About one-fifth of Bernie’s Madoff’s client list has Palm Beach zip codes, but business is still pretty good at the town’s big annual antiques fête, the Palm Beach International. Distressed-assets king Wilbur Ross, fashion doyenne Iris Apfel, and theater mogul Robert Nederlander are here shopping, and last night’s party for dealers and collectors was at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, where the crowd ate beef Wellington and danced to Carlyle Hotel headliner Hilary Kole. Said Ross, scanning a roomful of diamond-clad women in sequins, “This doesn’t look like a depression.â€
Right off the bat, New York dealers at the fair sold an Andrew Wyeth (Adelson Galleries, “in excess of $5 millionâ€), a Tiffany chandelier (Macklowe Gallery), and a small pile of diamonds and emeralds (Graff). Business is “better than I thought it would be,†said fair owner David Lester. “People are scared to put money in real estate and the market — and the dealers were giving big discounts.â€
But don’t mention the big “M.†When decorator Mario Buatta asked one woman if she’d been burned in the Ponzi scheme, a handful of people surrounding him actually hissed.
Of course, the sales pitches reflect the new economy. Madison Avenue’s Carlton Hobbs Gallery is trying to sell a $1.7 million pair of Chinese painted cabinets with the sunny observation that they were once owned by a Belgian Prince who “got into some financial trouble — but he recovered.â€
And, for at least some of the super-wealthy, times are tougher. Shortly after the antiques fair (it goes through Sunday) opened, an announcer came over the loudspeaker: “The owner of the gold Rolls-Royce in self-parking, you left your lights on.†Said Lester, “What’s a gold Rolls doing in self-parking?â€