on a winter's night; From a Hollywood disco ball to frisky business in London, theme parties heated up the chilly season.

Byline: William Norwich

Hibernating in wintertime will not be the topic of this column.

They think they will, they wish they might, but for the bejeweled bears in this neck of the woods there is nary a silent night.

Here's your hither-and-thither update: South of the Mason- Dixon Line there were hipper-than-thou-parties during Miami's Art Basel, including a poolside dinner at the Raleigh hotel hosted by Yvonne Force Villareal. In Manhattan, elegant evenings included the Neue Galerie's Winter Gala (underwritten by Akris) and, in the Metropolitan Museum's Temple of Dendur, the opening of "Wild: Fashion Untamed," the winter show at the museum's Costume Institute.

Hosted by Roberto Cavalli, this last event was a safari of leopard spots on leopard spots as far as the eye could see in a glass temple at night featuring a 220-foot-long buffet table in the shape of a snake. Remarkable. As were some of the frocks, including Mr. Cavalli's corseted numbers, strings and laces attached, worn especially regally by the countess of Albemarle, or Sally to her friends.

"It was very interesting getting into this dress," explained the countess, smiling. "I had to ask the baby-sitter for help, as Rufus"-the earl of Albemarle-"was not there when I was getting ready. She pulled and tied and I held my breath, and the whole thing started to feel reminiscent of some movie I had seen . . . Gone with the Wind!"

In Los Angeles, the film most frequently mentioned at Crystal Lourd's fortieth-birthday dinner dance, with its 1970s and 1980s theme, was Saturday Night Fever. Costumes were required. Crystal, mother of two sons and wife of Blaine Lourd, a financier, invited about 200 of her nearest and dearest to the rooftop of the Holiday Inn in Brentwood, not far from the Getty Museum, where, with the help of party planners Bryan Rabin and David Rodgers, and the flower power Eric Buterbaugh, she turned the otherwise unheralded venue into a disco destination with mirrored strobes, sparklers, curvaceous roller-skating babes, and a go-go boy in hot pants.