“Well enough to quit your day job?”
“Why would I quit my job?”
EPILOGUE
VOGUE
Bambi Von Bizmark: An American Story
By Vivienne Lanuit
Every season and city has its rituals. Spring in New York is marked by the Opera Ball, the crown jewel of that city’s social season. Each year, the event salutes my dear friend, international style icon Opal. But the nature of tradition is evolution, and this year the cash-strapped New York Opera chose to honor Bambi (known to friends as “Kissy”) Von Bizmark instead. In another departure from custom, Von Bizmark planned an art auction to benefit the specialized public school attended by one of her staffer’s daughters. Then, the IRS swooped in at the last possible moment to seize the art intended for the auction at the literal doors of the opera house. Rushing in to fill the breach, like some sort of philanthropic superhero, Von Bizmark planned a luncheon fundraiser improbably at her estate in East Hampton. Helicopter transportation would be provided, and I was invited.
From the outside, anyone could see the intrigue and confusion swirling around one of the most staid, consistent, elitist gatherings in North America. My task would be to knit together all the various pieces—tax evasion and private-public partnerships, town and country, money and art, privilege and servitude—into a meaningful narrative.
Chopper rides to the Hamptons and a public school in the Bronx are not a natural match, and this would be no ordinary luncheon. While I doubt it was any of the guests’ first time on a helicopter, the sheer outrageousness of it all was like a shot to the toned, slender arm of every hard-to-impress guest. There just is nothing else quite like quaffing champagne with a gaggle of giggling millionairesses floating over Long Island to a fairy-tale chateau. It was as if by attending this lunch, one could leave not just the grit of the city behind but the myriad constraints of our normal lives.
The ease and beauty of it all transported everyone to planet Von Bizmark. By the time all one hundred ladies had been ushered inside the great room, seated, the wine poured and poured again, it was as if a spell had fallen. Time melted. The volume and temperature in the room went up and up. The women forgot why they were there. Scarves were removed and plates nudged away, everyone eager to join the conversation that seemed to be happening like air, a modern-day, midweek, midday bacchanal.
The trippy effect was complete when Von Bizmark eschewed her prepared remarks and announced, apropos of nothing, “I am a Jewess.” Instantly, and weirdly, she thereby disarmed the snooty crowd, carrying us all one step further into an alternate reality of her careful design. The public school principal herself got up to make her frank case: give to avoid guilt.
The first check—written by Opal—functioned as the final ingredient in a magic potion. Every other woman mechanically followed suit, the tribal ritual of philanthropy unfolding with so many credit cards, checkbooks, and, in one case, a thick wad of bills banded together. In this way, with the help of a fleet of helicopters, a charismatic principal, and a cellar full of chardonnay, Bambi Von Bizmark managed to raise over $1 million in about twelve hectic minutes in her own living room.
On the one hand, I could argue that Von Bizmark acted in pure self-interest. Her personal connection to the school is its singular advantage over other institutions. There are surely equally good schools that will close for lack of funds and friends. On the other hand, Von Bizmark (and her staff) nearly saved an entire school—that serves 472 kids every year—which simply cannot be a bad thing.
Then there was the opera itself to consider. In The Marriage of Figaro a servant outwits his employer, thwarting the more powerful man’s unethical efforts to exercise his antiquated right to bed the servant’s fiancée (an outdated tradition if there ever was one). Many historians view the precedent play by Beaumarchais as denouncing the aristocracy and foreshadowing the French Revolution. The opera largely concerns the interactions of the residential staff among themselves and with their employers.
The first time I asked Von Bizmark about the choice of Figaro, she brushed it off. The second time, on the red carpet moments before curtain, she said, “I don’t like the insinuation that there’s something going on here tonight that escapes my understanding. Let the art speak, for goodness’ sake!” she implored me. “Let events speak! Let the opera speak! It is your job to make meaning out of it.”
Which is to say, I think, that we should all of us look at everything in context. Von Bizmark and the mayor of New York, a socialist, appear to be fast friends, united in the cause to save PS 342. Look how she embraced not only him (in the images that accompany this article) but her maid Josefina. Von Bizmark brought her entire household staff to the opera and ball, as if to announce to the world, “These are my people.” Look at them, all on the red carpet together resplendent in brand-new evening gowns (I recognized three from this season’s runway), like petals of a flower with Von Bizmark at its center.
Because one does not get to exist in the rarefied world of Bambi Von Bizmark alone. She herself must be taken in context as the head of not a household but a vast enterprise. Each and every moment of her life is a careful choreography so that Von Bizmark herself can host the party, smiling and relaxed, warm and present. Because when you see Von Bizmark at her own lunch, embracing this one and introducing that one, she is essentially at work.
What does it mean to be a philanthropist? So few understand the work of fundraising, which requires accumulating associates who can jot off checks for $10,000 without thinking. These sorts of people can be time consuming and even unpleasant, but Von Bizmark did not just wake up one day chairing the board of the New York Opera. She worked toward it for years if not decades, making “friends,” cultivating relationships, writing checks, and then asking her “friends” for money. She wields not only her own funds but the power of a hundred or more purses.
So Von Bizmark simply can’t worry about tens of helicopters coming and going. She doesn’t wonder when the windows get cleaned or the silver polished, and she will never chase down a caterer if lunch is late. She is busy working every room she walks into. Her people will take care of the rest. Von Bizmark knows that when you want to live larger than life, you can be only as good as your staff. Bringing them into the spotlight was Kissy Von Bizmark’s way of telling us that despite or perhaps because of all the help she requires to actualize her life, she is ultimately just like the rest of us.
You can doubt me, but I saw with my own eyes as Von Bizmark held the hand of her nine-year-old daughter, Peony, throughout the entire three-plus-hour opera. I watched Peter Von Bizmark, a tycoon who calls thousands of people employees, attempt to dance with his youngest child. The Von Bizmarks have been together for twenty-five years, an anniversary they celebrated privately this week, a rare evening at home for the couple.
Most other Western nations choose to leave the divvying up of financial resources in the hands of government, where rational and fair priorities can be established, simple math employed. No galas. No performances. No helicopters. This is how we do it here in Europe. In a city as rich as New York, schools for talented children should not suffer for resources.
But this is the United States we are talking about. What fun would it be, really, to sacrifice the superrich of America in favor of, say, something as banal as health care for all? And so Americans, and increasingly the world at large, look to people like the Von Bizmarks to give them something to aspire to and live for. Von Bizmark herself embodies that unique American hope. It’s a challenge she must try to live up to every day of her beautiful life.