DINNER WITH ALEC AND HILARIA

A Close Encounter with the Baldwins

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A young lady who was a fan of my fashion criticism in the New York Times became a good friend of mine when she interviewed me for Elle magazine. 

https://www.elle.com/fashion/news/a3286/sartorial-sitdown-cintra-wilson-1444/

Nina (not her real name) was a real looker: a tall half Indonesian girl who was insanely driven in every situation to win.  She even nicknamed herself “Tracy Flick” after Reese Witherspoon’s character in the movie “Election.” I loved her style, which she called “Battlestar Galactica” - very short hair, asymmetrical angles.  Always high heels. She was all sharp, dark shapes in space.

She had been the winner of a reality show, and as a prize got to be an editor at Elle for 1 year.  What was amazing about Nina is that she made herself indispensable, and they hired her back for another year - she had won again.  

She was accustomed to winning.  She rowed crew at an Ivy League University. She spoke fluent Mandarin, and before coming to New York she had been working for the government, analyzing Chinese texts. 

 She also immediately brought up the name of the Senior Pentagon Official I had been dating, which endeared me to her instantly — his world was very insular, and the fact that she knew enough to bring him up suggested she had really done her homework, and moved in the right crowds in DC.  She had many interesting professional and personal tendrils. 

Anyway, she was hated over at Elle because her boyfriend at the time happened to be Alec Baldwin, who used to periodically give her gifts of $10,000 to go shopping at Barneys.  The other girls just hated that. 

One of the senior editors used to call her a whore. 

But I liked Nina and her rude Will to Conquer.  She introduced me to Alec Baldwin.  He is a giant man, in person — rather his head is enormous, the size of a bear’s head, or a combination microwave/convection oven.  He looks like a LEGO character.  But he was incredibly funny and engaging.  He is significantly bigger than life — a booming, singing, squeaking, impression-doing spectacle of a celebrity.  I liked him.  His head is seriously fucking huge. 

Due to my connection with Nina, Alec knew I was a fashion writer for the New York Times, and called me up one day to ask me to speak with him on a panel at the Hamptons Film Festival.  He was showing a biopic of Yves St. Laurent, and wanted to speak with a couple of fashion experts before the show.  I was able to introduce Alec to the great Simon Doonan, former creative director for Barneys New York, and the two of them hit it off. 

It became really clear, talking to Nina, that she really wanted to be my guest and come with me to the event.  This was a little bit awkward, since Alec had a new girlfriend:  Hilaria, the woman who would eventually come to bear his numberless brood.  

But Nina always gets what she wants, so about a week later, she joined me in the sleek private car Alec had sent for us to drive us to the Hamptons.  She answered emails on her iPad the whole way down, looking entirely comfortable, like this kind of luxury was par for the course. 

I had never been to the Hamptons before. It has an interesting quality of light that makes people look richly hued and extra rich.  A very color-saturated place.

I met Hilaria, who sat humorless and posed in her chair backstage with perfect posture, wrapped in a pashmina.  The pashmina, I guessed, was necessary because under it, she was wearing an itsy bitsy little stretch-velvet slip-dress — the kind I used to wear out to clubs when I was 21. 

(Hilaria was reported to be 24, at the time. Alec: much older.) 

I got to walk out into Alec’s paparazzi, which was a blast — I acted like they were there for me as well.  I was wearing a vintage Yves St. Laurent dress and felt great, so I sucked up the applause and flashing cameras and smiled beatifically, feeling vicariously famous. 

Onstage at the event, Alec, Simon Doonan and I had a little PBS-style mini-panel, talking about fashion and Yves St. Laurent before the airing of “L’amour Fou,” a biopic about the legendary designer, whom I have always loved because he tried to create a couture for women that was as empowering and protective as the male suit.

The evening went by well.  A wholesome and edifying entertainment was had by a bunch of nice middle-aged white people. 

Alec generously took a few of us out for dinner, after the event — including Nina and I.  I could feel the strange competitive bristling that Nina’s psyche was doing, the closer we got to Hilaria. 

“Well, we’re all adults here!  This doesn’t need to be awkward,” Alec said, unconvincingly. 

Hilaria, it must be said, was absolutely charmless.  She was a preening show pony, clinging to Alec’s side.  Her accent was so thick, I presumed her English must be quite bad.   She offered Nina and I no conversation or acknowledgement. 

Nina grabbed my sleeve and hotly whispered,“Hilaria just said to another guest, ‘Eeet ees pronounced EEN-cheelada.’”  Nina pretended to barf into my lap. 

Dessert was kind of a big deal for Alec, because his favorite dessert was at this restaurant, and thanks to the draconian new diet Hilaria had him on, he was forbidden from partaking in what he wanted, which was a chocolate dipped ice-cream and caramel mound the size of a softball.  I decided to order it just to torture him a little because his antics with HIlaria were so absolutely silly. 

She kept infantalizing herself.  At one point Alec tried to feed her a spoonful of blueberries.  

“Oh NO!”  She admonished him, in a Latin baby voice.  “That’s too many!” She said in a way that was calculated to be adorable.  She wagged a manicured finger at Alec and plucked two blueberries off the spoon, leaving 3. 

Nina and I rolled our eyes at each other so far back we could see Greenland. 

At the end of the dinner, I was feeling friendly. Nina and I had been splitting glasses of wine. (Later, Nina would tell Alec I drank all three glasses.) Goodbyes were being said, and I decided to try to break the ice with Hilaria one last time. 

“Come here you beautiful THING,” I said to Hilaria, insisting on hugging her — an act she withstood but barely tolerated, since I was obviously teeming with bacteria. 

Then a few years went by, and it came out her accent was fake the whole time.  It’s hard to imagine living with such a person.  At what point did Alec know she wasn’t Spanish at all? 

And now they are birthing an army — a fortress against any known threat to Baldwin immortality. 

Anyway, she was a bitch. 

EDITING! Cintraw@gmail.com

Artwork: “Priscilla Presley",” oil on canvas, Cintra Wilson 2020