One Way to Be Rich: Fake It

The most fascinating thing in this weekend’s NYT is an article by the writer Alan Feuer about his doppelganger, the man-about-town Alan Feuer. The former wrote an essay last year about the latter and how they came to meet (through a shared name and swapped phonecalls). This newest missive, on the event of the other Alan’s death, take a deeper look at his life. He was “an expert waltzer and a wearer of white ties who spoke with an accent — the Palm Beach Lock-Jaw — [that the writer Alan Feuer] had heard only in Preston Sturges films,” but also had a backstory that was totally bullshit, as these things are wont to be! How we went from boy in the Bronx to aristocrat:

In 1963, Alan graduated from Ohio University, and a few years later, during the Vietnam War, he enlisted in the Air Force. He was stationed in England, and when he returned, in 1968, he was — to his family’s astonishment — transformed. “He had turned into a kind of English fop,” Mr. Teicher said. “He had that accent, and was wearing an ascot and carrying a walking stick.”

I would like to see this movie, if someone would like to make it. Also, I didn’t really realize that the part of Gossip Girl that included 248,234,802,394 society balls all the time was true-to-life? But apparantly it totally is. Top hats, tails, and waltzing: things that exist on the regular in Manhattan.

Also, this needs further study and is perhaps a good thesis topic, but please know that Black Tie Magazine exists exclusively to document such happenings, and that it has the ugliest website in the history of websites.

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