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May 8, 2005
Social Conscience, Junior Division
By ERIC WILSON

JULIA CAPALINO and Janie Ostrager realized their social standing had risen in the eyes of other sophomores at the Spence School when Ms. Capalino's cellphone rang. The caller was Selby Drummond, who is such a fashion plate at Spence that she is listed as a contributor on the masthead of Teen Vogue and had her prom dress made personally by Zac Posen. Most impressive of all, she is a senior.

"My friends were, like, 'You talk to Selby on the phone?' " recalled Ms. Capalino, who is 17, and best friends with Ms. Ostrager, 16. Both are so familiar with Ms. Drummond's daily calls that they are no longer impressed at being programmed into the speed dial of a popular student.

The two sophomores had formed an unexpected bond with the senior at the beginning of the school year when they approached her with an idea for a fund-raising project. That idea, cultivated in the minds of the philanthropic tenderfoots, has since grown into a full-blown benefit and fashion show, with boldface names like Aerin Lauder Zinterhofer attached, and an organizing committee of social progeny - including teenage children of Edgar Bronfman Jr., Paula Zahn, Anna Wintour and Mick Jones - that would make the city's veteran party planners blush with envy. Or at least perk up at the prospect of a new crop of socialites in training.

"It sounds like they are following in mommy's footsteps," said David Patrick Columbia, the editor of NewYorkSocialDiary.com. "There are kids who painted rooms at Martin Luther King High School last week as part of a fund-raiser for Publicolor, but those kids are just ordinary kids. These kids are doing what social people do, they're drawing in names, and they're raising money off those names. That's what social life in New York is now."

The three students, amid attending classes and studying for exams, have spent their school year stuffing envelopes and working their many family connections to secure designer gowns, a site and models for their benefit tomorrow night. They were driven to do so by a passion for a relatively obscure cause: combating obstetric fistula, an injury suffered during obstructed labor by hundreds of thousands of young women in developing countries the students have never visited.

Like many New York City teenagers, including their friends at the city's elite private schools, the three young women are sophisticated beyond their years, accustomed to classmates who have acting careers or fashion collections well under way, or are fixtures on the Manhattan party scene by the time they graduate.

And in spite of their naiveté toward certain ways of the world - scheduling a new charity event on a Monday night during the crammed spring benefit season, for instance, is generally a no-no - Ms. Capalino, Ms. Ostrager and Ms. Drummond are determined to succeed and to raise at least $75,000.

"You start very young in New York," said Mr. Posen, a New Yorker who also began early, interning for Nicole Miller as a teenager and starting his own dress business at 21. He has been enlisted as an auctioneer for the event, a role he accepted without concern as to the ages of its organizers. "You practically start in charities today with Unicef," he said. "I'm not surprised they're doing this at all."

IT did come as a shock to some of those who make events their domain. "I didn't even realize these were high school students," said Valesca Guerrand-Hermès, who has organized benefits for the French Institute Alliance Français and received an invitation to the fistula event last week. "To be attracting that kind of designer, that's a lot of work."

Although they are too modest to say so, the women's achievement in orchestrating a coup that has the tacit support of Ms. Wintour, the Vogue editor, who last week staged the New York party of the year at the Costume Institute of the Met, is remarkable.

Invitations to "A Girls' Night Out," as they are calling their benefit, a mother-and-daughter cocktail party, list the model Liya Kebede and Ms. Zinterhofer, the cosmetics heiress, as honorary chairwomen; Ms. Capalino, Ms. Drummond and Ms. Ostrager as chairwomen; and an organizing committee that includes Hannah Bronfman, the daughter of Mr. Bronfman; Haley Cohen, the daughter of Ms. Zahn; Annabelle Dexter-Jones, a daughter of Mr. Jones; Bee and Charlie Shaffer, Ms. Wintour's children; and, somewhat incongruously, Diana Taylor, the state banking superintendent and the companion of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. (Ms. Taylor is a family friend of Ms. Drummond's, and Ms. Shaffer is a close friend in her class at Spence, which helped to gain access to designer showrooms.)

After school on a recent weekday, the three students met at the Metropolitan Pavilion, an event space in Chelsea, to go over floor plans and logistics, debating whether a video on fistula might be a drag. "It is important to us that it be a fun exciting event, but not at the expense of being sensitive to the cause," Ms. Ostrager said.

