Peter Brant II and Harry Brant. (PatrickMcMullan.com)

At the party he co-hosted at the Jitrois pop-up store in Soho, Peter Brant II was saying how much he liked his leather pants. “I just think their elastic leather is really fantastic,” said the fast-talking elder son of the Brant Publications magnate and art collector Peter M. Brant and the supermodel Stephanie Seymour. “It looks great on everybody! As you can see,” he said, gesturing to his black-and-silver Jitrois leather pants. The pants cost $2875. “That’s the main attraction.”

“I sometimes wear women’s pants, because I have very very tiny legs,” said Harry Brant. The younger Brant brother declared his Jitrois pants “so comfortable. The nylon looks like leather, but it feels like you’re wearing sweat pants.”

While guests including Carlos Mota and Keegan Singh milled around sipping sweet, pink champagne, the Brants discussed their summer plans. Peter, an art history student, is going to be working in the jewelry department at Sotheby’s. Harry is looking forward to taking in the couture shows in Paris in July. Especially Dior, where former Jil Sander designer Raf Simons will present his début collection.

Both boys say they welcome fashion’s other big news — the announcement that all 19 global editions of Vogue magazine will cease working with models under the age of 16, or who, in the magazine’s words, “appear to have an eating disorder.”

“I think that it’s a good step to, like, try to regulate the modeling industry,” said Peter II.

Stephanie Seymour began her career in Paris at age 14. “It’s a different time now than it was in the ’90s,” said Harry. “People like my mom, or all those big models, they started when they were 14 or 15. But the requirements of being a model then were very different than they are now. There was less strain on their bodies. I just think it’s a very good thing that they’re doing, actually. Because it protects the models.”

Jitrois, which opened its first boutique in Nice in 1976 and might best be described as a kind of French Roberto Cavalli, is a brand little known in North America. But Jitrois U.S.A.’s Randi Jacobson is looking to change that. She switched from being a multi-brand retailer to selling only Jitrois because, she says, it kept selling out. “And their clothes last,” Jacobson, who’s been shopping the brand for 25 years, says. “I’m still wearing the 25-year-old clothes. So long as they don’t have shoulder pads.” The pop-up Jitrois has been open since last fall, and a permanent boutique is set to open its doors in November.

The DJ, whose name was KISS, wore a white Jitrois dress made of stretch leather panels joined with faggoting. It retailed for $4275.

Swedish style blogger and budding tech entrepreneur Elin Kling popped in as the evening wound down. NowManifest, the blogging platform and advertising network Kling cofounded with entrepreneur Christian Remröd, was acquired this week by Fairchild Fashion Media, the unit of Condé Nast that publishes Women’s Wear Daily, Style.com, and the magazine Style.com/Print. An elated-looking Kling wouldn’t comment on the value of the deal — “I don’t think that’s public” — but did say that the new ownership wouldn’t change anything for the bloggers who use NowManifest. That cohort includes some of the most influential style sources out there: Vogue Japan editor-at-large Anna Dello Russo, Bryan Grey Yambao, better known as BryanBoy, Rumi Neely of Fashion Toast, and Industrie magazine.

Yambao, for one, was quoted shortly after the deal was announced expressing his displeasure that he hadn’t been notified until less than 24 hours before the acquisition was made public. Fashionista characterized Kling and Remröd’s handling of the deal as “underhanded.”

Kling expressed surprise at the criticism. “I didn’t even tell my boyfriend until two days before!” she said. “It was a huge, huge deal.” She said that NowManifest has never exerted any editorial control over the Web sites it hosts, and that won’t change under Condé Nast’s watch.

Ronan Farrow and Mia Farrow

As The Observer approached the United Nations building yesterday evening, guests were handed an official-looking purple credential with an institutional insignia emblazoned on the front. “This is in case you need to go to the bathroom,” revelers were told.

Bathroom pass in hand, we ambled toward the Greater Talent Network’s 30^th Anniversary fete. It was a tented affair, and guests were met with delegate-worthy river views and pomegranate martinis as they entered the space. Inside, a wide array of notables toasted the talent agency.

After a round of handshaking, Carl Bernstein was keen to share his views on the current state of American media. “Readers are really less interested in being open minded about information and more interested increasingly in reading things to confirm their already held prejudices, ideologies, beliefs, et cetera,” he said. “The real difficulty,” he continued, “is that there are fewer institutions that are committed to real reporting and many too many are focusing on gossip, sensationalism, manufactured controversy instead of the best attainable version of the truth.” On that subject, we asked about the recent Watergate allegations. “Obviously, nothing was fabricated for sensationalist value, and nothing was fabricated. But I’m writing a piece about it, so I’m not going to say much,” he said.

