I LOVE NICE THINGS.

There are those who assert that Lynn Wyatt's sale of her River Oaks mansion and her move to a smaller mansion nearby means nothing to the life and times of Houston. Wyatt is now a woman of a certain age, but she looks great: She's still a blonde, still appears at charity galas, and is still featured in the pages of Vogue and W. She's also the woman who for decades gave Houston its international social cachet, an extremely valuable donation to a city that, despite being the country's fourth largest, still smarts at the slightest suggestion of hickdom. During the height of the oil boom in the 1970s and early '80s, the Wyatt mansion was a party house for the likes of Princess Grace, Bill Blass, Mick Jagger—and a temple of envy for those who weren't invited. Hence any hint that she might be withdrawing from the spotlight fills Houstonians with an odd mixture of fascination and dread. "Lynn Wyatt is NOT stepping aside," insists Franci Crane, a well-placed o...

Saperstein and boyfriend Christopher Roselli in their office, with designs for the Chiave clothing line. The woman in question, everyone quickly learned, was Suzanne Saperstein, the Swedish-born chatelaine of Fleur de Lys, one of Los Angeles’s most extravagant homes. Although Saperstein, a former model and competitive skier, was no newcomer to Paris (she’s been a dedicated couture client since the Nineties), she had been mostly absent in recent seasons as she weathered a bitter divorce from her husband of 21 years, Texas billionaire David Saperstein. Among the jaded onlookers at the shows, Saperstein’s fashion-victim ensembles and 33-year-old boyfriend (former pro soccer player Christopher Roselli) sparked a range of comments, some kinder than others. But any critiques from the crowd were mild in comparison to the torpedoes Saperstein fires at herself a few weeks later, over lunch at the Polo Lounge in Beverly Hills. As she amusingly mocks her physical imperfections, her taste in cloth...