THE SCENE: socialites and synchronized swimmers at Greta Constantine’s late-summer party

The closing days of summer are always a little dreary—thoughts of day drinking and cottage life shift back to work and responsibilities—but the third annual Greta Constantine pool party on Thursday proved to be a great distraction for Toronto’s scenesters. At a sprawling mansion in the Annex, we spotted Little Mosque on the Prairie star Zaib Shaikh doing purse-holding duty for CBC’s Kirstine Stewart and Anne-Marie Mediwake, as guests sank into the grass in their spike heels. The evening’s conversations shifted from talk of joining Soho House to TIFF and NYFW plans—guests lamented that they’d love to do it all, but are just “too busy” (we’d love to have problems like that). We chatted Forest Hill real estate with CityTV’s Sandy Pittana, while socialite Catherine Nugent pointed out potential subjects for our photographer, noting one guest looked “like she should be on the cover of Town and Country.”

The pool saw a lot of action, first with a quartet of synchronized swimmers in Greta Constantine frocks (afterwards, designer Stephen Wong lamented that “the dresses turned see-through”) and later with drunkish guests who hiked up their skirts and ditched their towering heels to wade in—a first, though we’ve always wondered why no one had jumped in in previous years. DJ Diego Armand got everyone dancing with Dance Mix-era hits like Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shoop,” and Rana and Richard Florida, skirting around the dancers to get to their friends, looked dangerously close to falling in the water if a wayward arm came flying in their direction. All in all, the evening felt like a party straight out of The OC: pool, dancing, and far too many drinks.