Standing near the entrance, Mia Farrow was anxiously awaiting the arrival of her son. “He’s coming in on the train,” she said. “And I’m excited because when he was a little boy, before he went to college—he went to college at eleven, you know—he said, ‘I want a da Vinci–esque life.’ He was eight. At ten—Oh my god, it’s Michael Moore,” she said, suddenly catching sight of the director. “Come with me! I need to take a picture,” she said, perfectly giddy.

Wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, Mr. Moore entered the tent and was immediately swarmed by admirers and colleagues. “Can I get you a drink? A beer maybe?” Ms. Farrow asked, hardly hiding her excitement at meeting the filmic guru.

“He really is larger than life,” one attendee remarked, with a soupçon of sarcasm, to taste.

Despite his prolix reputation, Mr. Moore was unable to identify the subject about which he most prefers to pontificate. In fact, our question was met with a surprisingly shrill giggle. “Just write that I’m speechless,” he said. When prodded further, however, Mr. Moore was more than willing to share his thoughts on the current state of the Republican party. “Well, they’ve kind of self-imploded,” he said. “They’re turning themselves into, like, an extinct party because younger people are never going to sign on to something that is bigoted against women, gays.”

Mr. Moore also offered his views on the upcoming French election. “I think Europe has got to try something different,” he said, removing his baseball cap and wiping his brow. “So, give the socialists a chance, see what happens.” Though he readily expressed his aversion to Nicolas Sarkozy, Mr. Moore’s political bias does not extend to the first lady, Carla Bruni. “Well, who’s not a fan of her, come on.”

Trying our luck, we asked Mr. Moore who he was wearing. Fortunately, and again startlingly, he giggled. “I came from work!” he said apologetically. Assuming his best red carpet affectation, Mr. Moore then described his ensemble. “I have a brown hoodie,” he began, “and the jeans I got a Kmart in their big and tall section. And the shoes are New Balance, made in America.”

Finally arriving after a long day at the State Department, Ronan Farrow was greeted ecstatically by Ms. Farrow, who immediately arranged a mother-son photo opportunity with Mr. Moore. Asked if he thought President Sarkozy would pull though in this weekend’s elections, Mr. Farrow smiled coyly. “Oh man, as a state department official I’ll have to decline except to say that we’re following with great interest,” he said. “I did a bunch of French press recently at a UN thing, and I had to give that line a lot,” he said. In French? we wondered. “I wish,” he laughed. “That would really up my stock.” Something to fall back on, say, when the whole child prodigy thing loses its novelty?

After toasts, a brief movie tribute to GTN and a round of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, guests skirted past the unsmiling security detail and emerged into the damp April evening.

Barnard Gala Nights. (Barnard College/Asiya Khaki ’09)

After the grown-up gala upstairs, which raised $2.3 million for Barnard student scholarships, young Barnard alumnae in cocktail dresses and heels emerged from the Plaza’s second floor elevators.  Older alumnae put on their coats and wandered away as their younger counterparts entered a hall with gilded ceilings and paintings of cherubs. So began the inaugural Barnard Gala Nights, a chance for recent graduates to dance and mingle.

“I don’t know any of these people,” we overheard one blond girl say to another.

A massive dessert station by the entrance offered macaroons and cannoli, and all the tables displayed bowls filled with chocolate lollipops covered in sprinkles. The two bars on either end of the room, however, were stocked to serve adults.

A DIY candy station from Dylan’s Candy Bar further added to the evening’s youthful aura (and was its highlight, in our humble opinion). Delighted guests scooped piles of gummy worms into plastic bags, and we helped ourselves to a generous portion of chocolate-covered Oreos.

The DJ played Pitbull, Ke$ha and Katy Perry, but the hardwood dance floor remained pristine and empty, like any school dance, for the first half of the night.

“Oh, we’re going to dance,” said a girl in a pink floral dress to her date, who wore a matching pink bowtie.  She pulled him toward the empty dance floor.

At the gala earlier that evening, nearly all the speakers made mention of President Obama’s upcoming speech at Barnard’s graduation, and the buzz continued into Gala Nights. A select group of undergraduate seniors, including Nina Ajami, managed to finagle their way into the event and revel in the hype.

