They might well have been the cleanest stables in Sonoma. A vast and lush green lawn, set against the summer-scorched golden hills, lined the walkway leading up to the Tuscan orange structure. A pair of 14-foot-high sculptures of cowboy boots flanked the entrance, which opened onto a courtyard surrounded by ten stalls. For the night, each stall, the ground covered in fresh hay and housing an immaculately set dining table, was named after a western legend, from Annie Oakley to Buffalo Bill Cody. Out back, a wooden facade of a bar front bearing the sign Saloon had been erected to evoke the days of the Wild West. No horses were in sight.

The setting was Shanel, O.J. and Gary Shansby's Sonoma getaway, and their stables were getting a send-off before being converted into another guest cottage on the 360-acre property once featured in Architectural Digest. "People coming here for the first time would sometimes confuse this for our home," O.J. told the Socialist, seemingly amused by such a thought, given their impressive real quarters—complete with sculpture garden—farther up the hill. "So we decided to turn it into real living quarters."

And so, a party, "for a celebration of the old West," drew some 120 guests, mostly older establishment types from the city. There were the usual suspects: a glam Yurie Pascarella ("I came as a Japanese cowgirl") and her husband, Carl (who recently announced his plans to retire as CEO of Visa), Bob and Ann Fisher, Wilkes Bashford, and major art collectors John and Frances Bowes (who count among their homes around the world a place one hill over, designed by Mexican architect Ricardo Legorreta). The surprise guests, however, were former governor Pete Wilson, along with his wife, Gayle, up from San Diego, and Gretchen Leach, the wife of the U.S. ambassador to France, Howard Leach.

Gretchen, back from Paris for the summer, was in a jocular mood. Explaining the origins of her nickname, Go-Go, and her mother's, Yo-Yo (for Yolande), Leach came up with a nickname for dermatologist Seth Matarasso. How about So-So? To which Matarasso, long used to being society's court jester, could only respond, "That was a good one."

It was a heavily Republican crowd, what with Wilson's presence, which Matarasso couldn't help but remark on to Nancy Pelosi when she stopped by our table. "I think we're outnumbered," he told her. Pelosi, dressed in a pink western shirt, craned her head, surveyed the room with an eagle eye, and picked out the blue from the red. "There are the Caufields. And the..." Pelosi said, not missing a beat as she continued to rattle off the roster of Democrats.

The same day, a different contingent was diverted to Mara Fritz's home on the west shore of Lake Tahoe for the annual Oscar de la Renta fashion show. Scheduling conflicts (and the hush-hush talk about them) seem de rigueur on our ponderosa—particularly in the past month. There was modern art collector and MOMA trustee Norah Stone's annual birthday party

up in Napa, which coincided with the wedding of Katherine Post (daughter of Thérèse), which vied with the wedding of F. Montgomery Woods III. Oops! The weekend after, there was a tribute to Margrit Mondavi. Successive weekends were similarly spoken for, with symphony board member Barbara Brookins-Schneider's Napa blowout the weekend after the Shansbys'. 

The lake event, despite overlapping with the Shansbys' affair, was sold out. Some whisper that the benefit for Save Lake Tahoe has been on the wane since Bill Blass handed over the reins a few years back, but Boaz Mazor, Oscar's right-hand man, gleefully told the Socialist that it raised a record $450,000. Standbys Sally Debenham (who, in an annual tradition, hit the Slanted Door with Oscar the next night), Dolph and Emmy Andrews, and Adrienne and Keith Provo attended, along with Oscar's elegant and understated stepdaughter Eliza Reed Bolen and her husband, Alex Bolen, the CEO of Oscar de la Renta, who flew in from New York.

Meanwhile, the relentlessly social Denise Hale was back to her summer entertaining up at her ranch in Cloverdale. There for a large part of the summer was Daniel Smith, a fascinating, well-traveled professor from Virginia who has studied the world's religions and lived in Egypt and all over Europe. But a contingent of city folks were invited to meet Palm Beach fixture Pauline Pitt (recently photographed in Bob Colacello's big spread on Palm Beach for Vanity Fair), who had come out to the ranch and San Francisco for a week. On hand at the pool for some Cristal and a spot of lunch were Vanessa Getty, Jo Schuman Silver, and publicist Allison Speer, who brought her new beau, Adrian Kyriazi, a Greek banker raised on his family's 120,000-acre farm in Kenya.

Pitt, a decorator, had become acquainted with Hale through her father, and like many social women counts Hale as a mentor. "I've handed myself over to Denise for the week, except for one day—when I hit the San Francisco Designer Center," Pitt told the Socialist. "And I just adore designer Michael Taylor's work and want to stop by his showroom."

Besides attending the dinners held in her honor, the visitor from Palm Beach dropped in on a belated birthday lunch for Daniela Faggioli at Bulgari. That's  the luxury-goods world—if, like Faggioli, you are a loyal, consistent, and influential (read: press-generating) customer, perks are a given. On hand were the Italian contingent: Maria Manetti Farrow, Romana Bracco, and Denise Hale (well, she speaks Italian and lived in Rome) with her friend Professor Smith.

And now, the bonus question: which would-be boldfaced socialite has taken Nob Hill Gazette publisher Lois Lehrman to task for not running her pictures and name often enough in the NHG? The press-starved woman apparently counted the mentions of various other notables and, finding her numbers lacking, had her attorney contact Lehrman about the matter.