Portfolio debuts today with a soft focus on the 50th Swan Ball, a super-exclusive annual charity event where women spend $10,000 or more on couture gowns often bought overseas or near their summer homes in places like Naples, Fla.
Invitations to the party in the former plantation community of Belle Meade are "extended based on a person’s standing in the community, their charitable givings, participation in social events and connections to others on what’s referred to as the 'Swan Ball List,'" The Tennessean says.
“You can’t buy your way into this one,” founder and society grand dame Jane Anderson Dudley, 87, explained. (Details make the difference: The paper noted she was sipping Smirnoff on ice in her veranda garden during the interview.)
Today's coverage includes a who's who of celebrity guests; four sidebars; two photo galleries posing mainstreaming challenges, and an interactive timeline. (At the 20th ball, country performer Loretta "Coal Miner's Daughter" Lynn was asked to sing, You Ain't Woman Enough to Take My Man.)
Earlier: Tennessean publisher promises "content improvements."
[Photo: Dudley and 2010 ball honoree Lynn Wyatt of Houston, New York Society Diary]
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| Dudley (left) and Wyatt |
“You can’t buy your way into this one,” founder and society grand dame Jane Anderson Dudley, 87, explained. (Details make the difference: The paper noted she was sipping Smirnoff on ice in her veranda garden during the interview.)
Today's coverage includes a who's who of celebrity guests; four sidebars; two photo galleries posing mainstreaming challenges, and an interactive timeline. (At the 20th ball, country performer Loretta "Coal Miner's Daughter" Lynn was asked to sing, You Ain't Woman Enough to Take My Man.)
Earlier: Tennessean publisher promises "content improvements."
[Photo: Dudley and 2010 ball honoree Lynn Wyatt of Houston, New York Society Diary]
The photo I've posted of Lynn Wyatt reminds me of a 2005 interview when I was a USA Today reporter, where Wyatt told me about her purchase of a $7,000 alligator-skin handbag.
ReplyDelete"I thought," she said, "that they were high-quality and good design and different from the usual, standard alligator bag."
Lord knows, if I want an alligator handbag, I'd want only the very best. As for the interview, at least she wasn't drinking from the bottle, so it's totally couth.
ReplyDeleteEver hear of a hip flask?
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ReplyDeleteHere's an edited version of 1:35's comment:
ReplyDeleteWhat a way to pander [to women] who probably don't read the newspaper in any form.
Reminds me of when my site sought out certain zip codes in a push to target the affluent pockets in the area. That push, like all the others, has gone by the wayside, since it did little to boost circulation.
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ReplyDeleteLynn is a very classy and elegant woman. Sorry she ever had to speak with a low life like you Jim.
ReplyDeleteEvidently, like most of the elite, 8:30 staunchly believes in a class system. "Classy?" Sad, that, when a better word would be "obscene." In the meantime, we lessers are supposed to eat our cake. Guess we saw how that turned out, huh.
ReplyDeleteSorry YOU'RE so uninformed, 5:35. "Let them eat cake" or "why don't they eat cake?" is a manufactured saying. Or at best, uttered by a well-meaning but somewhat clueless person of stature. Marie Antoinette is never "quoted" as saying those words until the 1900s.
ReplyDeleteAs for the publication, you should applaud any sales that can be gleaned. I guarantee ads aren't cheap in that mag. Probably doesn't need a lot of circ, just the RIGHT circ.
I used to live in Naples. The times I ran ran into people with big bucks (hard not to there) they were no different than you or I. Dressed like anyone else, unless they had some function to attend. Usually nice and friendly to a fault. One way you KNEW you were in Naples and that it might be upscale: I remember seeing many times a gorgeous black Mercedes with a "Meals on Wheels" placard on the dash.
For those of you into class warfare, you may recall the "Harvest of Shame" documentary from maybe 50 years ago. That show was filmed in Immokalee, maybe 50 miles east of Naples. The poorest person in Naples had absolutely no desire to go anywhere near Immokalee.
The first 'Portfolio' budget declared NO WIRE COPY. A pool has been created among staffers on how soon the weekly magazine will have wire copy. Everybody wanted week 2-5.
ReplyDeleteAnd the winner is.....one week. This week's LOCAL, LOCAL, LOCAL Sunday magazine has a wire story. A whole page 26 inch with art wire story. One week all local was enough. Take a couple of days off feature folks.
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