Corporate/business parties and those of social climbers are different from N.Y.C. parties of "just friends"...or were.
It's all business now, even among friends. That's the subtext of most of the parties I've attended over the past year. People are very fearful and nobody seems particularly comfortable in their own skin. I take this to be a bad sign for the economy.
I will give you a more amusing example. A fairly successful guy I met recently said he'd just moved to New York after a divorce. He's late 40s to early 50s, somewhat overweight, but highly educated and near the top in his field. He says to me, "I moved here from XXXXXX and I thought this would be a target rich environment for women my own age, maybe a little younger. But all I'm finding are 28 year olds with tattoos who want me to set them up in an apartment with a credit card...do you know any successful women?"