“I’m doing world hunger,” he replied.
“We’re here for breast cancer!” Ms. Hurley said.
“Have you met Los Lonely Boys?” Mr. Pastore said, ushering over the Hispanic rock band from Texas.
AFTER ANOTHER CREAM couch, another pink shirt from Ms. Hurley and another perky host—at LXTV—the ladies arrived at the Waldorf Astoria’s Presidential Suite. It was noon. “The fixtures in that bathroom—it’s from the ’30s!” Mrs. Lauder told Ms. Hurley and her bodyguard as she appeared from the rest room. In a vast, empty dining hall nearby, they met up with eight co-chairs (Anne Eisenhower, Arlene Taub, and Gail Hilson among them) of the upcoming BCRF luncheon to do a formal tasting and finalize the menu. Tickets are $1,600 each; $1.8 million has already been raised.
Rice-crusted halibut with long beans, shitake mushrooms, coconut sticky rice and ginger passion-fruit sauce appeared. “I think it’s a little white-looking. Can we do something about that?” Mrs. Lauder asked. The chef promptly resolved the problem with a julienne of peppers atop the coconut rice.
Next came wild king salmon and balsamic vinegar-glazed chicken. Among the topics of discussion as the ladies nibbled: Milking pregnant cows gives 11-year-old girls breast cancer; Bergdorf Goodman is empty, but the shoe department isn’t because, according to Ms. Lauder, “You can wear last year’s suit with this year’s shoes”; and, according to Ms. Taub, birth-control pills are responsible for certain strains of cancer and “are the worst thing that has ever happened to women.” Ms. Hilson disagreed: “But they gave women sexual freedom.” To which Ms. Taub retorted: “And what’s so good about that?”
Mrs. Lauder changed the subject to recent advances in reconstructive surgeries. “So are you saying that people with mastectomies can keep their own nipples now?” asked Ms. Hurley.
For dessert, they tried low-fat strawberry parfait, pistachio dacquoise, warm apple-strudel crepes and a Pavlova, which Ms. Lauder found “divine,” but which was overruled by a popular vote for the strudel.
“Do you text, Evelyn?” Ms. Hurley was now asking Mrs. Lauder.
“No. I like handwriting and I like voices,” she replied.
“What about a BlackBerry?” one of the others asked.
“My thumbs are too fat,” the doyenne said.
Unlike Mrs. Lauder, the young socialites of today seem more concerned about making their reality TV debut than creating a philanthropic legacy. Does she think they understand the responsibility that comes with their social standing?
“I think they do,” Mrs. Lauder said. “You think of Allison Roosevelt and Tory Burch and my nieces Aerin and Jane and my son William and certainly my California son Gary are extremely philanthropic with a great deal of organizations like the Aspen Institute, the Fresh Air Fund and RDC. It is important for us to be able to network with younger people because we can’t live forever.”
After a break, The Observer met the ladies at Bloomingdale’s at 5 p.m., where they would light the department store’s facade pink. Ms. Hurley managed to bring along two brand-new pink outfits, and Mrs. Lauder, having had a chance to change, was now wearing an all-pink dress herself, and heels. Her hair had been redone and her makeup reapplied, and she was smiling her way through the room.
Ms. Hurley said this was entirely in character and recalled when the Lauders attended her wedding to Indian textile heir Arun Nayar in Jodhpur, India, in 2007.
“They were the last people standing. It was 5 in the morning, they were in turbans and jewelry and they were up dancing to hip-hop!” Ms. Hurley said. “Evelyn has more energy than any teenager I’ve ever met. She just hits the ground and runs.”
