With Deborah Schoeneman
Did anyone believe Gisele Bündchen when she said she wasn’t looking for love? “Who needs a man?” she told a reporter last month. “I have three dogs, two horses, and five sisters.” She didn’t bring them to the White House Correspondents Dinner, where the Brazilian bombshell—recently split from playboy Ricardo Mansur—was overheard asking a couple of young women for advice during Bloomberg News’ pre-dinner cocktail party. “So where are there cool guys our age?” our spies heard her saying. Stumped, the young women pointed her across the room to Jennifer Love Hewitt, but that wouldn’t do. “No,” Bündchen said. “Not gals. I want guys. Where are the cool guys?” If there are any cool guys around Bündchen’s age (22) who imagine they have a shot with her, here’s a tip: Think dinosaurs. When we caught up with her at the Costume Institute Gala last week, she let on that “the Museum of Natural History is my favorite. I’ve been there, like, 30 million times.” Maybe all those skeletal giants make her feel at home.
It may be impeccably stylish, but the late Bill Blass’s apartment at 1 Sutton Place South is headed for the clearance rack. When the designer lost his long cancer fight last summer, the 2,200-square-foot place went on the market for $7.9 million (with the proceeds to go to a cancer charity). In January, it was slashed to $7 million, and last week, it fell to $5.9 million. Apparently, the layout is to blame: Though the 900-square-foot living room is spectacular, the place has only one bedroom, and the monthly maintenance is $8,000. On top of that, Blass’s furnishings won’t be included in the sale—they’ll be auctioned at Sotheby’s in October to benefit the New York Hospital’s aids center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Now that she’s trying to clean up her image, Tara Reid may want to start wearing flats. Though she’s on a wholesome press blitz to promote her upcoming film My Boss’s Daughter—she recently told People that she’s tiring of the scene, saying, “I’m getting older”—she apparently spent every night last week on the town. At the opening of Cirque du Soleil’s Varekai on Randalls Island on April 24, Reid was spotted at about 1:30 a.m. being helped to her car. But, says a pal, her unsteadiness came from shoes, not booze—Reid had trouble negotiating the gravel parking lot in her stilettos. The friend’s evidence that Reid was okay? Afterward, she headed to Suite 16 and Lotus before calling it a night: “She really is behaving much better.”
The paint is barely dry at Soho House—and the club already has competition. Ground has just been broken at 60 East 55th Street for the private Core Club, the brainchild of lawyer Jennie Saunders that’s scheduled to open in about eleven months. The club will offer everything from dry cleaning to over-the-top spa services. “You tell us what you want and we’ll get it,” Saunders says. A select group of jet-setters will soon receive invitations to become the club’s 100 “founding members”—initiation fee, $100,000. Another 1,300 “regular” members will later be invited, at the bargain-basement rate of $25,000 to start, plus $1,000 a month. Saunders declines to name her backers, but she will let on that real-estate tycoon Aby Rosen (his holdings include Lever House and the Seagram Building) is behind the club, and Craft restaurateur Tom Colicchio is in talks to run the multiple restaurants, lounges, and bars. Rosen finds nothing extraordinary about the fees: “It’s like you’re buying a piece of it,” he told us. “There’s a certain amount of credit against that payment—there’s value for what you pay for.”
The party’s over at the Submercer, the super-VIP lounge in Andre Balazs’s Mercer Hotel. Buzz in the neighborhood is that the basement watering hole—which has hosted Russell Crowe, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lopez, and Chris Rock, to name just a few—was recently shut down for licensing and permit violations. “This is pretty serious,” a source told us. “The space is just not up to code.” Balazs did not return several calls requesting comment; when we phoned the hotel’s front desk, we were told that the lounge had been closed because of water damage and that it will reopen in the fall.
First came The Nanny Diaries—now the socialites themselves are dishing dirt on their neighbors. Upper East Side natives Jill Kargman (whose father, Arie Kopelman, runs Chanel) and Caroline Doyle Karasyov (whose late father, William Doyle, founded the auction house that bears his name) are shopping their manuscript for The Right Address, a novel about a fictional apartment building “inspired by” 740 Park Avenue. The two authors—who also wrote The Intern, a 2000 movie lampooning the fashion industry—certainly know about notorious co-ops. Kargman grew up in the same Park Avenue building as Fred Leighton and Ira Rennert, and Karasyov had Charles Gwathmey as a neighbor. However, Kargman makes the usual disclaimer: “It’s more of a fictional composite of insane socialites we’ve eavesdropped on our entire lives.”
