Out & About
A Prospect of Fashionability
As if further proof was needed of Brooklyn's fashionableness, the guest list at the Prospect Park Alliance's Junior Benefit Thursday was packed with Vogue staffers: the fashion news editor and features director, Sally Singer, was one of the event's chairwomen; a contributing editor, Robert Sullivan, the author of the acclaimed "Cross Country," whose favorite spot in the park is Sullivan Hill, named after the American general captured in the Battle of Brooklyn, and the magazine's book critic, Megan O'Grady.
Further increasing the borough's style quotient were the T-shirts guests received in their goody bags, which were from Madewell, J. Crew's new brand of women's clothing that is opening its own store in SoHo later this year.
Two members of the Junior Committee have known Prospect Park since it was not so fashionable: the executive director of the Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corp., Phaedra Thomas, a daughter of the founder and president of the alliance, Tupper Thomas, and a party promoter and art curator, Elizabeth Beller, who learned how to skate in the park.
Ms. Beller wasn't feeling nostalgic. "The goal of the party is to introduce the park to the new young set of Brooklyn," she said.
One happy contributor was the president of the Brooklyn Young Republicans Club, Luke Vander Linden of Bay Ridge. He paid $750 for dinner with Miss USA 2007, Rachel Smith, at the Park Slope Thai restaurant Song. He'll be taking along his brother, Jake, as part of the bachelor party before Jake's August 29 wedding to Maggie Moon.
A co-chairwoman of the event, Emma Bloomberg, doesn't live in Brooklyn, but she still has a favorite part of the park: the carousel, which the alliance restored to its original turn-of-the-century grandeur in 1990. It will be running at the alliance's Prospect Park Ball on October 20, at which the alliance will celebrate its 20th anniversary.
