Nina Garcia, Tinsley Mortimer, Derek Warburton, Charlotte Ronson, Chris Benz and CNN“s Alina Cho were among the well-appointed attendees, while liquor sponsor Domaine de Canton kept the ballers well lubricated with a host of refreshing cocktails. Bill Cunningham donned his best — and in all likeliness, only — tuxedo to capture the scene, including the 20th Annual Holiday Train Show. Calling it a”Train Show” is a bit of an understatement since the Garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory was turned into a miniature train town, featuring the most stunning scaled-to-size architecture I’ve seen since Barbie‘s Dream Italian Villa.

Besides an excuse to dress up and be fabulous, the Wonderland Ball also supports the Garden’s world-renowned Children’s Education programs, allowing children of all ages, particularly underserved children in the Bronx, an opportunity to learn about nature in engaging ways through workshops and hands-on activities. While it may sound like a very serious and somber affair, the night was a blast, particularly after the DJ took to the turntables. There’s nothing quite like seeing a stately woman in a feathered gown shaking her tail-feather to LMFAO.

Click through the gallery for images from the Winter Wonderland Ball — courtesy of Patrick McMullan and Will Raggozino — and try your hand at Domaine de Canton’s signature cocktails with these handy recipes:

Etlingera

1 ounce of Domaine de Canton topped with Champagne. (served in a champagne flute and Garnished with a Wild Hibiscus flower)

“The Winter Gold Rush”

1.5 Ounces of Domaine de Canton

1 ounce of Makers 46

Half ounce of fresh lemon juice

(Shaken and strained into a martini glass and garnished with a luxardo cherry)

“The White Orchid”

Equal parts (1 ounce ) of Domaine de Canton, Belvedere Citrus Vodka, White Cranberry juice. ( Shaken and strained into a rocks glass over fresh ice. Garnished with a white orchid flower )

Contemporary Magic: A Tarot Deck Art Project features the works of Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, Christian Louboutin, Vivienne Westwood, Gareth Pugh, Nate Lowman, Patrick McMullan, Ryan McGinness, Terry Richardson & Will Cotton giving classic mystical figures a total makeover. You’ve never seen the High Priestess card look quite like this.

Kristin Prim snapped front row at Ohne Titel. Photo by Patrick McMullan for NY Mag.

Kristin Prim photographed outside the Nicole Miller show in a Nicole Miller jacket and dress, Balenciaga bag and shoes, and Ray-Ban sunglasses show on February 12th at Bryant Park.

Next Monday, DavidBartonGym will host its 8th annual Toy Drive at the newly opened Astor Place fitness mecca with co-hosts and iconic fashion designers Marc Jacobs and Narciso Rodriguez, Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon, Hotelier Ian Schrager and his wife Tania Schrager, celebrity chef Art Smith and renowned photographer Patrick McMullan. All guests will bring an unwrapped toy, which will be donated to various children’s hospitals and charities in New York.

Let me start out by stating that I am not normally a superstitious person: I don’t throw salt over my shoulder when I spill some, I don’t think twice about walking under ladders and my only chagrin about breaking a mirror is that I have one less surface in which to admire myself.  After this week though, I must say that I absolutely believe in omens, especially when delivered in the form of clothing.

Fashion is my religion so it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that it was a pair of pants that decided the fate of my uneventful week.  It was with great excitement that I broke my recession shopping rule and purchased a pair of Cheap Monday dark navy pants with bright red polka dots (size 25 inch waist!) from Inven.tory.  In anticipation for the Topshop opening party, I knew that I needed something funky and fun as I would be competing with some major celebrity wattage for my Patrick McMullan photo credit.

When Tuesday night came around, I could no longer contain my enthusiasm for the pants and decided to give them a test run at Nylon Magazine’s 10^th Birthday Party.  Held at the Shang Restaurant in the “it” hotel of the moment, the Thompson LES, I thought they would be the perfect statement for a downtown, hipster party.

Alexandra and I had somehow confused the time, arriving half an hour before the party was scheduled to start so after making friends with the publicists at the door, we went across the street to a little French bistro to kill time.  As fifteen minutes turned into an hour, a veritable throng of bodies in furs, leather jackets and high heeled pumps had formed a line around the block.

