Parties You Will Never Get Into

Continuing her advocacy for pooches, country music superstar Carrie Underwood turned out at the 6th Annual Pedigree Adoption Drive in New York City. Fellow vegetarians and dog lovers flocked to the affair, held in Manhattan’s Bideawee Adoption Center on March 30, 2010.

Underwood, who appears in the online campaign with Ace, her adoptive chihuahua, urged guests to open their homes to dogs. The Grammy award winning songstress and American Idol champion also convinced guests to visit and become a fan of Pedigree’s official Facebook page. For every new fan, the dog food manufacturer would give one food bowl to an animal shelter until Dec. 31.

“Half the dogs in shelters never find a home,” she said.

Underwood posed for photos on the red carpet, where she clutched a docile beagle puppy in front of the paparazzi.

All in all, Pedigree is pledging $2 million in aid of dog shelters across the US. The company already gave $50,000 to Underwood’s own effort, the Checotah Animal, Town and School Foundation (CATS).

Fresh off her first movie, Soul Surfer, Underwood is embarking on a 54-city concert tour sponsored by Pedigree. Moreover, she would take to the stage at the Academy of Country Music Awards on April 18.

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital held its first ever Estrellas Por La Vida (Stars for Life) Gala on Apr. 6, 2010 at Club Nokia in Los Angeles. Living up to its namesake, the gala drew more than 300 stars and VIPs, including some of Latin Hollywood’s most stellar personalities.

Wilmer Valderrama, Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens, among others, took a brief respite from their Hollywood chores to attend the black tie affair. Hudgens and Efron were present to support their High School Musical 3 director Kenny Ortega, who was up for an award that night with Daisy Fuentes and Zoe Saldana.

Fuentes, Zaldana and Ortega were honored for their philanthropic feats involving children fighting cancer and other life threatening diseases.

Guests sipped wine courtesy of the legendary Beringer Vineyards and dined on dishes prepared by world famous chef Wolfgang Puck.

Later in the evening, a silent auction was held. The winemaker auctioned a wine-tasting tour in their 1876 Napa Valley headquarters and two of its award winning products: the 2007 Beringer Private Reserve Chardonnay and the 2005 Beringer Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon.

Proceeds of the auction would benefit the charitable works of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, one of the leading pediatric cancer centers in the world.

In Floria Sigismondi’s The Runaways, Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning play punk lesbian lovers. However, on the red carpet of the film’s March 11, 2010 premiere, the two New Moon actresses looked every bit the dolled-up Hollywood femme fatales that they were.

Spectators headed to Bowery Hotel after the film’s screening, held at the ArcLight Cinemas’ Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles. At the hotel, Tommy Hilfiger cooked up a rock-and-roll celebration in honor of the movie.

Joan Jett and Cherie Currie, the film’s legendary subjects, came in the flesh at both the screening and the party. Lucky punk lovers and artists were able to get autographs from Jett at the screening.

Other famous faces, like actress Chloë Sevigny and rocker Dave Grohl, also joined the group and rubbed elbows with the punk rock goddesses. Director Sigismondi was also present, and so was Michael Shannon. Stewart’s foxy New Moon co-star Taylor Lautner also joined in the celebration.

Both Stewart and Fanning will appear with Lautner this summer for Eclipse, the third film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire novels. Robert Pattinson, who plays Stewart’s lover in the vampire films, was visibly absent in the bash.

Grilled cheese and beer were passed around the room, while music from The Runaways’ original albums blared from the speakers.

Every year, before spring, the Associates Committee of The Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center holds a Bunny Hop. Marking its 19th year last March 9, 2010, the affair gathers rich parents and their kids for a good cause.

This year’s honorary chair Tina Fey and her daughter Alice led over 800 VIBs (Very Important Bunnies) to the event. Like all other years, it was held in the giant FAO Schwarz toy store at Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Garbed in Sunday clothes, kids walked the pink carpet to a veritable fantasyland. The toy store let tiny attendees flit around miniature photo booths and dress-up stations complete with manicuring amenities. They also tried their hand at face painting and balloon art, or dine on cupcakes, mini-hotdogs, fruit kebabs, candy necklaces, and PB&Js. In addition, an Easter Bunny was on hand to hug them.

