Meet the new, bright young things

The Bright Young Things, originally Fleet Street gossipcolumn parlance for the socially ambitious bratpack members of the 1930s Mayfair It crowd, as satirised by Evelyn Waugh in his novel Vile Bodies, are about to become controversial again.

Only this time, instead of being led by Lady Diana Cooper, they are the subject of a glossy new coffee-table book entitled Bright Young Things London, compiled by the glamorous 35-year-old New York socialite Brooke de Ocampo.

Did somebody say American? Britain's jaded ranks of social commentators - or at least those who weren't asked to contribute a few carefully chosen words about their much richer and better-connected friends - will be curious to know what sort of social cocktail party for 36 hastily invited guests this attractive, Manhattanbred young mother of three girls, married to a poloplaying Argentinian banker, has come up with in less than a year of moving to her South Kensington townhouse.

De Ocampo was asked to compile this "Insiders View of English Young Style" following the runaway success of her previous Bright Young Things New York book. Selling over 25,000 copies at £35, the New York Observer declared: "This incredibly fashionable and high-profile group is redefining society style."

Whether Londoners will be similarly moved by the BYT phenomenon will only be known when the book is published by Assouline next month. However much jealous vitriol and ink is sprayed across the book's handsome pages, everybody seems desperate to get their hands on a copy.

Having written about my old LA friend Matthew Mellon, scion of the famous East Coast banking family, and his wife Tamara, CEO of Jimmy Choo Shoes, I got to read an early copy last week. While it was in my possession, a wellconnected Old Etonian friend of mine, a partner in the terminally trendy Woody's nightclub in Notting Hill, saw the book lying on the back seat of my car. Leaning through the window, he grabbed it and read it with ferocious interest for 15 minutes in the middle of the road, oblivious to the cars screaming past him. The resulting list of names, accompanied by glossy "at home" photographs, is full of surprises.

Some of these BYT names must clearly guard their private lives very carefully, as few outside this London-based, Eurocentric, club-class flying social set will ever have heard of them. The list ranges from mediasavvy couples such as the Mellons, to those such as film mogul William Turner and his wife Emily Oppenheimer: he is the youthful head of Sky Pictures in Britain, currently on "sabbatical" at the Harvard Business School; his wife is a De Beers heiress whose part-time job, when not looking after baby son Marlow, is social editor-atlarge of Harpers & Queen.

There are other powercouples, such as the Hon Will Stanhope, a DIY enthusiast who spends most of his life building bookcases for the country pile in Scotland that he and his Chanel model wife Candida Bond are renovating. (Chanel, I should add, is hosting a glitzy launch dinner for De Ocampo's new book on 2 May at their new boutique on Brompton Cross.)

No list would be complete without such ubiquitous London socialites as the model/make-up artist Jemma Kidd, TV presenter Tania Bryer and Vanity Fair contributor and girl-about-town Kate Reardon. The latter proved so popular a choice that she has both Graydon Carter, Vanity Fair's editor, and Vassi Chamberlain, features boss of Tatler, vying separately to do justice to their friend's precocious talents.

There seems to be a mild shortage of eligible men, with the Sunday-stubble exception of Ben Elliot, boyfriend of Jade Jagger and nephew of Camilla Parker Bowles. For some reason he is photographed in a local park wearing sweat pants and his best anti-fashion "just got out of bed" look. Others who made it include Wild At Heart Notting Hill florist Nikki Tibbles, George Club chef Daniel de la Falaise - the Mayfair club is a popular haunt of this set - along with ballerina Darcey Bussell, Shoreditch gallery owner Detmar Blow, Cosima Pavoncelli (née von B&uoml;low), and interiors writer Rita Konig, daughter of society designer Nina Campbell. She decorates the cover of the book lying semi-naked in her bath wearing a top hat.

Curiously, several of the BYTs - such as Konig and Reardon - have also contributed pieces to the book. In fact, many of the writers - myself excluded, of course - may be better known to readers than the subjects they have written about. Contributors include Nicky Haslam, Claus von B&uoml;low (on his daughter), supermodel Honor Fraser, Marianne Faithfull and Paul Smith. Nicholas Coleridge, the managing director of Condé Nast UK, was so taken with the idea of the BYT phenomenon that he wrote an introduction after De Ocampo rang him out of the blue and invited him to lunch. Like myself, I suspect he scratched his head a few times at one or two of the names. He concluded: "The dramatis personae are culled from the discordant worlds of Wallpaper* to Dazed and Confused by way of Tatler and Vanity Fair. It is like the best kind of party, at which half the guests are old friends, and the other half like each other on sight."

But how reliable is it?
Who's on the list