A new profile of Isabell (seen here with Molly Ringwald at the launch party for his Parfumes Isabell product line in 1996) by Arthur Lubow examines his finances and real estate deals around the city, and shows that after he bought at the height of the market and as real estate prices and rents were crumbling. On August 1 of this year, he had a $48 million dollar loan that was due and no way to repay it. Though friends say he remained outwardly cheerful, it sounds like a stressful situation.

At the center of his real estate woes were 837 Washington, a Meat-Packing District building he bought for $45 million in 2008, that he planned to turn into studio spaces and offices for high-end clients. After he successfully flipped two buildings in 2006 — one on West 13th Street and another on Little West 12 Street — he thought this was his next step in the real estate game. When he couldn't get approval from the neighborhood landmarks commission to renovate the space on Washington, there wasn't any return on his investment to repay his loan.

The party, or "The Party" as it has come to be known by some, remains famous for it's over-the-top flamboyance, and since Talk was partially funded by Miramax money, Harvey and Bob Weinstein served as co-hosts for the event, leading the New York Observer to headline their coverage of the night's festivities, "Weinstein Brothers Revel in Vulgarity, Glory of Manhattan."

In her Daily Beast post eulogizing Isabell dated July 12th, Tina Brown reminisced about the illuminated-by-Japanese-lanterns soiree on the electricity-less Liberty Island to bring in the now-defunct magazine. She spoke wistfully about the plethora of stars she shipped in on an ark to genuflect at her altar, The Statue of Liberty, for the evening. Here's the money quote:

Guests, who included Madonna, George Plimpton, Demi Moore, Tom Brokaw, Kate Moss, Christopher Buckley, Helen Mirren, and Jerry Seinfeld, disgorged one after another from the Liberty Island ferry that Buckley immediately re-christened the "Star Barge." Like an A-list Noah's Ark, it motored slowly toward the tiny island where the Talk staff waited to greet the 800 guests in a warm August dusk.

Brown's piece must have triggered the memory of the New York Times' David Carr, as he dedicates his Monday "Media Equation" column to the Talk launch party, only his take on the event isn't so much a fond remembrance as it is a look back at what he now views as an event marking of the beginning of the end of an era of excess. Noting that the ten years that have passed since "The Party" have seen the death of many established titles as well as a dramatic drop in ad pages, Carr, who says he's "still ashamed to admit that I wasn't one of the lucky 1,000 people invited to the party," writes:

Too bad nobody saw the sharks circling in the harbor. Rather than the culmination of a century of press power, the Talk party was the end of an era, a literal fin de siècle. Flush with cash from the go-go '90s and engorged by spending from the dot-com era, mainstream media companies seemed poised on the brink of something extraordinary. But that brink ended up being a cliff. partied

Ten years ago, journalists, long the salarymen of the publishing economy, began gorging on big contracts and options from digital start-ups like shrimp at a free buffet. With coveted writers commanding $5 for every typed word into magazines that were stuffed to the brim with advertising, there was a fizziness, some would say recklessness, in the air. The industry was drunk on its own prerogatives, working a party that seemed as if it would never end.

Carr goes on to note that Tina Brown's Daily Beast launch party in 2008 was held at Pop Burger in the Meatpacking District, where assembled guests munched on miniature burgers and hot dogs until about 8:15 or so, when the food sadly ran out. Indeed, that's quite a remarkable contrast. But hey, there was an open bar, so it couldn't have been that bad, right?

Finally, all of this brings to mind the words of a certain eccentric American prophet who, speaking about partying in the year 1999, once said, "Life is just a party and parties weren't meant to last." And really, all things considered, is that such a terrible thing?

