Sweet Smell of Success is playing on one of the flat-screen televisions in Larry Gagosian's beachfront villa in St. Barts, and his guests exude the appropriate aura of wealth and exploit. Or maybe it's just the warm breeze blowing in from the ocean, over the shimmering pool, past the torches on the deck, and into the brightly lit living room, where Harvey Weinstein, Aby Rosen, Brett Ratner, Tony Shafrazi, Kyle MacLachlan, and Anne Hathaway have assembled two nights before New Year's Eve, sipping Perrier Jouët and nibbling on what's left of the grilled mahi-mahi, coconut shrimp, and risotto from Maya's, a beloved local canteen. The conversation is casually spectacular: Paul Allen and Jon Bon Jovi dropped in for dinner; Harvey's island-skipping with his girlfriend, Georgina Chapman; tomorrow, Kyle is off with Israeli investor Aviv "Vivi" Nevo on Rupert Murdoch's yacht (without its owner) for a luncheon with Bill and Hillary Clinton. Richard Meier sidles up and I ask if he'd care to categorize the architectural style of his pal Gagosian's house, typical of the pink-roofed manors that dot the island's beaches and cliffs. He laughs mischievously and replies, "Teardown."
Talking shop in St. Barts — short for Saint Barthélemy and shorthand for barons in bathing suits — is inevitable given that the men who swarm this island in the French West Indies are masters of their universes. And considering the number of business cards and phone numbers thrust at me during a weeklong visit — from money managers to vintage Jaguar dealers to bodyguarded Saudis — the holiday period is essentially a sybaritic networking summit sponsored by Vilebrequin and Domaines Ott. "People need to be here because their friend is here," says the mayor of St. Barts, Bruno Magras. "It's an American mentality." What sets the island apart from its Caribbean brethren is what it has (an Hermès store, haute cuisine, impossibly gorgeous women) and has not (crime, vulgar hotel chains, golf courses and the jocko Fortune 500 CEOs who love them). And then there are the things that can happen only in St. Barts: Catherine Zeta-Jones singing "No Woman, No Cry" with Jimmy Buffett at La Plage; reclusive billionaire Eddie Lampert washing up at a Frédéric Fekkai dinner; a dance party brunch at Nikki Beach with women on tables and Russell Simmons doing yoga behind them, waist-deep in the turquoise sea. For all the privacy it affords, the island can be as claustrophobic, fleshy, and voyeuristic as a water park.
Land-ho'ed in 1493 by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage, St. Barts was rediscovered four and a half centuries later by global-economy conquistadors David Rockefeller and Edmond de Rothschild, who, seeking solitude, built estates in the 1950s and '60s. Fashionistos such as Patrick Demarchelier followed in the '70s; tax loopholes in the '80s made way for yuppies; and the '90s brought Jann Wenner, Lorne Michaels, and an influx of heat-seeking celebrities, which sealed the island's fate as a satellite campus for the Hamptons. To this day the 2,000-foot runway can't accommodate Gulfstreams, so hedge fund honchos and other alpha types take the next best thing: a turboprop engine Pilatus PC-12 with Tradewind Aviation from places like Miami and San Juan — eliminating the fear factor of a rickety puddle jump from St. Maarten.