HAIR CLIPS: Assistants to Marisa Tomei, Matthew McConaughey, and Ashley Judd had better update their Palms. In the fall, their hairstylist, Mark Garrison, is moving his Madison Avenue salon into a townhouse at 60th Street and Park Avenue, which he bought for about $3.5 million early this year. In other follicular news, Salon AKS colorist Frank Friscioni, who has counted Stephanie Seymour, Aidan Quinn, Linda Fiorentino, Emme, Cornelia Guest, and Marie-Chantal of Greece as clients, is jumping ship. After more than six years behind the chair at AKS, Friscioni is moving to the Oscar Blandi salon in the Plaza Hotel.
CAMPBELL’S SCOOP: Just when we thought we’d seen enough of Naomi Campbell, now she’s trying to develop her own TV special. We’re told she’s meeting with executives about launching a prime-time special that would center on a party hosted by the omnipresent supermodel—who says she’d like to turn it into an annual gig.
His shoulder isn’t the only thing that’s dislocated: According to friends, Yankees superstar shortstop Derek Jeter and actress Jordana Brewster have called it quits after a year of dating. Jeter was nowhere to be seen over Easter weekend, when Brewster was with her family in the Hamptons, and he skipped her 23rd-birthday party at Bungalow 8 on April 26. (Friends assure us that his absence had more to do with the split than with his injury-rehab stint in Florida.) But the Fast and the Furious actress seems to be bouncing back: Our spies report that Brewster—the granddaughter of Kingman Brewster Jr., onetime Yale president and ambassador to the Court of St. James’s—spent most of her birthday bash with Ashton Kutcher, who recently separated from his Just Married co-star Brittany Murphy.
Jennifer Lopez might style herself Jenny from the block, but she wants her own private way of getting to and from it. We hear that Ben Affleck has been trying to persuade neighbors in his Canal Street apartment building to let him install a private entrance and elevator for security’s sake (never mind that the building was fine for the Oscar winner before he hooked up with Lopez). Affleck has even offered to replace the building’s creaky main elevator if he gets his way. However, sources say that Hollywood’s hottest lovebirds won’t be getting the lift they were looking for. Nobody in the building can figure out where Ben and Jenny’s new entrance would go, and besides, residents say they’re fond of their rickety Fatal Attraction–style lift.
Nicolas Cage may have won his Oscar for Leaving Las Vegas, but he’s heading back to the City of Sin. Cage is negotiating for the role of legendary poker player Thomas Austin “Amarillo Slim” Preston, whose memoir, Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People, comes out this week. A flamboyant gambler and promoter, Slim won the World Series of Poker in 1972 and is known for stunts like beating billiards legend Minnesota Fats at pool using a broomstick, defeating Wimbledon champ Bobby Riggs with a skillet, and rafting down Idaho’s River of No Return in freezing weather just because Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder bet him he couldn’t. Cage’s rep confirms that the actor is in talks to buy the rights. In other movie-deal news, Sid Bernstein, the man who booked the Beatles’ first U.S. show at Carnegie Hall in 1964 as well as their Shea Stadium concert, may soon see his life story on the small screen. TNT is close to buying the rights to his 2001 memoir, It’s Sid Bernstein Calling … , and hopes to get it on the air in February, to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Fab Four’s arrival. We hear Robin Williams has expressed interest in starring, but Bernstein says he’s hoping for Al Pacino.
What: Canine Cocktail Party 2003, a benefit for Art for Animals, whichpromotes the rescue, care and adoption of pets in need.Who:
Hosted by Adrien Brody, Bernadette Peters, Edie Falco, Laurie Anderson,Bebe Neuwirth, and Susan Orlean, the evening includes a silent auction ofworks by Willem de Kooning, Mary Ellen Mark, Jack Pierson, Sylvia Plachy,Richard Serre, Cindy Sherman, Hunt Slonem, and Gus Van Sant, among manyothers.Where: Gagosian Gallery, 555 W. 24th StreetWhen: Tuesday, May 20 (6-8pm)Tix: Reserved tix $125 by calling (212) 675-9752. $150 tix at the door (cashand check only).
