The Surrealist Painting That Is the Central Park Conservancy’s Hat Luncheon

If you think only Millennials have the ability to curate visually stimulating, Instagram-worthy events tailor-made for social media, you are gravely mistaken. You’ve never been to the hat luncheon. A 36-year-old tradition, the annual Frederick Law Olmsted Awards Luncheon — put on by the Women’s Committee for the Central Park Conservancy — is anecdotally referred to as the hat luncheon. It’s an event that has, since its inception in the Eighties, become exceedingly more extravagant. This year was no different. On Wednesday afternoon in Central Park’s Conservatory Garden, waiters in white dinner jackets walked Ladies Who Lunch in couture down the stone steps leading toward the large, white tent where the awards ceremony was held. The hats ranged from Easter-inspired and low-key to downright artful; one woman’s hat was a bowl of ramen, another’s was a plate of sushi. In what was perhaps an Isabella Blow-motivated move, one attendee wore a lobster on her head. Still another wore a grass hedge shaped like a dog — with a pink leash around its neck that she held in her hand. The garden, where guests strolled before sitting down to lunch, looked like a surrealist painting. The scene evoked New York City society

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