Who

A social fixture for more than three decades, Serena Bass runs the A-list catering and party planning company that bears her name.

Backstory

Serena grew up in London and attended an all-girls' private school before tying the knot, at the age of 20, with child psychologist David Shaffer. Her early years in Britain were spent dabbling in fashion as the founder of a small clothing line (she also served as Ralph Lauren's point person in London when he was still starting out in the early '70s), until she moved to New York in 1977 with Shaffer and took up temporary residence at the Chelsea Hotel.

Serena soon established herself on the downtown social scene, launching a party planning career, she says, when a gallery-owner friend asked her for help catering a last-minute dinner for 60. By the next day, she'd already lined up two more customers. But organizing swanky events took a back seat following her divorce from Shaffer in the early 1980s (he married Anna Wintour a few years later) and a tumultuous (and short-lived) second marriage—by the early 1990s, Serena was a two-time divorcée, living in Westchester, and nearly broke.

A popular line of homemade chocolate chip cookies helped kick start a renaissance in 1992, and longtime pal Grace Coddington helped her out with assignments catering lunches for Vogue. Bass returned to the city in 1996 and set up her catering company in a former meat locker on West 13th Street. She's since established herself as one of the most popular caterers for the media and fashion elite.

Of note

Bass has long been a social presence in the city, but she became a nightlife impresario in 1999 when she and her son Sam Shaffer founded the trendy subterranean lounge Serena at the Chelsea Hotel (the venue that just so happened to have been her first home in New York more than two decades earlier). In 2003, mother and son sold the nightspot, but her catering career is as busy as ever: Her clients have included the Whitney Museum, Marc Jacobs, Kate Spade, Stella McCartney, the Gagosian Gallery, Oscar de la Renta, Anna Sui, Burberry, and, of course Vogue.

But you needn't be a celeb or a member of the fashion elite to partake of her kitchen wizardry: Bass now sells dinnerware through HSN. You can also read about some glamorous functions she's catered in a cookbook/memoir she published in 2004, Serena, Food and Stories: Feeding Friends Every Hour of the Day.

Personal

Bass met her first husband David Shaffer when she was 14 and he was 24. They married six years later. The couple had two sons, Joe and Sam, before divorcing in 1982, reportedly because of infidelity on Bass's part. He subsequently became Mr. Anna Wintour, but there doesn't seem to be any bad blood between the two Brits—Vogue is one of Bass's regular catering clients. Serena's second marriage to Curt Bass ended in 1992.

Habitat

Bass lives and operates her catering business in a warehouse on West 13th Street. She spends weekends with her West Highland terrier, Ruby, at a modest home in New Fairfield that she purchased for $225,000 in 2001.

Family ties

Serena's niece is actress Minnie Driver.