Anna Wintour, Dustin Hoffman and Sarah Jessica Parker were on the guest list. The venue was Central Park, New York, and Agyness Deyn provided the catwalk entertainment, and anybody who was anybody else had been jostling for an invitation for months. It was Ralph Lauren’s 40th anniversary and the lavish highlight of last month’s New York fashion week, yet its host remained ridiculously serene.

Guest-list drama, seating problems, last-minute cancellations and celebrity plus-ones – the hallmarks of fashion-week parties (especially in NYC, where more than a dozen events can be hosted per evening) – were nowhere to be seen. Much though we love a backstage tantrum, Lauren’s night was cool and calm.

As well it should have been: preparations for the festivities had been under way for half a year, 150 waiters were hand-selected and every detail was obsessed over. Lauren wanted dinner on a circular terrace, so he built a table 200ft long that curved along the garden balcony; instead of renting a few chandeliers, he decided to round up 9,000 crystals and build 12 of his own, each two metres high. When it was decided that Lauren would lead his guests into the party straight from his fashion-show bow, he propped up hundreds of hurricane lamps and enormous urns of pink hydrangeas to mark out a path made from more than 1,000 yards of sheer georgette drapes. Seven hundred bottles of champagne were on stand-by. It is all rumoured to have cost about £10m.

Everyone knows a party is all about your entrance – each guest was treated like royalty, ushered past a line of photographers into a pool of white-jacketed, model-like waiters carrying trays of champagne. And is any party really complete without a catwalk show? Front row were big guns such as SJP, Matthew Broderick, Barbara Walters and Robert De Niro. Of course, you have to be able to rub your rivals’ noses in your glory, so also on the list were Vera Wang, Diane von Furstenberg, Carolina Herrera and Donna Karan, the last of whom was so impressed that she threatened to call off her more meagre presentation two days later.

A crowd such as this must be bursting with macrobiotic diet requirements, surely. But Lauren served the finest of ingredients regardless: salad of herbed haricots verts with chanterelles, shiitakes, hazelnuts and goat’s-cheese soufflé, followed by rack of New Zealand lamb with sweet-onion soubise, asparagus, sun-choked tomatoes, parsley purée and heirloom cherry tomatoes, with a couture-seam-busting wild-strawberry shortcake and artisanal chocolate sauce for dessert. Is it possible the American Vogue editor Ms Wintour veered from her usual diet of steak and steak only that night?

The music may not have been to everyone’s taste, either, but it helped to provide that party essential: a talking point. Lauren’s son Andrew was churning out tunes such as Boring, by the Pierces, which contains the lyric: “Galliano, Donatella, Dolce & Gabbana - boring!”

Of course, it helps if you have a team of staff to manage the event, but what did the big man make of it all? Despite evidence to the contrary, Lauren said: “I have never loved parties; I’m a private person. But I think every once in a while you can make a big splash."

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