A young lady needs to learn certain things: how to behave during a manicure; how to tip; what, precisely, high tea is; and how to order room service among them. And when her mother—more prone to hippie knitted hats than heels—is uninterested in these matters, it falls to her de facto aunt to educate her in the ways of the world. Which is why I whisked my very own rental Eloise off to the newly-renovated The Plaza hotel in New York for a style baptism by fire.
My mother is 30 and has a charge account at Bergdorf’s, recounted Eloise, the famous six-year-old children’s-book character who “lived” at The Plaza, had a pet turtle who wore sneakers and made a profession of being a charming, dishevelled nuisance in the 1950s stories.
There are absolutely nothing but rooms in The Plaza
Ooooooooooooooooooo I absolutely love The Plaza
“Are we staying in Eloise’s room?” Six-year-old Neltje pelts me and her mother with questions as she loads up on free cookies in Porter’s plush airport lounge at the Toronto Island airport. (When travelling with kids, nothing beats avoiding the headache of Pearson.) “Eloise and me are both six. 6-6-6!” She sidesteps our entreaties to please brush her hair by evoking her heroine—Sometimes I comb my hair with a fork—and also gives us fair warning that she is not planning on doing much shopping. “I don’t think Eloise has to get dragged around from store to store to store,” she tells us firmly. “I don’t think Eloise does that.”
We arrive at the iconic hotel and are whisked inside by uniformed doormen.
“Oh, hi Eloise,” says the bellhop. Neltje’s eyes widen. “Why don’t you hop on the back of the luggage cart and we’ll take you upstairs just like the princess you are?”
Her mother glares at me.
“Quoi?!”
When we arrive at our glamorous suite (the recent reno has maintained The Plaza’s retro allure), a tray of fruit and chocolate awaits. Within minutes, our handsome, young, white-gloved personal butler comes to the door.
“I’m Eloise,” Neltje tells him pertly. “Call me Eloise.”
“Would you like an Eloise bath tonight?” he asks her. Moments later, a bellhop arrives with the Eloise costume we’ve ordered from missem.com. Mini slippers are laid out beside her bed. “I really like this place,” she says approvingly.
We drag her to high tea at Bergdorf’s—“When are we coming back? When are we ordering room service?”—and when we return, she almost falls over in a faint when she discovers a note written in pink crayon:
“Oooo, Welcome to my Plaza! It is rawther nice that you are here. What fun if you could visit me! Smoochies, Eloise.”
That it’s also finally time to order room service is almost too good to be true.
Ooooooooo I absolutely love Room Service.…
And I always say “Hello, this is me Eloise and would you kindly send one roast-beef bone, one raisin and seven spoons to the top floor and charge it please
Thank you very much”
I order dinner—the special Eloise menu includes “Charge it Please, Mac and Cheese” and “I’m-Not-A-Chicken Soup”—and Neltje gestures madly for me to pass the phone to her.
“And charge it please!” she says into the receiver.
“Oh, she’s trying to be Eloise!” says the order taker. “That’s so cute!”
We summon the butler to draw Neltje’s Eloise bath, though the one who arrives is not the twinkly charmer from the day shift but a rather nervous-looking fellow on duty for the evening. He blanches when I open the door.
“Someone ordered an Eloise bath?” he asks meekly. I assure him it’s not for me (though, darling, this is The Plaza after all—if you want an Eloise bath and you’re 80, you can have it) and he leaves, returning with a silver tray loaded with supplies, including a rubber ducky, a chocolate milkshake, a tray of cookies, plastic sparkly jewellery, bubble bath, an Eloise book and a mini bathrobe with the word “princess” on the back. He disappears into the bathroom and then comes back to usher Neltje in. He’s filled the bath with bubbles and scrawled flowers all over the tub with washable crayons. (You know you feel like a man when….) “Eloise” is written on the mirror in cursive script.
“Eloise snuck in and wrote her name on the mirror,” he explains. “She knows all the secret passageways.”
Neltje’s jaw drops. In the bath, she uses the crayons to draw the Plaza logo surrounded by hearts. Her mother tells me I’ve created a monster. Later, Neltje drapes herself in her princess robe and tiara and eats her macaroni on fine china.
“Dear Eloise,” Neltje writes in a note, with a drawing of her and Eloise holding hands. “It would be fun to see you too. Neltje.”
“Do you know Eloise?” she asks the concierge the next morning, clutching her note.
“Oh, yes!” he says. “She was just here. She went shopping.” He takes the letter and assures her it will be delivered forthwith.
After breakfast, Neltje gets into her Eloise outfit and poses for FASHION’s photo shoot. She will probably never have a more glorious moment in her life than this one, when everyone in the lobby of a grand hotel is gazing at her and asking her to pose for pictures. When we make her take the costume off, she pitches her Mary Janes down the hall in a fury.
Sometimes I have a temper fit
But not very often
It was all a bit much, perhaps. We spend the afternoon at the Broadway production of Mary Poppins in honour of Eloise’s “Nanny.” Neltje is abject that dinner is Korean.
“Can I have an Eloise bath again tonight? Why do we only get one bath and one room service? When can we go back to the room?”
On our final day in Manhattan, I take Neltje for her first manicure, after a detailed discussion on the nature of tipping. “It’s nice to say thank you and because it’s not nice they don’t get the money because they do the work,” she says, brow furrowed, lesson learned.
I slip her some bills when her tiny nails are a blush pink. “What is that called?” I whisper.
“Um, money?” she says. Well, it’s a start.
We spend the rest of the day wandering around the West Village, eating cupcakes from Magnolia and buying shoes.
“I’m going to move to New York when I grow up,” she announces, gazing up happily at the sunny Manhattan sky.
You and every other fashionette, kid. You and every other.
For more kid-friendly activities in New York City, visit nycgo.com.
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CHIC FAMILY TRAVEL
BABES IN TRAVEL LAND | JETSET KID IN JAMAICA | ELOISE IN THE CITY
First published in FASHION Magazine May 2009
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