Reeling off statistics she had learned through the Fistula Foundation and a special on "Oprah," she explained, "These women will be in labor for three or four days at a time, sometimes on the back of a donkey."

Ms. Capalino said: "They're worried about how their pregnancy is going to go, and I'm worried about my math test, you know? It's affecting someone my age, and yet I had no idea about it before a year ago."

A Kate Spade sample sale taking place in the same building had attracted hordes of young women about their age, but the three sat in a windowless conference room, sorting through a rack of dresses that had been donated for a student fashion show and auction by Calvin Klein, Oscar de la Renta, Prada and Diane Von Furstenberg, assigning looks to each of the students who have agreed to serve as models, including Ms. Shaffer, Ms. Dexter-Jones and Alessandra Balazs, a daughter of Ms. Ford of Ford Models and the hotelier André Balazs.

"Now I realize why kids don't do this," said Ms. Drummond, who is 17 and plans to attend Columbia University in the fall, as she tried on a Proenza Schouler dress with articulated seams along the bust, which she plans to wear in the runway show. "When we first started, I thought this would be easy."

Orchestrating such a benefit with virtually no budget could not have happened without the young women's respective connections and personality traits.

"We lucked out on the dynamic of the three of us," said Ms. Ostrager, whose father, Barry Ostrager, is a partner at the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett. She is the passionate one of the three, a self-described feminist who explains to potential donors the ravages of fistula without any sense of personal discomfort, adding that the $200 they are charging for a mother-and-daughter ticket represents the cost of a basic surgery to correct a fistula in Ethiopia.

Ms. Capalino, who juggles her charitable work and studies with weekend commutes to Palm Beach, where she is a competitive horseback rider, is described as the most efficient and organized of the three. Her mother is Dr. Carlin Vickery, a plastic surgeon who introduced the students to the cause, and her father is James Capalino, a lobbyist in Manhattan.

"There's no sitting there watching 'The O.C.,' " Ms. Capalino said. "Not when you have to write a letter and then study for a chemistry test."

Ms. Drummond chimed in: "Jane writes well, and she's very diplomatic with people. Julia is very organized and professional."

Ms. Capalino added: "And Selby is very charming. Whenever we wanted something, Selby was the one to ask because she is tall and intimidating and can get anyone to do anything she wants."

A round of giggles ensued before Ms. Drummond clarified that her skills of persuasion were learned from her mother, Deborah Jackson, an investment banker who has organized benefit auctions at Christie's for the Heart and Soul Charitable Fund.

After Alan Boss, the owner of the Metropolitan Pavilion and a friend of the Capalino family, donated the space and Cipriani contributed the catering, the students approached several designers, steeling their nerves to personally make their case.

"I remember walking into that first meeting with Diane Von Furstenberg and thinking, 'Am I allowed to breathe out?' " Ms. Ostrager said.

FROM there, things came easily. "We literally had Luisa Beccaria calling up and saying she had heard about the event and was willing to donate," Ms. Drummond said. They were floored when Prada offered two dresses, secured through a phone call by Ms. Wintour, who also encouraged Ms. Kebede to become involved. And Ms. Zinterhofer became involved through Ms. Kebede, who models for Estée Lauder.

"It's very impressive for these three girls from high school wanting to do something so great and so generous for these women who are so far away," said Ms. Kebede, who is a goodwill ambassador to the World Health Organization and supports the Addis Ababa Fistula Hospital in Ethiopia.

The students were conscious of how their event, a fashion show for fistula, might be perceived among their privileged classmates as frivolous or insensitive, or worse, a plotline for another "Legally Blonde" sequel.

"I thought there might be this stereotype," Ms. Drummond said. "But honestly, people have been so nice and supportive. These are people who have so many more important things going on in their lives, and they've been willing to stop and help, or at least buy a ticket."

As for their status at Spence, get over it. "We haven't changed into social butterflies or anything," Ms. Ostrager said. "The funniest thing about this for me was before, seeing Selby in the hall and thinking, 'Oh my God, that's a senior,' " Ms. Capalino said. "Now it's more like: 'Selby, stop being so weird. Stop calling me all the time. Just stop talking.' "

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

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