Multimillion-dollar parties? That's so '80s

SO Steven Schwarzman throws himself a 70th birthday party complete with camels, a gondolier, a 12-minute fireworks display and a performance by Gwen Stefani - with an estimated cost ranging from an improbable US$20 million to a more likely US$7-9 million - and the tsk-tsking can be heard from coast to coast, as it is cited as one more example of the wretched, over-the-top excess of the new Trumpian era.

Does no one remember the Reagan years? These kind of multimillion bashes seemed to be almost a monthly occurrence during the mid-and late-1980s (except for a brief blip following the Black Monday crash of 1987), with one mogul after another raising the party stakes for their champagne-swilling, caviar-supping, Lacroix-wearing guests.

Perhaps the most visible couple during the latter stages of the Reagan era was Saul and Gayfryd Steinberg, with the second Mrs Steinberg often referred to in the news media as "the queen of nouvelle society".