Bash Compactor: Getting Laid Off Is Still Getting Laid

Broke bankers and struggling models mobbed the rooftop of the Empire Hotel last night for the latest installment of Fashion Meets Finance. A tipsy brunette on crutches was trying to put her Burberry coat on so she could leave, but guys wearing suits sans ties kept jostling her as they moved past. Struggling to anchor herself with the crutches she told me her deal. “I was running to work to get there on time when I fell. It’s not funny!” As the tiny metaphor hobbled away, a bushy-haired suit eyed my black notebook and smiled. “How many numbers you get tonight?” With an obscene bro-wink he added, “I’m just chilling because I’m engaged.”---

The party was billed as a return to the halcyon excesses of 2007, and enough unemployed finance types fished the necessary change from their couch to pony up for a bottle of Absolut. Liz, a 20-something fashionista in a low-cut black cocktail dress, eyed them skeptically and said, “just look at all the douches in those seats. They’re all so broke.” A line-up of seven models was in the DJ booth nodding to anemic dance music. One of them, Sabrina Roberts, a six-foot Afro-Chinese stunner wearing a tiny creme-brulee-colored dress—told me she wasn’t giving up on finance dudes. “One, they’re more interesting; and two, can you imagine if everyone was in fashion?” I asked her if she had ever thought of dating so-called normal people. She twirled around, took a sip from her champagne flute and asked happily, “How do normal people pay for champagne?”

Far from her home-turf, Futurist post-club kid Jessica Nightwife was sitting in a booth wearing a kimono and a gargantuan ribbon in her hair. Smiling brightly she confided, “I told my friends I was going to wear a bra and panties but I lied.”

After buttonholing several shell-shocked Patrick Bateman types, one of them finally pointed out a tall, well coiffed suit with some scruff doing the robot against a leggy mannequin; Jeremy Abelson—who runs PocketchangeNYC.com—is the brain behind the event. “I’m saying to hot girls, don’t let the recession get in the way of your destiny to marry a hedge fund broker,” Abelson intoned gravely. “I’m doing God’s work, they could wind up with a consultant.” He looked at me without skipping a beat and added, “or, yes, even someone from the media.”