‘THE DECADENCE OF MUSEUMS’
The master planner, no populist, forced the museum to become more democratic, more entertaining, more popular, more representative of the community and more responsive to its needs
Michael Gross is the author of Model, 740 Park, House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World’s Most Powerful Address, and the forthcoming Focus: The Sexy, Secret, Sometimes Sordid World of Fashion Photographers, which will be published in July by Atria Books. His My Generation: Fifty Years of Sex, Drugs, Rock, Revolution, Glamour, Greed, Valour, Faith and Silicon Chips, a group biography of the Baby Boom for which he interviewed Donald Trump, was just re-released as an e-book.
Dirty Business
I don’t remember why I was in the nightclub Les Bains Douches that evening, but what happened there and afterward is a crystal-clear memory.
‘So Much Fun’
‘I was there to party myself. It was guys with younger girls, sex, a lot of sex, a lot of cocaine, top-shelf liquor’ but no smoking. Trump didn’t approve of cigarettes.
Small-Time
‘Marla is a good girl, and I had a good marriage with her, but it’s just that I get f*ckin’ bored,’ Trump told me. ‘One of those little things.’
RICHES TO RAGS
Big-name high-end brands like Burberry, Prada, and LVMH are in difficult financial times: The public simply doesn’t covet their once-desirable labels as much as it used to.
opinion
Drumptown!
Trump envisioned and created today’s city of white boxes for rootless new money types, who dominate the city even as they leave little mark here.
POOR LITTLE RICH GIRL
Heiress Huguette Clark disappeared for decades into her vast estates, strange obsessions, and years in New York hospitals. Michael Gross on a new book that tells her full story.
Flaccid
Author Michael Gross had to be evacuated when Hurricane Sandy toppled the crane above luxury skyscraper One57.
GRANDES DAMES
New York high society has reasserted itself in the tawdry battle for Astor's millions.