Finally refusing to wait any longer, we pushed our way to the front and immediately entered thanks to our earlier brown nosing.  Thinking we’d walk upstairs to a nearly empty room as we still hadn’t seen anyone else coming through the door, we were shocked when the entire restaurant was packed with the who’s who of the downtown scene.

I was disappointed to see that there was only one photographer in front of a meager step and repeat.  “I brought out the polka dot pants for this?” I whispered to Alexandra incredulously as we posed for pictures.  After pushing to get a drink at the besieged bar, we moved into the back room where we ran into Richie Rich hanging on the arm of singer Kat DeLuna.

We were quickly tiring of the pushing and shoving around us so as soon as we overheard that there was a VIP gifting suite on the 7^th floor, we ditched the frenetic main room and made our way to the promise land (so we thought).  It turned out that the joke was on us as the alcohol had run dry upstairs and the most ‘famous’ person was a castmate from The Real World: Brooklyn.

Slightly befuddled, we made our way back downstairs where things had started improving.  The crowd had thinned out but the ratio of celebrities to commoners had increased.  I ran into my friend, America’s Next Top Model Winner Jaslene Gonzalez, who was hanging out with club impresario Matt Levine.

In the other room was a dour-looking Taylor Momson, party hopping from the private Topshop dinner at Balthazar.  Inexplicably, Alexis Bledel (Gilmore Girls) was hanging out and looking rather out of place among the slightly grungy hipster set.  Definitely non-hipster, though, was Lydia Hearst, back from her charity work in Africa and wearing a custom silver corset by The Blondes—the same one Britney wore in her Circus album.

There was something slightly unfulfilling about the night and lack of press so Alexandra and I were out of commission for the next evening, vowing to come back strong for the Topshop party on Thursday.

When Thursday arrived, I once again donned the polka dot pants, determined to get them the press they deserved.  Our intel had told us that the Topshop party was in the store at 7PM.  I thought this was rather strange as the store had opened for business that day and it seemed unlikely that the place would be cleared and cleaned up for such an early party.

My suspicions were confirmed when the line snaking outside the store was filled with shoppers instead of socials.  After some urgent texting, we discovered that the party was actually at 9PM at The Box.  Already dressed to impress, we decided we’d do a “filler” event before Topshop to kill time and get a buzz rolling.  This was to be our downfall.

We bounced around from no-list to no-list event, the worst of which was the Marc Ecko store ‘party’ where a massive man straight out of a Suge Knight video was actually walking around with a pimp cane and hat.  The last time I felt that out of place was on 2^nd grade picture day when all the boys and girls were in their Sunday best and my mother had irreverently put me in a LA Laker’s jersey because she didn’t want to buy the photos anyway.

After forty miserable minutes, we left to attend the Complex Magazine party at Anchor Bar celebrating the Kanye West cover.  Once again, we had arrived early and were told to wait, something for which I have no patience.  When fifteen minutes passed and we were still on the wrong side of the velvet rope, I had had enough.  The last straw was when the flack outside told me they weren’t letting anyone inside as he opened the rope for a group of five to come inside.

I had such a bad taste in my mouth from the night that I refused to prolong my pain by going over to The Box.  Such was my week.  If you disapprove of the dearth of excitement, don’t blame me—blame the pants.

Adrien Field

Adrien@AdrienField.com

Once again, my week began early as Alexandra coaxed me out of my family visit in the boondocks to come back to the city on Sunday under the pretext of finding a suitor. Alexandra’s friend “Chicago” was performing at the Ritz. “It’ll be fun!” she said in her reassuring, sweet voice. “It’ll be good for you go to out and meet new people.” Bah humbug, she hit me at my Achilles Heel and so I agreed. I tried to convince a few more of my friends to come out with us but they lost interest as soon as a specified that I meant “The Ritz”—as in the gay club, not the hotel.

I had never been to The Ritz but I heard that Madonna and Jesus had stopped by during the previous week to dance. “How bad can it be?” I thought. Well, I was in for a surprise. It goes without saying that there was no open bar and I refused to pay for drinks so I sat on the banquette and watched the performances—clearly not meant to be done in a sober state. The show ended when the fat lady sang, literally. Said fat lady stripped off her dress and belted “Don’t Stop Believing” to an audience that had mostly paired off for the night. It seemed to me that the crowd had stopped believing in the performances somewhere after the man singing an opera ballad threw off his trench coat to reveal a pale body suit and ran around the room screaming, “I’ve got no privates.”

