Following ten months of a seemingly endless, blistering cold winter, the first outdoor event promoting heavy drinking and fashion was always going to recruit the world’s top social media mavens, who rock up to the opening of an envelope simply because their Instagram followers demand it. Worth remembering, however, is that pictures, rather than words, are more their thing.
“This was my first polo match ever. I must say I was mesmerized by the horses,” said Instagram aficionado-come-model Joan Smalls, mistakenly regurgitating her interview monologue reserved for runway events, because, like, ‘Are horses the nickname they give to plus-sized models?’. ‘No honey, you’re actually at the polo,’ her PR assistant gently barked in her dainty ear as she popped another bottle of Veuve, her fifth on an empty stomach which has been a stranger to food for the past four-point-five days.
But models are kind of like horses, so she gets a free pass for distracting the masses from her passion for the four-legged fox trotters by drawing attention to her slim legs while wowing in a white summer dress at the eighth annual Veuve Cliquot Polo Classic at Liberty State Park in New Jersey on Saturday. Having that much carbonated fluid around the specific subset of New Yorker willing to handover a small fortune to stand around in a field swigging individualized bottles of a beverage I could have otherwise purchased for a fifth of the price with the intention to share with a party of five, is as daunting a prospect as being trapped in a giant bottle of Diet Coke watching a packet of Mentos plummet into my face.
For those in the VIP section, a tower of champagne greeted guests with the same enter-at-your-own-risk disclaimer as being greeted by the former police officer-come-maître d’ at bottomless brunch hotspot and neighborhood nightmare, Pranna, which caters to the three top things rich kids are known to enjoy: Drinking, brunch, and telling everybody how successful their parents are.
“I am such an animal person, I didn’t care so much about the game,” Smalls admitted, demonstrating her lack of understanding of the fact that horses are not in fact people capable of choosing to become professional athletes. “I’m guilty, guilty as charged,” she added, before taking a selfie with the adorable horse recently benched due to a broken hoof, his cute, perky ears now covered with sparkly glitter to ‘really make that Sierra filter pop!’.
Dressing for a day at the fillies is a difficult affair, with the event unevenly straddling the line between competitive sporting, fashion, some irreverent hipster event and a chance to binge drink like an Australian.
While some, such as Diane Kruger and her requisite adorable hipster beau, Joshua Jackson, chose to style the event like an extension of that weird time they partied with lifetime, free-spirited dream weaver David Hasselhoff at Coachella, going braless in an odd black cutout jumpsuit complete with floral sandals, straw hat and oversized white sunglasses, others, namely Emma Roberts, took a more literal approach. ‘Screw it, I’m here for a day of bottomless champagne! No glass needed, straight from the bottle please!’ Roberts shouted at the former Abercrombie employee waiter who’s since been required to wear a shirt to work, over the banging beats of the reimagined, audio lovechild of the brand spanking new Taylor Swift and Calvin Harris collaboration, yet to hit Apple iTunes, dressed like a giant magnum of Veuve in a floor-length gown in the bubbly’s signature orange hue.
While the fash pack, celebs and a weird, prolific cameo by 50 Cent in an appearance the most ill-suited to a high-end event since Ludacris bombed the SNL Tribeca Film Show premiere, would lead you to believe that the polo shindig is, in fact, sponsored by Alcoholics Anonymous, for the rest of the gala’s attendees, the day involves seven hours of solid binge drinking, for the ripe sum of $275 a pop.
Sure, taking a picture of your sun-covered blatant display of misguided, trust-fund baby wealth as you lay among a dozen empty bottles of Veuve is cool to post at your poor friends jostling for a piece of real estate on the urine-encrusted city sidewalk, while you instead bounce about with your pastel-pop collared J Crew posse, preferring ponies of a more scantily-clad kind.
But having one of 24 said bottles smashed against your forehead as you attempt to hail a cab mid-intersection during 5PM rush hour while tourists film your potential love interest for the next 12 hours crying and then vomiting into her iPhone while staggering barefoot to destination nowhere, is as classy as the 42-year old bridge-and-tunnel bird wandering drunk around the Meatpacking District in a bandage dress after a four-hour table-top dancing brunch hoping to catch a ride home.
Both cases are going to leave you wishing you’d be on the outer of your friendship circle the week those ‘must-have’ tickets were purchased by the social butterfly of your gang, otherwise known as the unemployed one with a creepy, hedge fund husband, also known as Mary Kate.
Cowboy humorist and the first Mayor of Beverly Hills famously wrote, “Playing polo is like trying to play golf during an earthquake.” But I’m sure attempting to whack a stick at a fast-moving ball is a lot more appealing and less likely to result in a dangerous injury than rocking up to the Beverly Hills Hotel, also known at The Polo Lounge, for a post-game spritzer, only to be abruptly hashtagged in the face by the seven, ‘funemployed’ 20-somethings from E!s reality show “Rich Kids of Instagram” Tumblr-inspired show, who drop thousands of dollars on clothes, shoes, cars, and partying, like it’s their job.