One of the more standout tots in the 2010 event was four-year old Barron, Donald and Melania Trump’s son. Helena Grace, Kelly Rutherford’s baby, was another.

In attendance was Heather Leeds, The Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center President. Other guests included Leslie Heaney, Dee Dee Ricks, Alexandra Lind Rose, Lauren Stahl, Catherine Carey, Lisa and Chris Errico, Amanda Taylor, Karen Cohen, and Barbara McLaughlin.

SMSKCC’s 19th Annual Bunny Hop raised more than $350,000 in funds, which would go to the Pediatric Family Housing Endowment. In the next five years, the Associates Committee pledges to raise $2 million for the Endowment. It would finance the overnight stays of MSKCC’s indigent patients and their families.

For a second year in a row, European children’s clothing label Papo d’Anjo sponsored the event, alongside UBS Financial Services. This year’s Hop was co-chaired by Celeste Boele, Annabelle Fowlkes and Laura Harris. The vice-chairs were Kate Doerge, Kate Allen, Palmer O’Sullivan, and Laura McVey.

Imagine yourself in a room packed to the rafters with genuine Hollywood idols and celebrity types. Imagine yourself only a star-struck breath away from legendary women like Shirley MacLaine and Joan Collins.

That’s exactly what happened to invited guests at The New York Times’ T Magazine party on Jan. 15, 2010. Thrown inside a cramped space in West Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont, the celebration unofficially set off a series of shindigs leading to Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards.

Hosted by Peggy Siegal, the T Magazine party was a veritable magnet to celestial beings, among them Scientology clerics Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. It likewise lured Quentin Tarantino, Jared Leto, Ashley Olsen, Ben Stiller, and Adam Lambert.

Legendary peahens Shirley MacLaine and Joan Collins were among the party’s early birds. They were spotted conversing early in the evening, before MacLaine moved on to chitchat with Julianne Moore.

Only days away from winning a Golden Globe for TV’s Big Love, Chloe Sevigny attended the get-together with filmmaker Liz Goldwyn. Another TV thespian in the crowd was Kim Raver, who stuck close to her Lipstick Jungle co-worker Lindsay Price. Academy Award nominee Carey Mulligan also came, but without boyfriend Shia LaBeouf in tow. She was seen close with The Office actor B.J. Novak.

Gossip Girl’s Chace Crawford could also be sighted here, puffing a fag with an unidentified boy friend. At the outdoor smoking area, Eli Roth could be seen cozying up to an unknown blond.

Around 9 pm, the party almost hit overcapacity. Yet guests were mostly eager to fill two less breathing spaces with the grand entrance of Cruise and Holmes. Before long, Holmes hit a conversation with Glee actress Dianna Agron, while Cruise cracked some jokes with Woody Harrelson. All the while, Holmes’ ex Chris Klein kept his distance.

TomKat exited the party after 10 pm, probably in a rush to get home to their daughter Suri. But directress Sofia Coppola chose to tag her 4-year-old daughter Romy along to the party.

Dina Lohan and her starlet daughters Lindsay and Ali burst in the doors fabulously late. However, everybody was preparing to vacate the penthouse just then.

President Bill Clinton suited up on October 7, 2009 for the New York Historical Society History Makers Gala. However, the annual affair largely celebrated the life of another US president, Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln’s shadow was all over guests at the gala, which was held at the New York Historical Society’s swanky Manhattan headquarters. The gala served to inaugurate the first major museum exhibit associating Lincoln with New York City.

President Clinton was there to kick off the Lincoln exhibit with a keynote address. He was also on hand to accept the 2009 History Makers Award from the Society.

This exhibition was the culmination of the NY Historical Society’s yearlong celebration of Lincoln’s birthday bicentenary. The Society first marked that milestone in February with an exhibit of Lincoln’s handwritten documents.

Titled “Lincoln and New York,” the newer exhibit chronicled Abe Lincoln’s Gotham experiences, from his historic campaign speech in Cooper Union to his funeral procession through the city. It came with hundreds of documents, paintings, and artifacts, including the lectern from which the Cooper Union speech was delivered.

Brooks Brothers, Inc. lent the exhibit a faithfully made replica of one of Lincoln’s suits. The former president wore it first at his second inauguration and then on the day of his assassination in 1865.

