Social Study

The Met fete

They're striking the set at the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute: after fifteen years, Diana Vreeland is handing over the exhibition reins to the Met's curatorial staff. But "The Party of the Year," which has launched each of the extravaganzas (remember Balenciaga, Russia, and Hollywood?) and become the social event of New York's winter season, will go on under the spirited chairmanship of Mrs. William F. Buckley Jr. and Sisi Cahan. And the theme for this year is, appropriately, "Dinner with D.V."

Mrs. Vreeland has seen to it that press clippings on each of the opening nights have been scrupulously compiled in tomelike scrapbooks kept in her office. They are nothing less than a social—and fashion—history of the seventies and eighties. One day in the distant future, anthropologists will study them—and wonder.

STEPHEN JAMAIL

Shifts in the party line