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Farewell to the King of Parties
When renowned party planner Robert Isabell died this week, it reminded Tina Brown of the Talk magazine launch party he planned and an era that passed long before him. VIEW OUR GALLERY of his ethereal events.
When I read in the New York Post’s “Page Six” on Friday that the great party designer Robert Isabell had died suddenly at 57 (of a heart attack), I felt as if a magic lantern had suddenly been extinguished. The last party he pulled off for me was the Talk magazine launch event, co-hosted with the magazine's co-owner Harvey Weinstein, on Liberty Island in 1999, an extravaganza I have come to see as the last social celebration of the pre-9/11 celebrity decade. Guests, who included Madonna, George Plimpton, Demi Moore, Tom Brokaw, Kate Moss, Christopher Buckley, Helen Mirren, and Jerry Seinfeld, disgorged one after another from the Liberty Island ferry that Buckley immediately re-christened the “Star Barge.” Like an A-list Noah’s Ark, it motored slowly toward the tiny island where the Talk staff waited to greet the 800 guests in a warm August dusk. When the magazine folded two years later in a howl of schadenfreude, that party was considered one of the calumnies of hype I would never live down. (As the movie producer David Brown once said, “Never give an opening night party that’s better than the movie.")
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Still, I had no regrets then, nor do I now, because thanks to Robert Isabell’s creative genius, the Talk party was unforgettable. A prime enchantment was that tourists never visit the Statue of Liberty by night, so there was no electricity on the island. A velvet, sexually charged darkness engulfed the partygoers, illuminating them only by Christmas-tree lights that strung together the colored Japanese lanterns hanging from the trees. And since there was no real ability to bring in tables and chairs without absurd freight costs, Robert Isabell decreed this event would be a picnic under the moonlight. He organized for each guest to be provided with a different colored tablecloth and big Moroccan pillows to be spread out on the grass and a small picnic box loaded with delicious patés and delicacies and small bottles of wine from Glorious Foods.
A soft shower of purple rain over the Hudson River signified the start of the fireworks display narrated by one of the guests, George Plimpton. “This one is for you, Salman,” George boomed over the intercom. “It’s banned in Iran.” The MC was Queen Latifah and the vocalist of the live band she introduced was a new artist named Macy Gray. I came upon Macy late in the evening hiding in an out-building with her backup group as she tried to get her nerves up to come out at 11 p.m. and play before such a high-octane audience.
Perhaps it was the combination of the darkness, the distant, twinkling lights of the towers of Manhattan, and the fact that you were trapped on this island until the home-going barge returned at midnight, but it made unexpected people feel irresponsibly mad-cap. The tiny, recessive writer Joan Didion and her husband John Gregory Dunne and the then-editor of The New York Times, the schoolmasterly Joseph Lelyveld, climbed to the top of the Statue of Liberty with their wine and watched the firework show from the very top. Under one of those lanterns Salman Rushdie spied for the first time a beautiful Indian model, Padma Lakshmi, and instantly fell in love (they married in 2004).
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Benjamin Sarlin is a reporter for The Daily Beast. He previously covered New York City politics for The New York Sun and has worked for talkingpointsmemo.com.
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Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
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Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
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Tina Brown is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Daily Beast. She is the author of the 2007 New York Times best seller The Diana Chronicles. Brown is the former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines and host of CNBC's Topic A with Tina Brown.
The Daily Beast Video curates the most essential and entertaining video, and brings you original and exclusive productions from our talented contributors.
this is a great piece from a nice lady. my greetings to mr harold evans and yourself.
anil mathur, delhi, india
Sad to hear Mr. Isabell has left us.... that was a nice tribute to him.
I don't think I ever attended a party he designed (you never invite me to your parties, Tina...) until this last April when he created a spectacular, extravagant design for perhaps the most spectacular, extravagant room in New York City.