10 Years Ago, An Omen No One Saw [New York Times]
Farewell to the King of Parties [Daily Beast]

This is kind of classic Old School Media: getting sentimental with What Used To Be, in pre-9/11 New York, and bombastic titling in a story about someone who'd perfected an obscure, fleeting for-the-rich-by-the-rich "art." All that being said, it's a pretty great piece about, well, What Used To Be. Just imagine: you, getting shitfaced with George Plimpton in the head of the Statue of Liberty, pretending to be in Ghostbusters II. Meet "Farewell to the King of Parties," by Tina Brown. Highlights:

• The opening salvo, regarding the Talk magazine launch, which she does not take lightly! "The last party he pulled off for me was the Talk magazine launch event, co-hosted with the magazine's co-owner Harvey Weinstein, on Liberty Island in 1999, an extravaganza I have come to see as the last social celebration of the pre-9/11 celebrity decade."
  
  
• Then, her guest-list, which she trots out while trying to remain as calm and humble as possible. Okay, or, not: "Guests, who included Madonna, George Plimpton, Demi Moore, Tom Brokaw, Kate Moss, Christopher Buckley, Helen Mirren, and Jerry Seinfeld, disgorged one after another from the Liberty Island ferry that Buckley immediately re-christened the "Star Barge." Like an A-list Noah's Ark, it motored slowly toward the tiny island where the Talk staff waited to greet the 800 guests in a warm August dusk." Emphasis mine, because that's exactly what I think when I hear about Christopher Buckley and Kate Moss on a boat: God told Tina to capture all the creatures of the land and save the ones worth saving, or something.
  
  
• Brown's semi-aplogetic, but slightly seething dismissal of the scale of the party in the face of the magazine's massive failure: "When the magazine folded two years later in a howl of schadenfreude, that party was considered one of the calumnies of hype I would never live down. (As the movie producer David Brown once said, "Never give an opening night party that's better than the movie.")"
  
  
• The previously mentioned George Plimpton throwdown: "A soft shower of purple rain over the Hudson River signified the start of the fireworks display narrated by one of the guests, George Plimpton. "This one is for you, Salman," George boomed over the intercom. "It's banned in Iran."" Comment needed? No.

And that's just the first page. Seriously. There's Salman Rushdie's apparent first meeting with Padma Lakshmi in there, too. And the rest of the article goes on to actually eulogize Isabell The Person, but not before you forget who you've been rhyming with this entire time. First, this priceless picture, included in a gallery with the article:

It's of Brown, Interview editor and Andy Warhol-ite Bob Colacello, Studio 54's Ian Schrager, and the founder of Phoenix House, Dr. Mitch Rosenthall. At one of Isabell's parties. Facinating, but: no Isabell to be found. Then this, the last shot fired:

There was a clear, full moon, and my husband and I stood leaning out over the rail facing the wash at the bow of the boat, along with a last group of stragglers who included Helen Mirren, the New Yorker writer Hendrick Hertzberg, and the movie stars Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson. As the boat sped back toward the lights of Manhattan, a large cold wave washed over the side and soaked us all.

The next decade turned out to be a colder wave than any of us imagined. Two years after that glorious party, the Twin Towers came down, Talk magazine folded, Padma and Salman recently got divorced. The economy collapsed. I last saw the beautiful Natasha Richardson in March lying like a medieval effigy in the open casket at her wake. And Robert himself has left the party forever. Our revels now are ended!

Revels, indeed. Did Natasha Richardson really have to be brought into this? Oh well. Yeah, The Party Planner may have died, and he may have taken The Party with him, but I think, as far as parties go, we're all better off.

All Tina's eulogy/wake-a-sleeping-dog dissection into history does is serve to remind many of the publications and people who used these extravagances of their asinine spending habits of yore that preceded the poor, shitshow shape they're in now (like Vanity Fair, which had to fire so much of it's support staff, or Talk, which is, again, long dead, but was a trendsetter as far as the "magazine launches signify magazine deaths" trend). Or of their jobs, which they used to have.

Is there any question as to why that aforementioned schadenfreude ever existed, though? These parties, though probably fun, cost ridiculous amounts of money, and were only accessible to a microscopic percentage of New York, let alone the rest of America. Much like the things they were meant to celebrate. And, naturally, much like this blog post about them.

Farewell to the King of Parties [The Daily Beast]