Mysteries

The Case of the Vanishing Coats

The other night at the opening party for Chris Santos’s massive new restaurant-club, Beauty & Essex, everything flowed as smoothly as the readily available Champagne — until we sidled up to coat check, on the way out. There (and it was only nine-thirty at this point), we found the beginnings of a melee, with several angry partygoers standing around waving tickets and complaining of MIA cloaks and the like. Thankfully, our retrieval went smoothly and we hightailed it out of there, but we heard from sources who stayed later that the situation eventually became dire, and certain attendees had to walk away sans outerwear into the 30-degree night, leaving behind their e-mail addresses and hopes of recovering the garments. (A rep for Beauty & Essex told us this of the situation’s eventual resolution: “Some of the coats were put in out of order, but they’ve been returned.”)

We clucked that off as a one-off lamentable occurrence, but just now our Facebook in-box lit up with a missive from Simon Ford, a member of the Cocktail Collective, who last night hosted a shindig at 44 at the Royalton. Ford writes:

Lost Coats

Can anyone who lost there [sic] coat from coat check at the Royalton last night email me please so that I can take this up with the Royalton — thanks and sincerest appologies [sic] to anyone that did

We’re not sure if there’s a dastardly ring of coat thieves loose in the city, or holiday-coat-drive organizers have decided to get particularly aggressive this year, but we’ll merely say this: People, hang on to your coats!

The Case of the Vanishing Coats