“Is this for my obit?”

The Instagram direct message came in reply to a reporter’s query to Nina Griscom. It was meant to be humorous but also not.

Whip smart, potty mouthed and uncommonly direct, Ms. Griscom, 65, is a celebrated “It” girl from an earlier era. The decade in question was the 1980s, a time in New York of big hair, pouf dresses, outsize personalities and a small social compass, when influencers were a concept far in the future and the democratizing dimensions of online existence were yet unimagined in a city still dominated by real-time encounters and class-based tribal cliques.

On any given night in Manhattan, as the fashion journalist Eugenia Sheppard once noted, 16 separate and competing societies were in play. The doors to each were firmly closed to those lacking a key, which in Ms. Griscom’s case took the form of a trifecta of intelligence, breeding and good looks.

They were golden years for Ms. Griscom and might have gone on forever if fate had dealt her different cards. These days, she would tell you flatly, she has every reason to believe that hers will not be a ripe old age.