“The whole campus went nuts,” Ms. Ajami said, about the moment the class of 2012 learned about their graduation speaker.

Alumnae committee member Ashley Walker Bush expressed excitement about Mr. Obama as well, although she just missed the opportunity to hear her uncle’s replacement speak, as she graduated in 2011.

“That he chose us is a great honor, and it highlights women’s leadership,” she said. “We all think it’s pretty cool.”

Ms. Bush left us for the dance floor, which had been filling up ever since the aforementioned pioneering couple started dancing.  The music remained consistently Top 40, so it may have been a combination of the alcohol and all the sugar that inspired the migration.  Some couples stayed locked together while they danced, but most guests were on the move, making spirals of black dresses and suits with the occasional pop of colorful satin.

In the group closest to our perch in the now almost-empty bar area, a few girls managed to simultaneously joke around with their friends and fiercely scan the dance floor for the most desirable partner.  One of the guys in the group hovered around a girl in a striped dress, hoping for a signal of encouragement.  The girl spent two and a half songs avoiding his gaze and searching for alternatives.  Finding none, she feigned surprise at seeing him next to her, and they both smiled. The committee’s hopes for mingling, it seems, were achieved.

Joe Jonas, Calvin Klein's Italo Zucchelli, and 'DETAILS' Dan Peres (Benjamin Lozovsky, BFAnyc.com)

They call New York City a melting pot, but in reality, you spend most of your days looking at the same faces, the same social group, over and over again. You and your friends don't really "melt" with other groups of people so much as "occasionally share a train with them."

Even within the media strata, there are too many sub-communities to name, mostly based around who you work for and who you drink with.

That's why every once in awhile its nice to go to an event that gets you out of your own social comfort zone by celebrating both Joe Jonas, Instagram co-founders Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom, and Reuters' Anthony "Soup" De Rosa, as we did at last night DETAILS' and Calvin Klein co-hosted event, celebrating the magazine's "Social Mavericks" feature.

Like characters in a Gustave Flaubert novel trying to escape the banalities of our own small-town existence for one evening (even while living in New York, yes, provincial ennui is common in February, though especially if one is living in Brooklyn), we dolled ourselves up and headed to the Calvin Klein flagship store on 60th and Madison. For some reason, a large piece of driftwood jutted out inconveniently in the main room, making socializing somewhat of a dangerous proposition, as at any point your group got too big and you were pressed against the wood, you risked impalement.

"Here's a quote for you," one reveler told us. "I just asked a DETAILS editor who all these people are, and he told us...readers."

"Uh-huh."

"But I thought he said breeders."

"Right."

"And he was like...same difference."

"I don't think the men who read DETAILS are very into breeding," another party-goer said, drolly.

"That was the joke," said the first guest testily.

Oh what fun we were having!

Though we couldn't find Mr. Jonas, whose brother is currently starring in How to Succeed in Business Without Even Trying on Broadway, we did run into Valentine Uhovski, whom we had sat next to at the Jeremy Scott Fashion Week show.

"Sorry, I didn't recognize you with the lights on," Mr. Uhovski said, giving our shoulder a squeeze as he tried to maneuver by us.

We stopped to chat with Dan Peres, EIC of the magazine. "So what made you want to team up with Calvin to celebrate these 12 'Social Mavericks'?"

"We've worked with Calvin before, but this particular idea came during a dinner we were having in Italy with Italo Zucchelli (the creative director for Calvin Klein's Menwear)."

"So this whole issue is based on a dinner?"

"More or less," Mr. Peres laughed. "Though of course social media is extremely important and is making such a huge impact in the way we communicate..."

Right. So why weren't we singled out for the evening's tastemakers?

"Sorry, you were Number 13...not a very lucky number, I'm afraid."

Mr. Zucchelli had a different take on the social media landscape. While talking about the recent Fashion Week, we asked the Creative Director what he thought about the use of cell phones and computers on the red carpet.

"It's great, in a way, but there's also this other side of it...where you never know if someone is really watching a show, or just too busy taking pictures and blogging about it to really enjoy," the Italian designer confided.

"So it's the difference between the experience and mediating the experience?"

"Yes, exactly!"

Marshall Mcluhan would have been proud: here we were, socializing IRL by toasting people who have learned how to capitalize in our disseminated digital age.

The Instaprint booth set up past the driftwood was a nice touch.