Anyone who has taken a ride down (or up) Park Avenue lately surely has noticed a certain 23-foot, 35,000-pound, bronze, yellow teddy bear sculpture seated outside the iconic Seagram's building on 52nd street. This monumental sculpture -- created in 2005-2006 by Urs Fischer and inspired by memories of his childhood -- is expected to be the highlight of Christie's Post-War and Contemporary Sale come Wednesday, May 11th, where it is expected to fetch up to $10 million. In anticipation of this record-breaking sale, Christie's threw a party on Saturday evening to toast this most spectacular, the Grand Poobah, of all bears. Jennifer Creel, Adelina Wong Ettelson, Teen Vogue's Andrew Bevan, and Lauren Remington Platt were among those on the chic guest list who not only got up close and personal with the larger-than-life teddy, but who also got to witness some vintage toy allure, like a life-size jack-in-the-box (not to be confused with the fast food joint), all the while sipping yummy Grey Goose cocktails and grooving to mostly 80s tunes that likewise took many back to their childhood.
So with toys and the 80s and nostalgia being the order of the evening, some of us got to reminiscing about our first doll, or stuffed animal, or our other beloved playthings. Christie's Lydia Fenet had four Cabbage Patch Kids, while writer Peter Davis treasured one teddy bear that he had as a small child. "It was a Paddington Bear, who is British and wears a blue duffle coat and a floppy yellow and sometimes red hat. He also stars in his own series of books and now TV shows. His arm kept getting 'stitches' from my nanny because I think he did everything I wanted to do but couldn't at age four -- parachute from the top of the roof, get in wars with monster trucks and other things that often ended in losing an arm or a leg. I wish I still had Paddington, but I don't know where he ended up -- hopefully somewhere there is a person adept at sewing up stuffed animals."
Gatecrasher's Carson Griffith had an equally memorable story to tell: her mother, who traveled to Germany a lot when Carson was a child, used to bring her back "the most amazing toys," most memorably "a pregnant German Barbie whose stomach popped off and had anatomically correct twins inside -- a boy and a girl! The most unrealistic part, though, was that her stomach was totally flat afterwards! Ha! You could snap the stomach right back on and play all over again." Actually, that doesn't sound too different from celebrity pregnancies of today; nonetheless, Griffith confided that this fast number of a Barbie "caused quite the controversy with the other kids I played with! You know how those Europeans are," she kidded.
Now the big question remains: who is going to buy the Urs Fischer bear on Wednesday? While most of us were pretty stumped when it came to that guessing game, Peter Davis had a ingenious idea as for what the buyer (whoever he or she may be!) should do with it: "Use it as a night light for their tennis court. The yellow color of the big bear sculpture even looks like a tennis ball." Could a tennis party be next on the agenda? If so, Fischer's sculpture would make one heck of a mascot.