CORNELIA GUEST: LADY OF THE MAI

It's hard to believe that there was a time when well-brought-up girls might have preferred to stay in Locust Valley with their ponies and French governesses rather than head for Manhattan to disappear into the demimonde. Nowadays, busting out of the gilded cage is standard socialite behavior, but Cornelia Guest did it first.
Or if not first, she certainly did it loudest. At age 18, with her mothers pal Nancy Reagan newly installed in the White House, the daughter ot polo-playing Winston and fashion icon C.Z. Guest took her fresh-off-the-horse style to the glittering nocturnal corridors of Studio 54, Xenon, and Regine's. The press dubbed her the Deb of the Decade.
"I was really, really lucky," says Guest on an early-autumn evening soon after putting Templeton—her famous family home in Old Westbury on Long Islands Gold Coast—on the market for $11.9 million. (The price tag includes neither Salvador Dall's portrait of C.Z. nor Andy Warhol's of Cornelia.) "When I was living in the city, I had these people who protected me: Andy, Halston, Scavullo." All three functioned as de facto fain' godfathers for the young Cornelia. Halston taught her how to walk in a dress on the makeshift runway in his studio, and fashion photographer Francesco Scavullo would watch her collect ribbons at the Hampton Classic horse show.
The equestrian habit may have saved Guest from the other popular habits of the day—or night, as the case was. "I loved to go out," she says, "but I was on a horse the next morning. Aid there was my mother at home waiting to wake me up by pointing the garden hose at my bedroom window. The truth is, 1 didn't have that bad-girl gene."
Guest was four years old v/hen she first met Warhol at one ol her parents' Templeton dinners. "Andy came up to my room and played wirh me all night," she remembers. "We became great friends.' Guest recalls the time Warhol joined her at the International Jumping Derby in Newport, Rhode Island. The hotels were booked that weekend, and she and her retinue were staying on a friend's yacht. "One night, the captain came up and said there was a hurricane coming and we needed to go out to sea and ride it out," she says. "Andy turned whiter than he already was. I realized he didn't know how to swim."