Double takes as Lewinsky comes back to the social scene

Monica Lewinsky is back on the social scene after breaking her 15-year silence about her affair with President Bill Clinton.

Lewinsky, wearing a conservative but girlish pink and black lace dress, showed she no longer wants to stay in self-imposed hiding by attending a high-profile Manhattan event Thursday night, the Kitchen Spring Gala Benefit at Cipriani Wall Street.

Lewinsky, 40, arrived at the gala with Vanity Fair’s editor of creative development, David Friend, who has been a longtime confidante and persuaded her to pen her essay “Shame and Survival” in the magazine’s June Issue.

Sources said Lewinsky had wanted to attend the gala because she is a big fan of the event’s honoree, American painter and sculptor Robert Longo, with whom she was seen chatting.

Longo told us he had met Lewinsky for the first time that night.

He said, “She saw some of my stuff when she was a teenager. She’s very sweet. I think she’s a courageous woman. She’s very smart, very cool to talk to. I told her I read that thing she wrote recently, I told her, ‘I think you’re a pretty courageous woman.’”

While Lewinsky declined to be interviewed by Page Six, she shyly posed for a few photos and spent a lot of time talking with other guests.

Lewinsky was shown around the room during the cocktail reception and introduced to others by Friend.

“People were surprised to see her there,” said a spy. “There were a lot of double takes.”

But she was met with a positive response and appeared to shyly charm other guests.

Friend was spotted introducing her to NeueHouse partner Tracey Ryans, who told Lewinsky, “We’ve been to the White House together.” Lewinsky asked Ryans, “What was your code name?”

Other guests mingling with Lewinsky included artist Cindy Sherman, actor and director John Turturro and actor and writer Eric Bogosian.

Lewinsky penned her Vanity Fair article in an attempt to move on — or, as she puts it in the article, to “burn the beret and bury the blue dress.”

She admits she remained “virtually reclusive” following the 1998 scandal, and after getting her master’s degree in social psychology at the London School of Economics, she moved around Los Angeles, New York and Portland, Ore.