THAT Girl

Curator, writer, fundraiser, and gal-about-town SARAH HOOVER is REINVENTING the New York MULTIHYPHENATE, in cartoon-pink Chanel

- MARLOWE GRANADOS

Thirty-two inches below the collarbone: That is the length that Sarah Hoover gets all her clothes hemmed. "I do it to my nightgowns too," she tells me. This glamorous detail feels like a natural extension of Hoover's overall sensibility. On evenings out at art openings, society galas, or fashion dinners, she will pair her miniskirts with heels that make her a solid six feet tall.

Hoover, 37, is a particular kind of New York enigma, one of those magnetic people with a string of titles who always seem to be wherever culture is converging, all while enjoying every minute of it. She is an art-world connector, having worked at New York's Gagosian gallery for more than a decade. She is a writer whose vulnerable confessions about motherhood have resonated with new and prospective moms. She is on the board of the arts nonprofits Art Production Fund and Recess Art, and she cofounded the Accelerator Committee at American Ballet Theatre, which advocates for more choreographic initiatives led by women. Hoover is also, obviously, very fun. She tells me, half jokingly, that her greatest skill is "finding friends who play nice with others."

A glance at Hoover's Instagram reveals a dichotomy at play. Official event photos from evenings out broadcast her bold fashion choices (often monochromatic, frequently hot pink, always something glittering) and are paired with wry, self-aware captions, often with a political slant. In a post from the Rosewood Baha Mar in the Bahamas, in which Hoover is wearing a floral-printed chiffon Valentino dress, the caption reads, "In the seminal feminist text The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan talks about 'frilly blouse syndrome' which is when women wear overtly feminine clothing in order to subvert patriarchal suspicion as an act of innocuous protest." She continues, "I am no doctor but I think my diagnosis is positive!!!"