It was for Ian & Rita Schrager's daughter Sophia's Quinceanera in the Rainbow Room ballroom.... perfection for a 15 year-old, her girlfriends and half-latin/ half-Jewish family. The floor was covered in pink circular confetti, mountains of it, thousands of streamers hung from the ceiling and a jungle of palm trees were hauled it. It was Rio on New Year's Eve... the oddest mix of an almost tacky kid's party and over-the-top New York glamour. It worked... and instantly put everyone in a festive mood.
I've done a fair bit of party-giving and decorating myself and this was a real hat trick, I'll tell you. On the way out, I caught his eye and said how perfect it all was and he shyly smiled and mouthed "Thank you." He was a real gentleman and his finely-tuned eye will be missed by many a party-giver and goer.
My condolences, Tina.
I wonder if we are gonna talk about his drug use and shortcomings? What bout his secret life?
Thats what we need to talk about isn't it?
Some one always has to be a "Party Pooper ( AliasOther) that means there is still a lot of jealousy even after he is gone.
Great article Tina and brings back memories of a old very talented friend of mine which is no longer with us that also hung out at Studio.Keep up the good work loce The Daily Beast.
Sometimes in life, you do actually get to sample the cherry on top. It is an unforgetable experience, one which you will seek never, ever to repeat again in life. Nice touch with the cold wave. NY Harbor is filled with them being as it is a triangulation of an Ocean and two rivers. It is even worse up and around the Spyten Dyvel.
I guess when the party's over, it really is over. Signs from above, no doubt. Signs also from within. They are the same signs, reflected differently, yet all pointing in the same exact direction.
Your day is over, Tina. Nice of you to take yourself back ten years to try to impress those who never heard of your glory days -- before Talk sank like a stone in New York Harbor.
It's "an era that passed before he did," not "him." Editor, please.
"Our revels now are ended!" Whom, exactly, is "our?" The Park Avenue-Upper East Siders? After your departure, VF continues to throw glam events, IE, the gala Oscars parties. I'm sure that Mr Isabell's firm will go forward in his absence. Just as Jed Johnson's twin brother stepped in to run his deceased brother's lucrative interior design firm someone will pick up Isabell's reins, too. There's money to be made. Life's a cabaret, old chum, the party must go on.
Williamboot must be a nasty piece of work to try and trash a moving and eloquent tribute to an artist. I never was lucky enough to be a guest at at an Isabella event but the scenes look gorgeous, justifying the sadness of his early passing. Get a life boring beastly Boot!
Ha. Almost not worth answering, but for the record, I'm not a nasty piece of work. Have studied Ms. Brown's oeuvre since she started at Vanity Fair, then The New Yorker, then Talk, her CNBC show, and now this on-line attempt at self-promotion. Several friends have worked for her along the way.
If you read the "tribute" carefully, you'll see that it's 90% Tina Brown and only a smidgen about Isabell. She'll latch onto anything that gives her an excuse to write about herself. My comment was about her ego, not about the alleged subject of her column.
Not worth the time to respond, or to read the D.B. anyway. I log in occasionally for the fun of it: how much Tina Brown can she promote and still pretend to be a source of news or reputable commentary? Clearly, she hasn't found the balance yet, and may not before this site loses so much money it's folded by her backers.
Now, have a whack at me and defend poor Ms. Brown, who, believe me, needs no errant knights.
This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
Harvey Weinstein was a super pig. Lev knew him when Harvey was an undergraduate at State University of New York at Buffalo. Lev says - alleges - Harvey bribed a student for the date The Grateful Dead were coming to play and then booked the Memorial Auditorium and stole the concert promotion from the undergraduate music committee. That's how Harvey got his start.
Lev asks, How could someone with class - Tina Brown - get involved with a philistine pig like Harvey W. Was that the only place to get the money for Talk Magazine?
To see the man harvey Weinstein cannot stand visit michaelslevinson.com
Beautiful tribute. She really made it come alive.
Did Robert Isabell die of an (AIDS related) (heart attack) or just a regular (heart attack)?
Thank you.
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