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Above the clink of crystal goblets and the beat of a twist tune wafted shreds and snippets of conversation. "Looks like Pierre made a party on the way." "No, darling, these models don't have a thing on underneath. They don't have anything to hide." "Look at Ethel go! Where does she get the energy?" "Look, McCone is actually smiling!" "I would love to see Allen Dulles twist." Floating among the crowd of 300 smartly-dressed people was the hostess, a tawny blonde, her hair bouffant, her gown a new Cardin, her perfume by Dior. At 1:30 a.m. her husband, Hervé Alphand, 56, the French Ambassador to the U.S., disappeared into an elevator on his way to bed. By 3:30 a.m. the last guests had departed, and Nicole Alphand, surveying all the bereft buffet trays and empty champagne bottles, smiled. It had been a good party.
The Merry-Go-Round. Giving good, and sometimes superb, parties is the most important thing in Nicole Alphand's life. It sounds like a frivolous occupation, but her husband often gets more done in ten minutes of quiet conversation at one of Nicole's dinners than in a day of shuffling papers. For in Washington the dinner table is merely an after-hours extension of the office desk, and at 5 p.m., when the lights wink off in thousands of offices all over town, the working day is only half over. Then the Senators and socialites, the diplomats and department heads begin to flow in a river of limousines toward the mansions on Foxhall Road, the shuttered houses of Georgetown and the row of embassies along Massachusetts Avenue.
From September to May, there are roughly 200 official parties a month in Washington, perhaps 20 times as many private ones. "During this season," says one diplomat, "there is hardly time between gulps of champagne and mouthfuls of canapes to think of anything but your feet, your stomach and your head" —and all three ache.
Keeping the merry-go-round whirling are the city's hostesses. There are dozens of them, ranging from the First Lady down to the newest Texas millionairess, who figures all she needs to succeed is a wad of money and a big house, just like Dolly Harrison in Advise and Consent. But on the New Frontier, where talent and power are the most negotiable currency, the moneyed matrons are out and the "official" hostesses—the wives of ambassadors and Administration officials—are in. Short of a summons to dinner at the White House, few invitations are treasured as highly as those to 2221 Kalorama Road, N.W., site of the grey stone, Tudor-style French embassy and home of Nicole Alphand.
The Power Play. She is, says one New Frontiersman, "a truly amazing woman, one of the rare hostesses who know how to combine fun with the power play." At 46, her skin has been lightly bronzed by the sun of Bar Harbor summers and Palm Beach winters. She is 5 ft. 8 in., scarcely an inch shorter than her husband. Her hair, rinsed a soft honey blonde, frames an angular face with high cheekbones. Long, curling lashes fringe blue eyes with just a touch of green in them. Her mouth is wide—too wide—but when she smiles or contorts it in the often losing battle with an English phrase, it is her most arresting feature.