Fashionably late? Is it polite to arrive at 8:30 for an eight o'clock black tie.

Byline: William Norwich

The invitation said cocktails at 6:30, dinner at 7:30. But at 6:45, as we stood, waited, watched from the top of the grand, white-tented steps of the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, the jolly June venue for the Council of Fashion Designers of America's annual awards dinner, barely a guest was in sight.

Although ours is a country that prides itself on its techno_luscious efficiency, time, or should I say timing, has run amok in social life. Lateness is increasingly accepted; punctuality is considered suspicious and rarely rewarded.

Happily, there are exceptions, parties that are not taken hostage by celebrities' star turns on the red carpet-such as MoMA's annual garden party and the American Ballet Theatre's opening gala at Lincoln Center, cochaired by Blaine Trump. Or small dinners at home, like that which art patron Douglas Cramer and writer Hugh Bush gave for Lee Radziwill and One Special Summer, her recently republished book (guests included daughter Tina Radziwill, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, and Najma and Peter Beard).

Otherwise, from Manhattan to Malibu, it happens every night. The invitation will say dinner at eight, or 7:30, but you finally sit at 9:30, having stood-or eventually fallen, as the case may be-over too many cocktails because everyone hadn't arrived yet and/or sat down. And this begets a wicked cycle: You start to assume you won't eat for at least an hour after cocktails are called, so you don't even arrive until the hour you guess everyone will really sit. Sometimes you get it right, and sometimes you are all paws and faux pas in the soup.

Meanwhile, in the communal social aggregate, chaos reigns.

"Have I ever gotten it wrong?" Vera Wang exclaimed when we talked at the CFDA dinner. "My theory is: You never arrive first, and you never arrive last. So several years ago this is what my husband and I were attempting when invited to a White House state dinner by President and Mrs. Bush. We were in our hotel watching C-SPAN, and there it was, the arrivals. 'Aren't we supposed to be at that?' I yelled. We were the last ones in the White House door."