As black tie bonanzas deservedly take a bashing, we ask: “What’s next for Britain and America’s party paraders?”
Last May, the acerbic Spectator columnist Taki wrote a brilliant opinion piece bemoaning the ghastly affair he believed New York’s Metropolitan Museum Gala had become. It perfectly summed up the vulgarity of an age where Kardashians have replaced Vanderbilt Sloanes and where Anna Wintour and her condescending ‘club’ have seized the mantle. This week, Primates of Park Avenue author Wednesday Martin took the debate one stage further and asked: “Is it time to say bye-bye to the black tie charity ball?” in an article for Town & Country magazine.
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Whilst Martin quoted a “titan of finance” as saying: “No one really wants to attend a gala”, she also suggested that “showing up feels somehow retro, tangible, genuine”. Society is still forced into the routine of putting on black tie and parading out in both America and Britain yet in reality, everyone would most likely rather be down their local spit-and-sawdust.
Aside from the rubber chicken (and vomit inducing wine), the likelihood of being stuck with nine crushing bores and the inevitable raffle of rubbish, such affairs are now mostly the preserve of a club of Z-listers and desperados. At such gatherings, you’ll find trolleyed trailer trash like Dawn Ward of The Real Housewives of Cheshire clucking with titleless tosspot twits like David Furnish and each and every Friday’s ES Magazine bears testimony to this fact. The black tie bash deserves to come to its natural end, but what on earth will replace it?
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24 comments
They used to say of Anthea Turner and Grant Bovey: “Here come Fuck I used to be famous and Fuck I want to be famous”
Denis Doble, Sandra Shevey and Elizabeth Jones should definitely be on your list too, Suzie.
I totally agree about these black tie affairs. Most of the money raised at them goes on costs and the charities end up with very little. You are better off writing a cheque to the cause instead.
Liz Hurley!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! phwoah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’ll have a bit of that!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yum, yum, my tum, tum!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Phwoah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Glasses at spec-savers for you Rod my boy.
Alexa Chong looks rather lovely too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Send her to Oz if you don’t want her!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rod if you go to specsavers you buy one pair and get another pair for free.
I saw David Pun last night at the party. He truly does go EVERYWHERE. I admire his stamina and skill.
I must leap to the defence of black tie galas. The ones I have been involved in raised much needed funds for dolphins and whales and I cannot see why people wouldn’t want to support saving these beautiful creatures.
Here we go again! All these people should be using their energies to support dear Gerry and Kate McCann in their efforts to find their beloved daughter Madeleine McCann. Madeleine is missing and until she is found all efforts must be put into the cause of finding her. FIND MADELEINE, FIND HER NOW.
Oh Gillian Pleeeeese
FECK OFF FECK OFF NOW..
Nice to see you out there looking Trott. Had it not got into your pea sized brain that Madeleine is dead? Most of the British public now believe your “dear” couple were responsible for some very dark deeds and the “Truth of the Lie” will emerge, as well as book being published in the UK.
This mob couldn’t give a monkey toss about poor Madeleine and what happened to her or any other of the children that go missing? And in my books they are just bunch of Jokers and no Hopers. We need to know who takes all the tens of thousands of British children every year that disappear never to be see again. Were are they now?.
I also saw the Pun last night at a private view at Leica studio, there was strict guest list and a security guy at entry, really wonder how he got in.. he had the bag in the pic ! I guess he uses it to stuff in canapes from the parties!
Leave the Pun alone, he’s obviously a very lonely man who wants to be in with the in-crowd, please let him in! so he can die happy, poor man.
I would put on a black tie to be sat between Liz Hurley and Alexa Chung.
Specsavers for you too Marcy, who knows you might bump into Rod and his boyfriend.
I never thought I’d see ‘bored OF’ in the Steeple Times. This is the very ugly argot used by the people you’re denigrating! It’s ‘bored WITH’.
Actually, the food at the Lincoln Centre is not rubber chicken, it’s excellent.
And while I take your point about footballer’s wives, Housewives of This or That, the Lincoln Center effort does raise big cash for a worthy cause.
This bunch of partying talent-less nobody’s are finished just like the rest of the UK . Like i said before no EU no UK. The Titanics nose dive you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Plenty of glass but no class.
What’s that old slapper! Esther Rantzen going out of nick?! Wtf, she was Jimmy Savile’s right-hand man. I though the scrubber was doing 100 years in the slammer? Those poor children. And she’s still doing the rounds, what a country, wheres the justice for those poor children, it makes me sick.
Why is Stephen Fry wearing such a long face did someone at the party nick his wallet?!
There’s some faces among this lot who i thought went down with the Titanic! Were did they dig this bunch of losers up from, the London Cemetery?
Stephen Fry and his husband. Wtf is going on am i still on planet earth or did i have a massive great breakdown and don’t know about it? I don’t think i belong on this earth planet anymore! Hence the title name.