Art of Home Building, Gingerbread Style

Children deserve fancy holiday parties too, right? And in this town, they get them.
At the Jewish Museum's Annual Family Hanukkah party on the Upper East Side—a fund-raiser for the institution—kids up to the age of 10 were treated to various activities.
There was live music by the Maccabeats, an all-male a cappella group from Yeshiva University, perhaps best known for its spoof of Taio Cruz's "Dynamite," called "Candlelight." ("I flip my latkes in the air sometimes, singing ay-oh, spin the Dreidel/Just want to celebrate for all eight nights, singing ay-oh, light the candles." Take that, Ryan Murphy and "Glee.")

There were potato pancakes and jelly donuts—traditions on this holiday—and there was also Dreidel-decorating, cookie-designing, airbrush face-painting, photo-snow-globe-making, robotic Lego-playing and a gentleman sculpting candy in the shape of dragons seemingly out of thin air. (But really out of flour and corn syrup, we think.)
"Do you know what Sponge Bob is?" one girl asked the Candyman, as he put the finishing touches on a unicorn. "Can you make it?"
"I do," said the Candyman, "but I can't make it."
"How about a dolphin?" she asked. The Candyman obliged.
Over at the Pierre Hotel, a more fashion-y and secular tea party was under way. This was to celebrate the debut of Lanvin's Petite Collection for young girls.
In place of a Jewish a cappella group was a man at a piano playing ersatz versions of Disney classics, like "A Whole New World" from "Aladdin." Instead of Dreidel decorating, there was a make-your-own gingerbread house contest. Instead of latkes, there were Magnolia Bakery mini-cupcakes and organic juice boxes.

Various adorable and impeccably behaved children were provided with adorable Lanvin-ized chef hats and aprons as well as a smorsgasbord of decorative material—Ladurée macarons, gumdrops, shoe-string licorice—with which to turn their shabby gingerbread houses into maisons en pain d'épice. As we see it, the French translation makes it all the more glamorous.
The difficult task of judging which cookie chateau was the best fell to Morgan Larsson, the executive pastry chef of the Pierre, and Linda Kaye of Partymakers, who helped put together the afternoon for Lanvin. The prizes were big stuffed animals.
What was the judging criteria for arbitrating this kind of contest?
"Well, we're not going to worry if it was done by an adult. There's not much we can do about that," said Ms. Kaye. So that's out of the way. "But I think the criteria should be creativity. How did they use the candy and their pastry tips? Did they make scallops out of the licorice?"
"Also, how well they covered the house," Ms. Kaye continued. "And probably colorfulness. I have a philosophy about kids—they enjoy doing things rather than viewing things. The world has become so robotic. Here they're doing something where they appreciate the final product. In truth, I don't even think they know it's a contest."
"Actually, Tyler spent a lot of time working on his," said Adelina Wong Ettelson, of her son. "It's not a nanny's work. It's his own."
The real point of this exercise, however, was to get parents—like Ms. Ettelson, the gallerist Amalia Dayan and the philanthropist Coralie Charriol Paul—to pay attention and maybe even buy some Lanvin clothing for their own petites.
Earlier this fall, we were surprised at the prices at Bonpoint. Let us tell you: Lanvin for your 5-year-old? It's going to cost you: $390 for ballerina flats, $485 for a darling little red handbag; $476 for a T-shirt dress; $990 for one in ivory satin; $1,570 for a pink trench coat.
Not that the stuff isn't positively, completely darling, made with the same fabrics Alber Elbaz uses for his adult collection It is. But that's a lot of maisons en pain d'epice, especially in a culture where parents complain about the price of 3-D movie tickets.
Not for John Demsey, a group president at Estée Lauder. He said he bought his daughter, Marie-Helene, three dresses and a pair of ballet slippers. Not a bad holiday gift, eh? "You can never start too early," Mr. Demsey said. "In this city, the high maintenance begins at an early age."
Not everyone was so quick with a charge card.
"I mean, I love it," said Ms. Ettelson. "But if I'm going to spend that much money, it's going to be for me."
 Source http://online.wsj.com