Would Atlas have shrugged at the party Tiffany & Co. threw Sept. 10 to honor its revamped Atlas Collection?
Not a chance. The New York Fashion Week fete featured models, bloggers, stylists and other assorted fashionistas – and os – who enjoyed the hors d’oeuvre minis, bevies, thumping DJ and one another’s company.
Not to mention the bling. For the uninitiated, the Atlas Collection contains bangles, rings and pendants studded with Roman numerals – and, in some cases, diamonds – in various golds or sliver. In the revised collection, the numerals are more spaced out.
Its also classic and classical: In Greek mythology, Atlas is punished by the gods for having taken the Titans’ part in the war against them by being forced to hold up the sky to keep it from canoodling with the earth. Atlas figures in Ayn Rand’s Objectivist manifesto “Atlas Shrugged” (1957), a book beloved by eager-to-impress students, Wall Streeters, Tea Partiers and people who like to pretend to be well-read but wouldn’t actually be caught dead reading.
I’ve never read “Atlas Shrugged,” but I did read Rand’s overheated “The Fountainhead” and see the movie version with the divine Gary Cooper, and all I can say is this, Ayn: People are more than the sum of their ideas.
As for Atlas himself, contrary to Rand’s ultra-individualistic Objectivist philosophy, he was a party no-show, because he’s still busy holding up the heavens a few blocks south of Tiffany at Rockefeller Center opposite St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
One can relate.
Read more about fashion in WAG’s September “Rag Time” issue.
– Georgette Gouveia
