“The Party Line,” by Julia Reed, was originally published in the December 1996 issue of Vogue.
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So far this season I have bought: a chocolate-brown wool-jersey evening gown with a slit up the front and five-inch chocolate peau de soie Manolo Blahniks to match; an aubergine chiffon Empire-waist cocktail dress like Emma’s and Josephine’s, not quite but almost as brilliant as Galliano’s interpretations; a navy silk Oscar de la Renta with a bow at the neckline and a crinoline beneath the skirt (very un-me, but so pretty and party-girl and cheap I got it at the Super Sale in Washington to benefit breast cancer research); a black velvet Saint Laurent dress and a black YSL ottoman-silk suit; a long, skinny black wool coat with a Mongolian-lamb collar, two evening bags, another pair of Manolos, and a wad of Chanel pearls. This does not mean that I am very social or very rich (it means, in fact, that I am broke and devoid of anything to wear at any time prior to, say, eight o’clock at night). It means that I have a wardrobe for which I have no immediate plans. And I really wish someone I know would have a Christmas party.
Not an office Christmas party like in the movies, where everybody gets drunk and wears funny hats and somebody invariably gets caught with somebody else on top of the Xerox machine. Nor do I mean a real-life office party, one of those boring corporate affairs where people wear slightly dressier versions of what they wear to work every day, and it’s always in a restaurant where they start setting tables for real customers at eight o’clock, so everybody has to clear out. And the ones that drag on are even worse, full of all that obligatory camaraderie—there’s no romance, no glamour, not even the hint of surprise. What I want to go to is a real old-fashioned holiday party, one that’s big and lavish and even a little magical, where all the guests look beautiful and the setting could be a stage—a party like the one in the opening scene of The Nutcracker (my favorite version is Baryshnikov’s, because the wife gets a diamond necklace just before the guests arrive) or indeed in the opening fashion spread of this issue.
Nobody has these anymore, but they used to. One year my mother had three of them back-to-back, with at least 100 people each, and I got to wear the blue velvet dress with the white lace collar I wore in my aunt’s wedding and take the coats at the door. A very sexy Englishman I’d never seen before tipped me $2, which I kept for years as a souvenir, a link not only to this unspeakably handsome man but also to the soigné night in which I had played a tiny part. My mother had a different outfit for each party, and my favorite was the white silk crepe pantsuit, with narrow pants and a short-sleeved tunic that had hunky glass sapphires, emeralds, and rubies around its sort of Greek neckline. It was very chic and very Versace and I would wear it now myself, but for the fact that about two minutes before the guests arrived my little brother threw a cup of Welch’s grape juice from his high chair, and it landed across my mother’s snow-white front, and she had to change into the red-and-gold plaid hostess skirt and red satin blouse she’d worn the night before.