Because we refused to end the night on that note, we made our way to the Greenhouse for Vandam Sundays, the weekly blowout gay party hosted by Kenny Kenny that’s reminiscent of an acid-trip. Besides the usual drag suspects in eye-popping makeup, there was also a girl on five-foot stilts swinging her purse around as she stomped to the music. Mary-Kate Olson was inexplicably downstairs dancing but had left before we could catch a glimpse of the mythical creature.

The next day was comparably more staid: the 25th Anniversary of the Wellington Hair Spa. Organized by PR Noir diva Danita King, the event featured complimentary wine by Bouké but most importantly there were enough hors d’oeuvres to get one’s fill for dinner. Hey, it’s a recession.

If I hadn’t been invited to any parties, I might have missed the fact that Tuesday was Saint Patrick’s Day all together. I was greatly looking forward to that night’s ACRIA benefit at the chic Soho House thrown by promoter-legend Patrick Duffy. The party was a late starter (all the bold-faced names were at the Valentino Film premiere) and there was no open-bar. Alexandra put it best when she said, “I feel like we’ve been duped.” Well, technically we had been Duffy-ed. Most exciting for me, I spoke with Ken Doll incarnation Leif Stacey who walked the Barbie Show during New York Fashion Week.

As no Saint Patrick’s Day is complete without society saint Patrick McMullan, we attempted to head over to PMc’s annual party, appropriately held this year at Greenhouse. By the time we had arrived, which was about an hour after the start time, the place was over-capacity and we were told we’d have to wait in line. Madonna doesn’t do lines and neither do we so we skedaddled like two Leprechauns.

I wasn’t in the mood to make another trip back to Greenhouse the next day for Wednesday’s Nylon/Bodhi Bags party so I didn’t resurface until Thursday for the Saks/FIT Gala. Held at the glamorous Cipriani’s Midtown, I knew I had to take it up a notch for the step and repeat so I stopped by Versani to borrow some bling. Guests included Teen Vogue’s Amy Astley, IMG’s Fern Mallis and other industry heavy-weights. The event, which included champagne, lavish hors d’oeuvres and photographers would have definitely been categorized as a “hit” had we actually had a seat for the sit-down dinner. In my quasi-press capacity, we were only invited for the cocktail hour. As such, I technically can’t report on how Mayor Bloomberg supposedly presented an award since I was not there to witness.

Alexandra and I were dressed to the nines and we refused to go home before 9PM and cry into a bowl of Lucky Charms so instead we dropped in on the Bowery Hotel for the Festa Brasileira event hosted by the Nature Conservancy Young Professionals Group. Lucky for us, the champagne and hors d’oeuvres continued there and we even managed to get photographed. It was a perfect and classy way to end the evening.

It was back to the Bowery on Friday night for the Layla Love benefit, which was raising money for blindness treatment of the photojournalist. If the Bowery Hotel represents the new glossy Manhattan, then the Collective Hardware space at 169 Bowery represents the vestigial, gritty Bowery of yore. I thought we might be mugged at any moment or at least see the ghost of Sid Vicious as we mulled around the industrial space, though neither incident occurred. Instead, we waited around for something to happen but left before the scheduled runway show at 10PM.

Even during a week of misses, it’s impossible not to reflect on how lucky we are to attend all these glamorous functions. It’s easy to forget that there are people who actually pay for alcohol—now that’s a crazy concept.

Adrien Field

Seems like the Gossip Girls are cramming for a dose of New York Fashion. They just filmed an episode featuring Chanel Iman, Patrick McMullan, and the Misshapes. Princess Coldstare versus Queen B? Wonder who’d win in that catfight.

LINKAGE: Fashionista

Step past the velvet rope and behind this premium vinyl curtain, decorated with a Patrick McMullan’s photograph capturing the energy of New York’s greatest nightspot. Finished with reinforced holes at the top for easy hanging. Available at Urban Outfitters.

Thanks Fashionista for finding this