Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage

MyHeritage: Celebrity Collage - Old photos - Dynasty

My New York

Sardi’s

Bryant Park

Barneys New York

Bergdorf Goodman

Bloomingdales

The New York Times

59^th and 5^th the Plaza

5^th Avenue shops

Bergdorf Goodman

The Met

Central Park- the Pond, The Jackie Kennedy Onassis Reservoir

Bloomingdales

Tavern on the Green

The Dakota

The San Remo

Upper East Side- Monty

Upper West Side- Judith Krantz

Midtown- I’ll Take Manhattan

The Sony Building

The Seagram Building

The Sherry Netherland

The Carnegie Deli

Lincoln Center

Columbia University

The Helmsley Park Lane

Chelsea

Fire Island

Scarsdale

White Plains

Briarcliff Manor

Bridgeport, CT

New Haven, CT

Yale

The Hamptons

The Algonquin

Broadway

Greenwich Village

Wall Street

Le Cirque

The publishing industry- The New Yorker, Random House

The garment district

The UN

Best Places on Earth

Paris – 6th Arrondissement near the Luxembourg Gardiens, Boulevard Saint Germain, Rue Cassette, Place Vendôme, Ile de la Cite, the Lovre, Eifel Tower, Brasserie Lipp

Honfleur/ Deauville/ Le Havre – Atlantic Coast (Le Bios Normand)

St. Tropez/Nice/Avignon/Cannes/Antibes/Aix au Provence/Menerbes (Cote d’Azure/Provence)

Megève – Ski, St. Moritz, the Cloisters, Davos

Strasbourg, Cologne, Geneva, Zurich – Rhineland

London- Holland Park, Kensington, Chelsea, Knightsbridge, Belgravia, Bloomsbury, Bond Street

Amalfi Coast south of Naples, Italian Riviera (Genoa), Tuscany, Venice, Rome

France, UK (London), Italy, Switzerland, Germany

Judith Krantz novels (ranked in order of my favorite)

Sex and Shopping

Scruples

Princess Daisy

Scruples Two

Till We Meet Again

Spring Collection

Lovers

Mistral's Daughter

I'll Take Manhattan

Dazzle

The Jewels of Tessa Kent

Scruples

This was Judith Krantz' groundbreaking novel which foreshadowed the glamor obsessed 1980's. Described by the author as a, "chocolate cake of a novel," Scruples brings the reader into the inner workings of fashion, retail, and the personal lives of the very rich.

The novel details the life story of Wilhelmina Hunnewell Winthrop as she goes from being a fat "poor relation" of an aristocratic Boston Brahman family to a thin, stylish woman who is left a vast fortune by the death of her elderly husband.

Because of her middle name, she is nick named Honey. After high school, she goes to Paris as a fat girl, totally unaccepted by any of her peers in Boston. There she begins a transformation and loses weight while on the limited diet of her host family. Simultaneously, she learns Parisian style under the guidance of the woman she lives with.

After a year, she returns to America and decides to call herself Billy, as a nickname of her first name. She stuns all Boston with her new look and then moves to New York to attend secretarial school. After graduating, Billy gets a job for Ikehorn Enterprises and during a business meeting in Bermuda, she sleeps with and subsequently marries the much older CEO. The next period of her life seems to be the happiest as she and her husband Ellis live a glamorous life filled with parties, homes all over the world, and regular appearances on the Best Dressed List. Ellis has a stroke and they move to Bel Air for health reasons.

Billy lives as a recluse in their enormous house and eventually Ellis dies. After that, she needs something to do with her life, so she decides to open a luxury botique called Scruples. She hires Valentine O'Neil to make original couture on site as well as Spider Elliot as Style Director. During the novel, a separate storyline has been Valentine's life as an understudy fashion designer to the House of Prince in New York, and Spider's career as a photographer.

The story develops around Billy's second marriage to Vito Orsini, a film producer, and then around the Oscars. The store makes many of the outfits for the Oscars and a subplot revolves around Billy's new friend Dolly Moon, a flamboyant supporting actress in Vito's current film project, Mirrors. This plot develops as Price Waterhouse is burglarized so that it becomes known that Mirrors will win the Oscar for Best Picture. The story ends at the Oscars with Billy (but not Vito) knowing that their film will win, as she contemplates her life while wearing a famous pair of ear rings given to her by her first husband.

The novel is an education unto itself as Krantz uses her own expertise to describe all the working details of each city, industry, and social class that she describes. The book also gives a complete view of all aspects of the lives of the characters including inner private thoughts and intimate descriptions of their sexual lives. While some may consider this part of the novel to be pornographic, it really isn't when one considers that everything is described in such detail that it would be more of a plot hole to leave any of it unspoken. The reader feels as if they are experiencing the lives of the characters, to the author's credit. Krantz uses her excellent magazine writing skills to make such detail seem exhilarating, never tedious. This book is unique as a true novel that is also a true page turner.

Best Hotels in Miami

The Alexander

Loews Miami Beach

Turnberry

The Eden Roc

Doral

Four Seasons

Ritz Carlton

Fontainebleau

Ever-expanding list of Gay men who contributed to the world

Alexander the Great

Michelangelo

Leonardo da Vinci

Charles L'Enfant

Dior

Yves Saint-Laurent

Versace

Jean Patou

Giorgio Armani

Henry David Thoreau

Walt Whitman

King Ludwig II

Montgomery Clift

Gore Vidal

Tennessee Williams

Truman Capote

Michael Stipe

Malcolm Forbes

Marc Cherry

Ron Cowen

Daniel Lipman

Ryan Murphy

Bryan Singer

Kevin Williamson

Jason Gould

Farley Granger

Laurence Olivier

Rock Hudson

Andrew Sullivan

Bruce Weber

Tony Perkins

Chad Allen

David Geffen

James Dean

Noel Coward

Oscar Wilde

George Cukor

Charles Perez

Anthony Corleone

Thomas Roberts

Randy Harrison

Barry Manilow

Jeremy Chase

Neil Rogers

Leonard Bernstein

Steven Sondheim

Vincent Minnelli

Brian Molko

Pete Wentz

Danny Roberts

Ross Hunter

Tab Hunter

Richard Chamberlain

George Takei

Andrew Cunanan

T.R. Knight

Lance Bass

Neil Patrick Harris

Elton John

Greg Louganis

Ian McKellen

Peter Paige

David Hyde Pierce

Steve Rubell

Yves Saint-Laurent

Gianni Versace

Raymond Burr

Andy Warhol

Clifton Webb

Thornton Wilder

Anderson Cooper

Tom Cruise

Michael Jackson

Matt Damon

J. Edgar Hoover

Christian Dior

Valentino

Halston

Giorgio Armani

Richard Gere

Merlin Jones

Jake Shears

Jason Gould

Roddy McDowell

Paul Lynde

Will Truman

Michael Crawford

Dorian Grey

John Doll

Ricky Martin

Dick Cavett

Merv Griffin

Maurice on Bewitched

Ross Hunter