Out & About
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Fe Fendi did not have her hair done yesterday for the 24th annual Frederick Law Olmsted Awards Luncheon. As she knows from experience, “When you have your hair done fresh, the hat slides off,” she said. “And it’s difficult enough getting up on time to be here at 11!”
She was not alone in a crowd of nearly a thousand attending the event, the Ascot of Manhattan. The Ascot of Brooklyn is the Prospect Park Alliance’s hat breakfast, which took place last week at the River Cafe.
It was a beautiful sight in Central Park’s Conservatory Gardens, but hats did wreak havoc on some beloved social rituals: no blow drys, and for the brim-encumbered, air kisses instead of pecks on the cheek. Sculptor Bette Korman had a way around that: The hat she made, with baby orchids and a scarf, was “designed for a full and wet kiss,” Ms. Korman said.
Some went without a hat, among them Thelma Golden of the Studio Museum in Harlem and Lisa Dennison of the Guggenheim. Others had little choice. “My host gets angry. You can’t be at her table without a hat,” Lisa Perry said.
Hat or no hat, the event filled the conservancy’s coffers with $2.4 million. The Olmsted medal went to the immediate past president of the conservancy, Karen LeFrak, and the major donors for the renovation of Heckscher Playground, Patti and Ray Chambers.
