Once we're inside, it instantly becomes clear that P'Trique has a fan club in the land of the double kiss: Fern Mallis, Carlos Souza, Ken Downing -- big names in fashion, bowing to the man in the pink vintage dress.

CNN: P'Trique Comes to New York Fashion Week

Separately and together, he and his sometime lover and regular companion, Giancarlo Giammetti, made sure to greet and double-cheek kiss friends and supporters sitting at all the tables in their area, ranging from the young (the former reality-television star Olivia Palermo, the Brant brothers, the model Jessica Hart and her shipping-heir boyfriend, Stavros Niarchos) to the established (the interior designer Mica Ertegun, Barbara Walters, the Texan philanthropist Lynn Wyatt, the Greek businesswoman Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki).

WSJ: A New Principal at the Ballet

The star of such films as "Double Jeopardy" and "Kiss the Girls" is known for her liberal political views and she would have been running in a largely conservative state where Republicans hold both Senate seats and five of the six seats in the U.S. House.

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No one there had any inkling of the desperate scene unfolding just beyond Kiss' black, sound-proof double doors, said taxi driver Edson Schifelbain, who was in his car, waiting for passengers.

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