Le Diner en Blanc

It was a late September evening in New York City. The UN General Assembly was in session, and with the Israeli Prime Minister due to arrive at any moment, protesters were spread out across the city. The Mayor of New York had just been indicted on federal corruption charges for having taken money from the Turks. Hurricane Helene, now a category four storm, was a few hours off the coast of West Florida. But none of these events were my main concern.

My main concern, as our Uber inched through one gridlocked canyon of Midtown Manhattan after another, was how strict the fashion police of the Dîner en Blanc event we were attending that evening were going to be. Would they point out with a smirk that the belt my husband was wearing may once have been white, but had grayed over the years? Would they reject with a sneer the lovely “not pure white” gown that my former student was wearing? Would they send us home in disgrace after all we had done to assemble the required clothing and items that we would be transporting to a secret location not yet revealed to us?

The road closures due to heightened security made it impossible for our Uber driver to bring us all the way to our assembly point, and we had to get out and walk the last two streets on our own. Dressed in white from head to toe, carrying our white bags full of dinner plates, table settings and cutlery, pulling our wagon of white chairs and small fold up tables, we were met by that specifically New York combination of self-involvement and tolerance. Passersby gave us no more than a glance and then continued on their way.

A crowd of people in white were gathered at the corner of Vanderbilt and 42nd. Next to the anti-Netanyahu protestors, amidst the streams of people pouring into and out of Grand Central.

There were no fashion police. Despite the stern online warnings from Dîner en Blanc, there were plenty of people wearing ivory and cream-colored clothing. There was a man with black shoes and a black belt. Nothing any of us were wearing was going to be a problem.

At 5:30 sharp our group set off, moving single file through the black-clad protesters and past a line of New York City police officers who, grinning broadly, seemed frankly grateful for this non-threatening diversion of men and women in white evening gowns and formal suits, Venetian masks, and sneakers.

Inside, the station was hot, the crowds unrelenting. The hero of our group, my friend’s mother, dressed in a white flapper dress with a jaunty white cap and veil on her head, pulled our wagon of chairs through the throngs of commuters with a smile on her face and a sense of serenity.

We descended into the subway. We lifted. We lugged. We somehow got our wagon down the stairs, along the platform and into a number 4 train. Riding pressed in amongst the commuters we received those same half-amused, one-glance-and-done New York City looks. At Union Square, we took a deep breath and lugged everything back up to street level.

“The party’s over there,” a friendly street vendor, his wares spread out before him on the pavement, pointed across the street.

Where we beheld with relief the vast open space of Union Square East.

Tape was already around the cleared area and subtly clad security guards wearing white T-shirts were stationed at its corners. We crossed the street, the tape was pulled aside, and we streamed through the gap, following our table leader to our designated position. Then, in a flurry of activity and within only a few moments, we’d set up the long row of our tables with white tablecloths, centerpieces, and place settings. As we worked, additional streams of white-clad attendees flowed in from the side streets, elegantly attired and similarly burdened.

Within a very short time, the large open space that had been completely empty at 5:45 was filled with over a thousand people sitting at tables drinking wine, eating, and talking to a mixture of old friends and new acquaintances. We had come from Connecticut with a group of women originally from the Cape Verde Islands. To our right were two Indian women who had traveled in from Long Island, and on the other side of us a gentleman from Mexico and his wife from Montreal. Edith Piaf’s voice soared over the assembled guests, over the languages of the world being spoken up and down the tables. Outfits ranged from the elegant to the jaunty. Some people, like us, had single lights on their tables. Others had elaborate decorations with Japanese umbrellas or plumed candelabras.

And so, against all odds, the Dîner en Blanc magic took hold. A serene oasis had been created in a city that continued to buzz all around it, extra helicopters in the air for the UN luminaries, ambulances heading for emergency rooms, and the steady throb of Thursday evening traffic. It was an oasis of tranquility where we, the lucky ones, were able to come together and celebrate while so many others struggled against forces conspiring to crush them.

At some point, I realized that we were dining just below a building that I had lived in more than forty years ago when I was an undergraduate at The New School. I raised my eyes to my old fourth-floor window, which was dark, but the building rose into the night sky as it always had, fifteen stories high, taller than its neighbors. Groups of us used to go up onto the roof to look out over the city and beyond, to Brooklyn and New Jersey. I remembered the exhilaration of the height and the lights and the rush of air, how, at eighteen, looking out over the night skyline, it had been impossible not to be filled with a grandiose sense of your own possibilities, of the roads that you would travel, and the directions you might take.

But it also felt fine to be forty years older, with two feet on the ground, having taken some of those roads and discovered others that at eighteen, I could not have imagined. It felt fine to be sitting with a woman who used to be my student, taking pleasure in how elegant she had grown up to be. It felt fine to be back in New York amidst the craziness and the bustle, in a city that has been intertwined with the history of my family for over one-hundred-and-thirty years, at a dinner in white, the kind of event that the first of our tribe could never have dreamed of attending, the kind of event which seems just as unlikely and crazy as New York itself, but which shines, like New York, in spite of its challenges.