A Talent to Amuse

WE are in a town automobile heading down Park Avenue from two party to another. Leigh Lezark, the Misshapes D.J., is pulling at the top of her slinky ivory pants in the back chair. Geordon Nicol, her partner, is riding shotgun. Squished on the middle hump, typing on a BlackBerry, is Derek Blasberg, a 27-year-old writer who looks, in a white one-button suit & bucks given to him by Burberry, as if they is wearing a Tom Wolfe costume, minus the hat. Talk is about work & travel & work-related travel.

“I’m going to Thailand on Thursday,” says Mr. Nicol, his eyes barely visible beneath a Peggy Moffitt haircut.

“But that’s for the operation,” says Mr. Blasberg, teasing him.

“Are you going to St.-Tropez?” Ms. Lezark asks.

“For Louis Vuitton?” Mr. Blasberg replies.

“Chanel,” they says.

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Blasberg says, excited, though his designs are not set. “Are they making you work?”

By work, they means to ask whether Ms. Lezark will be spinning for her supper next month at the runway show for Chanel’s annual resort collection, which is presented in a different port of call each year, or whether they is among the lots of amazing people who are being hauled on Chanel’s dime to the Italian Riviera to show up for the event. People like him, they means.

The automobile arrives in Chelsea, at the home of Lauren Santo Domingo, a contributing editor at Vogue who is serving dinner for 40 in honor of Mr. Blasberg’s first book, “Classy,” a primer on ladylike behavior. The writer melds in to a scene that includes several fashion designers (Rachel Roy, Chris Benz, Jack McCollough, Lazaro Hernandez), models (Jessica Stam, Byrdie Bell) & socials (Claire Bernard, Marjorie Gubelmann, Barbara Bush). “I told him there will be a full tent party for his second book,” Ms. Santo Domingo says.

In simpler terms, work, for Mr. Blasberg, means what they is doing right now, which is being a part of a scene. What that scene is does not matter, so long as the same Very Important People are there being photographed, their dresses remarked on & their names recorded in the party pages of a newspaper or magazine or whichever blog is in favor at the moment, like the two written by Mr. Blasberg for Style.com. They is very nice at his part — witty, teddy-bear cute but no threat to anyone’s husband, an enthusiastic dancer &, to the consternation of lots of of his more journalistic peers, a chronicler who reports only that the dresses are pretty & the parties are hot, hot, hot. Even when they are not.

They was in Tokyo last month for its Fashion Week, courtesy of a Japanese trade group. His nerdy-chic pairing of bow ties with sneakers inspired the look of the male characters on “Gossip Girl.” & they was the second most photographed guest at fashion parties for the year, according to a ranking by Style.com, a list on which they outranked Karl Lagerfeld & Lorenzo Martone & was bested only by Lindsay Lohan.

This reporter could go on describing who was there, but that is Mr. Blasberg’s job, &, , they seems to enjoy it so much — the parties & the free trips & the clothes & the lifestyle. Last year, they was flown to events in Rio de Janeiro for Fashion Rocks; Moscow for the opening of a Diane Von Furstenberg exhibition; London for the Frieze Art Fair; Vienna for the Life Ball; & Venice, two times, for the Biennale & another Chanel show.

Since his arrival on the scene a decade ago, when they was a freshman at New York University, Mr. Blasberg has gone unrivaled in making connections with boldface names, connections so tight that they himself has become a person whose name is more often on the invitation than the envelope. Ms. Santo Domingo, along with Chloë Sevigny, the actress, & Dasha Zhukova, the Russian heiress, were hosts of a party at Barneys last week for his book. Ms. Sevigny & Karlie Kloss, the model of the moment, will accompany him to St. Louis, his hometown, on April 17 for a Contemporary Art Museum gala, for which they are chairs. Ms. Bush, the former first daughter, will toast him in Dallas later this month.

“Liza Minnelli told me that the only way to get people to leave a party is to have a plan for later,” they said over breakfast at Balthazar last Friday. They had had some late nights that week, including his own party on April 6 & then a New Yorkers for Kids benefit at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on April 8, from which they had filed his document only a few hours earlier. They joked that his job is to rewrite last year’s party coverage, changing only the names.

“I am aware that most 27-year-old writers do not co-host galas in their hometowns,” they said. “But there is a difference between hosting a benefit for a museum that you believe in & putting your name on every store opening on the Upper East Side.”

& yet Mr. Blasberg, who describes himself as a fashion & arts writer, is reluctant to over the other mantle usually assigned to him: “It boy.” (Early in our correspondence, they said they was hoping for an news story that would not include those words because they thought they devalued his hard work as a writer.)

“I feel like I have been portrayed as if I was standing outside Cipriani hoping someone picks me as their plus-one,” they said.

Nevertheless, his ascent through Manhattan’s complicated social strata has come with a price, which is that they is held to the same scrutiny as his subjects, & by those who do not always see things as positively as they does. During his brief career, Mr. Blasberg has been described as a “high-society boy toy” (The New York Post), a “sharp-tongued party boy” (New York magazine), a “scribe & general gadfly” (The Every day News), as well as a “fashion-writer/socialite-walker hybrid,” a “male socialite” & an “annoying writer-socialite” (all by The New York Observer). To people outside his world, it's never been clear whether Mr. Blasberg aspired to be the Truman Capote of his generation, or the Carrie Bradshaw.

BACK to that Barneys party: It was obvious that Mr. Blasberg is greatly admired by socialites & fashion insiders, who are not exactly cuddly to people with notepads & pens in their hands. In addition to the usual suspects, like Tinsley Mortimer, of the reality-show Mortimers, there were esteemed industry professionals, like Pat McGrath, the makeup artist; Terry Richardson, the photographer; & Edward Enninful, the Vogue stylist; and a contingent of chilled children from Europe, including Julia Restoin-Roitfeld & Giovanna Battaglia.