Town & Country Focuses on Orange County

Keep it under your beach umbrella, but Orange County will be the focus of a major spread in Town & Country magazine, come spring 1988.

“Our writers are already conducting research,” said T&C;’s dashing publisher Fred Jackson, stabbing at soft-shell crab in the Director’s Club at Hollywood Park on Wednesday afternoon. “Orange County is a phenomenon. During the past 25 years, it has gone from ranchland to nirvana.”

For Jackson, who was hoste for Wednesday’s “Day at the Races” (a party format the magazine also uses at the Belmont race track in New York), Orange County is epitomized by Newport Beach. “It seems to be the nutshell of what Orange County is all about--the obvious wealth, the love of the outdoors.” People in Orange County are no strangers to the sleek pages of Town & Country. Some of its horsy set are pictured in this month’s issue, highlighted by ambitious coverage of California’s thoroughbred breeding and racing scene.

But never has the Big Orange been written up at length or had one of its beautiful people grinning from T&C;’s so-glossy-it-squeaks cover. “A cover is a good probability,” Jackson said.

Among the 160 guests seen betting, tippling and dining with the likes of Walter Matthau, Audrey Meadows and Hollywood Park CEO Marje Everett, were Newport’s Marie Gray, founder of St. John, attending with daughter, Kelly, who is St. John’s signature model; photographer Beth Koch of Irvine (who shot color for this month’s T&C;); Newport’s Mary Lou Hopkins-Hornsby (who had helped Koch identify her subjects); Bob Hightower, operations manager of Amen Wardy of Newport Beach and Irvine’s Maura Eggan, marketing director of South Coast Plaza.