High life
party men
-rale!
Although social climbing is as prevalent as ever in cafe society, the costume ball, the r?tece de resistance of a successful climb, is
Puerto as rare as Italian war heroes or 2erto Rican aristocrats. Instead, getting
wrecked and overstimulated in a profusion of sounds, strobe lights, disco music and Pills in a psychedelic setting is the in thing of the Seventies. . Needless to say, social climbers are ecstatic over disco culture and its fascinating amalgam of nobs and punks, rich and poor, _laare and trendy. Like air travel prices, cut People competition among the Beautiful reople has reduced refinement to hip, eccentricity to conformity, and nuance to i sensory overkill. And only a blue jean s needed to become an eligible climber. Gone are the days when South American Parvenus like Charlie Bestegui, a Mexican millionaire, would take over Venice, dress 9P three-quarters of her population and "Port all the right people on private trains. After making his mint, the Mexican wan in
to M i 'flake it in Europe and he went about t n
Style. He always attired himself in Louis XV e, nslumes, and his pock-marked face helped 'end credence to the disguise. Managing to combine unheard of things like taste, singenuity and flamboyance, Bestegui also Pent money as if it was going out of style. And he was successful. Admitted to the !IMermost sanctums of European aristo.cracy, he left an indelible mark that sur_vived both him and his fortune. He fathered _d, daughter who today carries one of the Oldest and grandest titles in Spain. He man
aged this by seducing the wife of a famous duke, his affair with her becoming common knowledge to everyone but the old gentleman.
Bestegui always said that if it wasn't for his flair for party giving he would have remained a peon in aristocratic eyes. But because of it by the end if his life people referred to him as a Spanish grandee.
Another great party-giver who used the costumed extravaganza as a vehicle to more gentle company and surroundings was the Marquis de Cuevas of ballet fame. Cuevas, a Chilean, was no more a marquis than my colleague Jeffrey Bernard, but unlike Jeffrey, who spends his time in Soho bars and likes to frequent yobs and rummies, Cuevas preferred upward mobility and European palaces. In a classic case of one-upmanship, he outflanked Bestegui by arriving in Europe unknown but with a title. The first thing he did after acquiring his honorific from an impoverished Portuguese farmer was to start giving balls. His last shindig was almost twenty years ago but people still are talking about it. It took place in Biarritz and Cuevas came dressed as Louis XIV. (Hopefully, readers will notice once again the one-upmanship.) He took over the Golf Club de Chiberta, transformed it into a seventeenth-century chateau and arrived last, on a throne carried by eight flunkies. Poor little rich girl Barbara Hutton entered riding on an elephant. The Duke of Brissac, France's premier duke, came as a Monmartre pimp. The party cost 50,000 preinflation pounds. South Americans had cornered the social climbing market in post-war days. Antenor Patino, Bolivian tin heir of cocoanut tree into Rolls-Royce fame, cannot be ignored when balls and climbing are mentioned.. The diminutive Patino has been giving parties for almost half a century and is the only climber alive today. Although still climbing he is attuned to the times and has not given a party in exactly ten years. His last took place in Estoril and probably had a lot to do with the subsequent Portuguese military uprising. It was rumoured that the coup leaders had served as waiters at the ball.
The party-giver who served as a bridge between the good old days of climbing and today's disco freaks was not a Latin, however. Alexis de Rede, ne Rosenthal in Vienna, was the first party giver and ascendant extraordinaire to indulge in nostalgie de la boue. In other words, inviting creeps, punks, black leathered gays and trendies. The aristocracy loved it. Dukes, Princes and Earls mixed with black hair dressers, rock stars and dress designers. Rede made it but in the process of doing so put the ball business in moth balls. Drugs did the rest along with voyeur journalism. Why spend money, alert the taxman, give an opportunity to the gossip columns to have a field day only to be read by people one would not be caught speaking to even if marooned on a desert island, when you can climb with anyone your heart desires simply by hanging
around a loo of a smokey disco and pretending to sniff?
Resembling primitive tribal religious rites, today's orgies differ from the grand parties of yesterday as snuff from cocaine. Although similar in nature and purpose they are as dissimilar as night and day. And there is no hope in sight. One of the greatest social climbers around, an American oilman, plans to corner the market of Beautiful People and hoi polloi by building a house with loos the size of drawing rooms and vice versa.
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