Susanne Bartsch, the magical New York party diva who never met a feather boa she didn't like, is dressed way down today, sipping matzo ball soup behind huge black Gucci shades.

She's in a simple tank top and jeans, a far cry from the faux-hawk and the ripped, safety-pinned, Victorian punk thing she worked on New Year's Eve, when she threw a wet, wild and windy bash at the Raleigh Hotel.

She's still glowing from the party, which drew more than 1,000 people (and served as personal celebration, since just two weeks before, she reunited with her muscle-bound husband David Barton, of the gyms.)

But none of that is why she's verklempft right now.

Susanne, who has organized visually dramatic parties all over the world, is at one of her old haunts at Collins Avenue and Española Way, her stage for sequined outrageousness in the early days of the South Beach renaissance.

What once was Warsaw, headquarters for hedonistic night life, is now Jerry's Famous Deli, where the biggest scandal is the triple-stacked pastrami.

''Better that it became this than a dry cleaners,'' Susanne, icon of a faded South Beach moment, says in her Switzerland-by-way-of-London accent. ``I'm almost in tears. It's 10 years later and I'm still here. I didn't get AIDS. I didn't get blown up in the World Trade Center. I have the life that I want. All of a sudden, Warsaw is a deli and 10 years seems like a very long time.''

Indeed, these days South Beach is more about conventioneers parading in khakis than it is about drag queens sauntering in stilettos.

CHANGING TIMES

''What I would say about South Beach is that now there is a lot less head-to-toe feathers and sequins,'' says Susanne. ``I guess times just change.''

There is also less head-to-toe coolness. That easy, unaffected city-by-the-beach vibe that drew Versace and Madonna to frolic among the shirtless throngs back when there was no such thing as a VIP room has long since been taken over by designer label put-ons.

Susanne is part of that stylish but unspoiled South Beach past. She may dress like a jet-setting rock star, but she behaves like a homey.

FRIENDLY CHAT

She has you hang in her room at the Raleigh while stylists prepare her for her party, and makes the kind of easy conversation you make only with friends. She confides about her separation from her husband, whispers about upcoming business deals she's not ready to be public about, shares stuff about her son.

Her magic has always been about sparking that kind of intimacy among her followers. Partying with Susanne is like being on a warm and fuzzy high -- without the need to pop a pill.

''In the old days of Warsaw, everybody partied together, gay and straight, young and old, rich and poor, famous and not famous. It was the fact that there were people from so many different walks getting together that made the great energy,'' says Susanne, whose New Year's party managed to resurrect that old Warsaw mix. ``Now, it seems people are more segregated. They stick to their own kind. And that means there is less energy.''

And less unbridled fun.

CHAMPAGNE BOTTLES

Bartsch's trip down memory lane turns to fond thoughts of wacky times. There were the drag queens who worked it RuPaul style in long lashes and tall wigs. There was Lady Hennessey Brown, the striptease star she brought down from New York to delight Warsaw regulars with her talents involving champagne bottles and other unlikely insertables.

By comparison, her New Year's Eve party at the Raleigh was PG. But it was still the Bartsch brand of eye candy. There was a five-story inflatable dinosaur that flattened in a weather-related mishap, a trio of very wide, very short go-go girls in Wonder Woman outfits, acrobats from Cirque du Soleil twirling on trampolines, and some crazy 12-foot, sea-meets-space creatures that miraculously didn't get knocked off their stilts in the weather.

``It was so windy records were flying off the DJ's table. Then a balloon flies into the dinosaur's motor, there were sparks and it went down. We had 36 confetti bombs, six million pieces of big confetti. They were supposed to shoot up and float down slowly. Instead they flew north to the Shelborne. I think the Raleigh wound up with six pieces of confetti on the floor. Then the rain came.''

Of course, Susanne found the bright side.

DRYING OUT

``I think it means it's an exciting New Year starting. And I liked how people handled the whole chaos. Nobody was upset. We had silence for a while when the sound switched out and we moved everything inside, but it was still a beautiful atmosphere. People were wet, but they were having fun and talking to one another.''

The talking to one another part is what set Susanne's party apart from bigger, better-attended fetes just north of the Raleigh at the Shore Club, and just south at the Delano. Each promised herds of celebrities that never showed, making the biggest attraction the gangs in Gucci that stood around flexing their South Beach attitude.

Bartsch's party, which recalled the good old days, actually was festive.

LOOKING BACK

''South Beach didn't used to be about labels. It used to be about creativity. I think it's still here, but it's harder to find,'' she said. ``When I first came in 1989, I fell in love with the place because the people were so liberated. They were innovators. Now the place feels a little like a shopping mall. But, then again, a shopping mall here is still sexier than a shopping mall in Chicago.''

Bartsch had done several jaw-dropping New Year's Eve parties at the Delano, where her husband has a gym, but she was planning on having a quiet start to 2003.

That is, until she got to talking with Andre Balazs, who just bought the Raleigh. Balazs owns the ultra-hip Mercer in New York and the Chateau Marmont and Standard on L.A.'s Sunset Strip. He aims to return the Raleigh to its early 1990s vibe, when it led the South Beach charge as the first in spot for celebs who came to recess in a paparazzi-free playground that was emerging as the new American Riviera.

OPEN-MINDED FUN

''To me the hotel is a lot of fun and it has a sense of humor and is warm,'' says Balazs. ``Susanne is like that. The imagery that she traffics in is quite warm and humorous. It's about open-minded fun and that's very much in the spirit of all of our hotels.''

Susanne will always have a soft spot for the Raleigh. It's where her relationship with David Barton got off the ground one New Year's Eve 10 years ago. And it's where it just took off again, after a two-year separation.

ROMANCE

'Ten years ago, I was standing on top of a table at the Raleigh after dinner, doing the countdown. I saw my ex-husband with his new girlfriend and I thought, `Ugh.' I was so over him. And then I saw David Barton. I had met him a few months before but nothing had happened. All of a sudden he helps me off the table and kisses me. I say, 'Why are you kissing me?' He says, 'Because it's midnight.' That was it.''

And this year?

``This year, the grandparents took our son [Bailey, 8] after the party and we stayed up together until we saw the sun.''