The spirit of Capote lives on - almost

Last week saw one of those evenings that are only conceivable in New York. Three hundred guests, including movie stars, models and designers, gathered for dinner in the Plaza Hotel's Grand Ballroom to celebrate Chanel's black-and-white "Nuit des Diamants".

The dinner marked the reopening of the ballroom in one of New York's most famous landmarks. Built in 1907, it borders the south of Central Park, and has long been home to the grandest of events and people. Marlene Dietrich lived there, as did Marilyn Monroe, Cecil Beaton, Stevie Wonder, Frank Lloyd Wright and F Scott Fitzgerald.

It was also home to a fictional girl called Eloise, whose impish pranks are familiar to all New York children who grew up reading her adventures in the same way the British read Beatrix Potter.

At the Plaza, Catherine Zeta-Jones married Michael Douglas, Pat Lawford married Patricia Kennedy, and Mick Jagger held his 50th birthday party. In 1966, Truman Capote staged his infamous masked ball there. The party started at 9pm and dinner was served at midnight.

But New York is a town that prides itself on its capacity to evolve as much as it values its history. Thus, two years ago, the Plaza was bought by the Israeli company Elad Properties for $670 million, and closed. Facing protests from city conservationists, Elad has kept the bottom part of the building as a hotel, but the upper half is now apartments.

One of the guessing games here is who has bought them. People reckon the buyers are people whose names we don't yet know, but will - just as in London a decade ago, Roman Abramovich was still relatively unknown.

Wednesday night's dinner was a symbolic nod to the old and the new. Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's theme tune was played. Tables were covered with silk velvet tablecloths in black or white - "One drop of water on them and you throw them away," designer Bronson Van Wyck told me. The room was filled with thousands of white ranunculus and camellias flown in from Belgium.

It was nostalgic, excessive, divorced from recession and reality. Until, that is, I looked at my watch. Thinking of looming deadlines and the children's drop-off next morning, I left, bumping into the actor Josh Lucas coming in from a smoke outside. "It's a late night, isn't it?" I sighed. "It is," he agreed.

I don't suppose Truman Capote ever felt like that.