SOCIETY Edie & Andy

Oscar Wilde once noted that the way to get into the best society is to amuse or shock. That theory may have worked in Victorian London, particularly for witty, shocking Oscar Wilde. But it never went over in New York. Afraid of jeopardizing their own social security, New York's finest followed the example of the Boston Brahmins, clung to the names in the Social Register and the rules in Emily Post as loyally as if they had made them up themselves -which mostly they had. In recent years, however, New York has gone Wilde, and the newest darlings on its social circuit are artists and artisans who ten years ago were talked about but seldom talked to -such as, say, Norman (Mailer), Tennessee (Williams), Sammy (Davis Jr.), Gadge (Elia Kazan), Rudolf (Bing) and Cal (Robert Lowell). At the moment, the magic names are Andy and Edie.

Depths & Heights. Pop Artist Andy Warhol is the man who sells exact-to-the-copyright reproductions of Brillo boxes for $1,000, lines his studio with aluminum wrap, paints his hair silver, and devotes eight hours of "underground movies" to such hitherto unexplored subjects as the depths of man's sleep or the height of the Empire State Building. Edie Sedgwick is his constant companion, an electric elf whose flashing chocolate-colored eyes and skittish psyche make her a perfect star for his slow-moving movies.

Last April, when Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art gave a black-tie party to celebrate the opening of its "Three Centuries of American Painting" exhibition, Edie and Andy stood cheek by jowl with Lady Bird Johnson, Mrs. Vincent Astor and Harry Guggenheim. Andy was wearing yellow sunglasses and a ragged tuxedo jacket over paint-splattered black work pants. Edie had dyed her hair silver (to match Andy's), wore lilac pajamas that covered nothing but a body stocking. Since then, they have gone to more parties than a caterer, sometimes staying for just a moment before moving on to the next one.

At a formal benefit opening of George Balanchine's Don Quixote, Edie climbed to the highest balcony in Lincoln Center's New York State Theater to twist, while Andy and fellow onlookers toasted her in champagne from below. A week later they showed up at the exclusive dinner given by the old-guard Nine O'Clockers of New York, Andy dressed in his usual black, bespotted denim work pants and Edie in a black crepe evening gown with shoulder-length white gloves, topped with ostrich feathers.

Some Dream. Biggest bash of all came last week. To celebrate (or mourn) his impending return to Claremont Men's College, Producer (Funny Girl) Ray Stark's 21-year-old son Peter threw an "underground" cocktail party at The Scene, Manhattan's freest-wheeling nightclub. The guest list read like a society columnist's dream: Huntington Hartford, Mrs. Eric Javits, Wendy Vanderbilt, Melinda Moon, Freddie Guest (Winston's son) and his wife Stephanie (Joan Bennett's daughter), Maria Cooper (Gary's daughter), Liza Minnelli (Judy's daughter), Alexandra Cushing and Christina Paolozzi, plus a constellation of Southampton and Newport debs, some of whom flew in for the occasion. But all eyes were on Edie and Andy.

In the background, Warhol's movie, Beauty Number II, unreeled against a wall displaying Edie in brief undies lounging on a bed and chatting (soundlessly) with a male companion in shorts. In the foreground, Edie and her companions frugged, jerked and twisted beneath hot studio lights. Edie was dressed in her "uniform," a pair of leotard mesh stockings topped by tight black panties, a blue surfer's shirt, and huge earrings that hung down to her collarbone. The rest of the Warhol entourage included Chuck Wein, Harvard '60, who peroxides his hair and wears it long, and Don Lyons, another Harvard man, who is a teaching fellow in Greek classics, wears his hair short and leaves it plain.

Andy, it seemed, was making an underground movie of people seeing an underground movie, letting his camera automatically scan back and forth between the world of coupons and caviar and that of pop and pot. After several paper cups full of champagne and apple cider, the socialites unbuttoned their suit jackets, set their ties at half-mast, and mixed it up with the denizens of the underground on the dance floor. Said one girl in a Pucci gown: "This is a gas! I mean, this is what I call a real party!"

Great-Niece. The artist and his "superstar" reached their present social pinnacle from different sides of the tracks. The son of a construction worker from McKeesport, Pa., named Warhola, Andy scarcely seemed destined to reach Fifth Avenue drawing rooms. Pale beyond the pale and shy to the point of sequestration, he arrived in New York at the age of 24 as a struggling artist with little training and less money. Gradually he earned enough through advertising illustration to eke out a comfortable bohemian existence on the Lower East Side. When the art world suddenly went pop in 1962, Andy found himself lionized by the white-tie world of the Museum of Modern Art. But he cut few social capers, clung to the company of fellow artists.

Then came Edie. The great-niece of the late Atlantic Monthly editor Ellery Sedgwick, the great-granddaughter of the Rev. Endicott Peabody (Groton's founder), Edie was definitely born a lady. But it was not a role she enjoyed. She quit school after one year at St. Timothy's and refused to have a coming-out party, divided most of her time between junkets to Europe and sculpture lessons in Cambridge, Mass. After settling in New York last summer, she drifted aimlessly about, looking for modeling jobs by day and dancing at discotheques by night, invariably dressed in racy culottes or leopard-skin slacks. Last January, having nothing better to do, she showed up at a screening at Warhol's movie "factory," talked herself into a part, soon took over where 1964's "Girl of the Year," Baby Jane Holzer, had left off. Said she: "I didn't know I was replacing Jane. In fact -I'd never even heard of her. I hardly ever read the papers."

"I Can't Say No." From then on, Edie and Andy opened doors for each other -she the doors to the Park Avenue patrons of his paintings, he the doors to the world of art and the cinema where she hopes to make her way. Behind the doors, there was an endless succession of parties. Said Andy: "Nowadays, I just can't say no to a party. I think all those people are great. They don't really know who they are. They don't even sleep -but then, we don't either."

How long will they remain the couple celebre? "Who cares?" says Edie. "I am not trying to create an image or a following. I act this way because that's the way I feel like acting. If people like it -fine. If they don't -that's their problem."

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