High life
Snow showers
Taki
Gstaad everyone who has ever heard of Gstaad knows, few people go there to ski. Although the picture-perfect village is set at a rather low altitude for a ski resort (3,300 feet), socially it is all peaks. Come Christmas and New Year, the so-called Gsnobbery (a name invented by a working- class Italian called Bob Colacello for Vanity Fair) goes into high gear. There is the Valentino bash, where the Italian couturier shows off his latest acquisition of young American ski bums to his Hollywood friends — people like Joan Collins, Roger Moore, Elizabeth Taylor, David Bowie and others too degenerate to mention in The Speccie's elegant pages. And then there is the rest of us: people like the Goulandrises, the Flicks, the Buckleys, as in William F, and a few royals like the Queen of Den- mark and the Pretender to the Italian throne. (The latter has lost all pretensioas since he did a Taki back in 1978, but the
death of a young German was ruled an accident and now everything is hunky-dory, for the pretentious one, that is.)
Oh yes, I almost forgot. There are also some nouveaux in Gstaad, and by this I mean that they are not exactly old hands in these parts. About four years ago, the Ron Perelmans arrived — they have since done the splits — and never have I seen people more ill at ease. Ron and Claudia are prob- ably the richest American couple. He owns Revlon and about a hundred other busi- nesses; she has a father who distributes every magazine and newspaper published in the United States. The good old Swiss tried their best to divest the Perelmans of their billions, but with little success. The ghastly couple was invited everywhere by jewellery salesmen and business hustlers trying to make an easy buck. They were as .successful as La Ligne Maginot. The same goes for some rich towel-heads from Kuwait and Saudi. A lot of people try and divest them of their ill-gotten gains, but up until now the only thing our Arab brethren have done is to eat their dates, which they imported from Paris and Miami. And Los Angeles.
Personally, I'm ensconced in my chalet with the mother of and my children, a very helpful cook and butler, and furious at the weather. There is never enough slim in Gstaad during early January, the time one wants to get away from the glitterati and ski all day. All night, too, if it were possi- ble. After ten years of throwing a bash in the Big Bagel, I finally threw the towel in this year. The last two years were a night- mare. On New Year's Eve, that is: dozens of free-loaders crashed my parties, and I was too drunk to evict them. But not too drunk to realise what had happened when I got the bill.
Here in Gstaad there are no gate-crash- ers. With some close friends, I have taken over a hotel-restaurant in Lauenen, a tiny village next to Gstaad, and we hope to start the new year off right. Essentially we are the same people from the summer. There will be no Hollywood types among us, no freaks, no professional gays, and no child- molesters. And I hope no royals.
And speaking of the latter, if I see Major Hewitt in Gstaad during the holidays, I shan't be surprised. I have never met the bugger, but I find him an appalling upstart, one whose career took off when the Princess of Wales was at her most vulnera- ble. He has now been named as the man who broke up the Faber marriage. I know David Faber and like him very much. The press described him as arrogant. As always, they got it wrong. He is the nicest of men. But Hewitt is not responsible. The woman always is. She used Faber; she deserves Hewitt and vice versa. But I wonder what they'll live on in Gstaad. Perhaps he could give skiing lessons to Victor-Emmanuel's wife.
Happy New Year to all of you, especially to my editor, Jenny Naipaul.
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