Take 28-year old Morgan Stewart, who is besties with a girl who “didn’t know how much money my family had until it was printed in Forbes.” Stewart has a blog soft porn site called Boobs-and-Loubs, because, “I have very large boobs and a very large affinity for Louboutin heels.” Her father bank roller is “an architect who built stores along Rodeo Drive. My mom puts up with me and that’s pretty much been her job,” she quips on the E! promo, following which you hurl your remote at the TV with the ferocity of a drunken, divorced, former Real Housewife harlequin trying to mount a parked car.
Today, Stewart and her other interchangeable BFF are both obsessed with Instagram, to the point where it consumes 83 percent of the time not spent otherwise gazing at their reflection. “If someone doesn’t like my photo it ruins my entire day, because I feel like it’s a plot because there’s a hidden agenda and we haven’t spoken about the issue they have,” she mourned to her third bestie in the Clueless gang, her miniature poodle, Coco.
In other sporting news, while the seven-round knock-out hockey smashfest, otherwise more affectionately known as the Stanley Cup finals, provides players artistic license to whack a stick across the nose of whomever they choose, the former Bruce Jenner just tossed his Klan the ultimate symbolic shade.
Making his debut as Caitlyn Jenner, the Olympic athlete formerly known as Bruce, made her first appearance as a transgender woman, posing in sexy lingerie on the cover of Vanity Fair.
While simultaneously stealing Kimye’s baby #two drop thunder on the impossible-to-believe perfectly timed mid-season KUWTK finale, Jenner also popped another first – adopting the extended family’s first phonetically correct first name.
“Call me Caitlyn,” reads the cover headline for the July issue, which is sure to become the family’s top selling magazine cover, infuriating momager Kris and her gaggle of ‘K’s’ in the process, leaving Kim wondering which further body parts she can reveal to try and break the internet v.2, and flooding Kris’s inbox with queries from her brood over whether they too should undergo a gender transition for ratings sake.
(Because, let’s face it, naming your offspring future Botox-stuffed cash cows, Kourtney, Kim, Khloe, Kendall and Kylie is as subtly disrespectful as Obama switching up his ‘DENIED!’ veto stamp in the next White House judicial throwdown for one sporting Comic Sans font).
As the world applauded Jenner for escaping the fabricated Kardashian media circus to instead use the spotlight to promote his journey for positive change, other celebrities endorsing more light-hearted causes have left many scratching their heads, in the same way that anyone who dropped $17 to see Cameron Crowe’s ‘Aloha’ is sure to question whether the title is actually in reference to Crowe’s parting from his career.
Hilary Duff (because now she’s divorced and is rebellious enough to dye her hair a wacky shade of blue, but still responsible enough to take care of a child) recently announced to the world she’s on Tinder via a marketing campaign moonlighting as a video clip, thinly disguised as an interview.
Announcing to a large group of people your insatiable appetite for a seedier version of online dating is as believable as informing your boss that you’d love to move into her house and perform household chores for no extra pay while potty training her twins. Both are so insanely pathetic that the only reason one would do so is if they had some sort of terror plot in play to eradicate all parties involved.
The likelihood that anyone would want to go on a super-fun, filmed, bowling date with Ms. Duff only to have your face redacted on a hip-shaking dance track three months later, is as appetizing as swiping right on your administrative assistant and meeting for a date, dressed like a mutant clown, at the local office bar.
The only plausible reason for Tinder hiring someone so antithetical to hip to promote a service aimed at spoken-for New Yorkers looking for a fling with a 22-year old intern, is if they plan to get taken over by aging beast Time Warner before launching a rival app through the revived carcass of Jay-Z’s hot mess, Tidal.
While seeing Duff’s pearly whites pop-up on your feed is sure to have you backswiping to the last fun-loving MILF faster than flying puck into the face of a Tampa Bay goalie, in any case, waiting for your date while being accosted by a crowd of rowdy, post-polo privileged drunk frat guys and their harem of barefoot wannabe street style stars after the Veuve Polo hot mess, is far better than a lonely, solo commute home on public transport while being exposed to this.
Because, frankly, I’d rather be exposed to Duff fumbling her way through a preview of her new song, ‘Sparks’, composed of scenes from her turd of a new show, Younger, then later viewing the actual song clip where she looks like a less dykey version of Pink lip synching to a Kylie Minogue hit rejiggered for MTV, than being within three-feet of a failed actor-come-comedian on public transport, trying to encourage me to groove to Jamiroquai’s ‘Canned Heat’ under the armpits of ‘that’ guy who didn’t wear deodorant on their way home from a botched Tinder date. But I suppose that’s a better nightmare than living out the narrative of the DJ’s, ‘Travelling Without Moving’, on a stalled subway car on a 100-plus degree day, sitting next to a Duff fan playing the Kardashian game off-mute.
While the world has taken communal delight in the release of the new app, KardBlock, that has the ability to remove all Kardashian Kontent from your news feed, in the same way that Iggy Azalea was forced to can her world tour due to dwindling ticket sales, you can be as fucking #FANCY as you damn well please, but it don’t mean a thing if you ain’t got any fans friends followers.
