banks left Mr. Weisberg chatting with her husband, Max Handelman, and wandered over in a strapless black dress. "My husband is, I’m sure, going to talk his ear off about politics," she said. "I am the biggest fan of Deborah Needleman and Jacob Weisberg that exists on the planet! I love these two. I love them as a couple. I love her as a human being. I love her as an editor. I think she’s fabulous." They had been seated together at a Highline event and had become fast friends.
Ms. Banks’ laugh reminded us of her seminal orgasmic bathtub scene in The 40-Year Old Virgin. "I do hear that from many people, like four other people tonight," she admitted. And there it was—ha ha ha!—again! "If you like The 40-Year Old Virgin you are going to freak out over Zack and Miri Make a Porno! [It] stars me and Seth Rogen. … It’s like The 40-Year Old Virgin on acid."
Ms. Banks professed herself Mr. Rogen’s biggest fan, despite his recent spate of—dare we say it?—overexposure. "He is that funny, he is that pudgy, and he is that adorable," she insisted. "He is my, what I refer to as my acting soulmate. There was Bogey and Bacall, there was Hepburn and Tracy, and I’m hoping that there’s Banks and Rogen."
Others were gushing over another, less heterosexual, man. "I adored it, I went crazy for it," said Domino fashion director Lauren Goodman of the Marc Jacobs show. "I wished the looks didn’t go by so fast, because there was so much to take in. I thought it was glorious."
"Beyond fantastic," added Ms. Sarofim, who wore a bob and big chunky diamond earrings.
Ms. Goodman had been keeping up with the wider world this week via "NPR, NPR, NPR! While getting ready. It’s like you can putter around and get ready and be informed at the same time."
Suddenly: "Did you see the lobsters in the bathroom?" cried interior designer Queer Eye veteran Thom Filicia, dragging an unwitting party guest to observe a clutch of plastic crustaceans crawling up one side of an otherwise minimalist bathroom. "This is why we love Alison. I’ve been to parties here where she’ll wall-to-wall carpet the house. She will wall-to-wall carpet the house in white plush carpet!"
He sighed with admiration. "It says, ‘I love beautiful things and I love timeless things, but I’m a little quirky, I’m a little outside the box.’"
