The Vogue-ing of Brooklyn

The stilettos arrive. Photo: Amanda Gordon

Hovering tightly underneath their umbrellas, a group of young women in stilettos arrived at the Prospect Park Boathouse last night, eager to get inside the Prospect Park Alliance Junior Committee’s Summer Soiree. But they had some unexpected trouble at the door: Not a bouncer — these willowy women are used to waltzing past the city’s most exclusive gatekeepers — but rather an obstruction that made a flashbulb-friendly entrance or even simply stepping forward difficult.

RELATED: Photos from the Prospect Park Summer Soiree

There they were covering every square inch of the floor: hundreds of white shopping bags, the premium kind, with stiff cardboard, cloth handles, and bright red interior, emblazoned with the Vogue magazine logo. Some were stacked neatly on top of one another, but many others were toppled over, their contents — copies of the August issue, CDs offering “the biggest pulse-pounding dance hits of all time,” bags of “all natural popchips” — spilling out to the ground, into other bags. Magazine pages were being wrinkled, bags crushed.

Sally Singer works for Vogue and volunteers for Prospect Park. Photo: Amanda Gordon

Dealing with this goodie-bag chaos was a tall woman with a furrowed brow, wearing flats and a floral dress: the Junior Committee’s chairwoman, who is also Vogue’s Fashion News and Features Director, and, until Anna Wintour moves to the Slope, Vogue’s top Brooklynite: Sally Singer. At the sight of her, the stilettos knew what to do: swoop down and sort out the freebies — the pens, the coupons for blow-outs and waxes (‘Oh well, someone might get no pens…”) — and free up the entrance, just in time for the party to officially begin.

Ms. Singer has presided over the Summer Soiree since its inception (at first with a co-chairwoman, Emma Bloomberg, who left the post this year), and each year the party has become more Vogue, or, at least, more Sally Singer, who stands out among her colleagues for her bohemian style and thoughtful, creative stories (in the August issue she's written a humorous profile of Google executive Marissa Mayer). This year the Vogueness expanded to the point where Ms. Singer claimed, as she put down a bid for a children's party at the Prospect Park carousel, "We have models clamoring to be at this party.”

Well, this was no Costume Institute red carpet (remember the pile of goodie bags), but there some designers and friends of designers, such as Maria Cornejo and Ikram Goldman. And there were a lot of Vogue staffers (many of whom are model-like): charity circuit fixture Stephanie LaCava; fashion writers Florence Kane and Jane Herman, who served on the party committee; one of Ms. Wintour’s assistants, Indree Rockefeller; and various colleagues such as contributing editor Robert Sullivan (yes, there are some Brooklyn dads writing for Vogue).

Robert Sullivan. Photo: Amanda Gordon

Ms. Singer explained it thus: “So many people who work at Vogue live in Brooklyn, and they want to be here. It's seamless." As for what it meant for the party, Vogue-ness was only part of the story. “The party reflects the increasing fabulosity of Brooklyn," Ms. Singer said.

The scene inside the boathouse, which serves as an educational Audubon Center by day. Photo: Amanda Gordon

Brooklyn “fabulosity” abounded: Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor and the folks from Southpaw were at the turntables; Nathan’s hotdogs got the puff pastry treatment on the hors d’oeuvres tray; Tess Amodeo Vickery and Rebecca Vintner and many others modeled high-quality vintage;

Tess Amodeo Vickery, Brett Garling, Lorenzo Pizzoli, and Rebecca Vintner. Photo: Amanda Gordon

Alexander Paulsson dared to wear white shorts at night and, noting how poorly his white sneakers were holding up in the rain, spoke of his “goal to buy Beatles boots from a place in Paris — the kind they wore in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’”;

Alexander Paulsson. Photo: Amanda Gordon

Annie Daly wore fresh flowers in her hair, artfully arranged by a Belgian houseguest (and Ms. Daly isn’t even a Vogue staffer — she’s an assistant editor who reads tons of diet books for Good Housekeeping);

Annie Daly. Photo: Amanda Gordon

stylist Lisa von Wiese showed off her bare tanned back with a green dress and brown cardigan, looking ready for the surf of the Rockaways; and there were dozens of straw fedoras, recently celebrated by Bill Cunningham in The New York Times (we’re willing to bet that trend started in Brooklyn). Absent were just about all the summer clichés — madras (we saw only one guest wearing it), maxi dresses, gladiator sandals -- they're so Manhattan.

The most important example of Brooklyn fabulosity was Prospect Park itself, on this night wet and foggy but still beautiful. Brett Garling praised Frederick Law Olmsted for the park’s design, clearly superior to that of Central Park. “We’re obsessed with him,” Ms. Amodeo Vickery added. Lorenzo Pizzoli said “the best thing is the free concerts.” Others spoke fondly of their bike rides, runs, and picnics. “I love the park. I live two blocks away and it has brought me such good times,” Ms. Daly said.

A view of Prospect Park, from the second floor of the boathouse. Photo: Amanda Gordon

The president of the Prospect Park Alliance, Tupper Thomas, who bid on a Derek Lam handbag in the silent auction, most likely a Vogue 'get,' said the park has been getting a lot of love this summer — a “devastating” amount, in fact, with more people home because of the downturn. “On Sundays and Mondays, there is so much garbage to pick up. And it’s costing us a lot of money to keep up,” Ms. Thomas, who has led the restoration and revitalization of the park for more than 25 years, said. The increase in costs wasn't budgeted, but that’s where the Prospect Park Alliance — and the Summer Soiree, which raises money for the Alliance — come in. The alliance provides private funds to keep the park Brooklyn-fabulous, as well as the one with the Vogue goodie bag, and the Vogue staffers seeking inspiration for the pages of the magazine. The party marked not only the Vogue-ing of Brooklyn, but the Brooklynizing of Vogue.