Costing $2.5 million, the Lincoln exhibit was lead-sponsored by JP Morgan Chase & Co. Other sponsors included the US Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Underground Railroad Educational and Cultural Program.

Gala-goers produced anywhere between $1,000 and $5,000 to gain entrance to the black-tie gala dinner. They were, in turn, served sumptuous food such as lamb chops coupled with parmesan paves.

Expensive tables were no object to the well-heeled guests, which included Bernard Schwartz, Philip Mirrer-Singer, and Emily Kimball.

Chairing the gala were Stuart Rabin, Patricia Klingenstein, Roger Hertog, Martin Gross, Richard Gilder, Diana Roesch DiMenna, Ravenel Curry III, Judith Roth Berkowitz, and Helen Appel. Lazard Freres & Co. Senior Managing Director Vernon Jordan was honorary chair.

Louise Mirrer, the Society’s president and CEO, attended. Understandably, the gala would benefit her organization’s future exhibits and philanthropic projects.

Two days after the gala, “Lincoln and New York” opened to the general public.

For as long as there are gulfs in income, Tatler has always been in existence. One of the world’s oldest magazines, Tatler has assiduously stalked the loftiest strata of social class since Queen Anne’s reign.

In commemoration of its 300th anniversary, the publication mounted a party of the bacchanalian order on Oct. 14, 2009. Party planners threw the bash where it all began: London’s majestic Lancaster House, where Tatler started its first photographic party coverage in 1901.

Seven-hundred people, representing a cross section of blue-blooded royalty, grand nobility, landed gentry, and new money, responded to the invitation. There to swill endless founts of champagne were social heavyweights like Sir Philip Green, Manolo Blahnik, and Marie Chantal of Greece. Amid servings of canapés and slices of a human-sized cake, one could also find Sir Stuart Rose, Talulah Harlech, Rupert Everett and Peaches Geldof.

Vogue UK’s editor Alexandra Shulman was also around, along with Nicholas Coleridge, vice-president of Tatler’s parent company, Condé Nast International. Also gracing the bash with their presence was Samantha Cameron and siblings Robert, Sophia and Emily Sheffield, Vogue UK’s deputy editor.

Marking this once-in-a-lifetime signpost was the new Tatler editor, Catherine Ostler. Former editor of ES, Ostler succeeded the post vacated by Geordie Greig in February. In effect, she inherited editing duties for the magazine’s November edition, also known as its tri-centennial anniversary issue.

Ostler did not disappoint though. The resultant anniversary issue was a highly special collector’s edition, an unmistakable postage-stamp head shot of Queen Elizabeth II splayed on its cover. Described as “300 years of Mischief,” the special issue came in three variations.

Tatler began as early as 1709, when British journalists Richard Steele and Joseph Addison looked to disseminate tittle-tattle in the coffee shops to a wider audience. Centuries later, in 1901, Tatler was reborn, changing the way society rags are made forever.

It snowed stars and socialites inside Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City as UNICEF threw its annual Snowflake Ball on Dec. 2, 2009.

Belying its icy subtext, the Snowflake Ball was actually warm with the charitable hearts of its guests. Two of the invitees were feted for their fiery humanitarian efforts: Island Def Jam Music Group Chairman Antonio “L.A.” Reid and UNICEF’s Ethiopia representative Ted Chaiban. The former received UNICEF’s Spirit of Compassion Award; the other, an Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award.

Music luminary Mariah Carey, who came with husband Nick Cannon, was on hand to introduce her Island Def Jam boss to the stage. However, the singing duties went to fellow Island recording artist Chrisette Michele.

Besides the awarding, the gala served to commemorate the lighting of the humongous UNICEF Snowflake. Hung high above Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, the Snowflake is a larger-than-life reminder to Gotham dwellers that, indeed, ‘tis the season not to be frosty. Anyone in their million-dollar cars would notice the 28-foot high leviathan, scintillating with 16,000 Baccarat crystal prisms.

UNICEF’s Snowflake was donated by the Stonbely Family Foundation. True to form, Christine Stonbely co-chaired the Snowflake Ball with Claudia Lebenthal. George Stonbely was also present, along with Barbara Bush and Maggie Betts, who served as the affair’s junior co-chairs. Charlotte Moss and Pamela Fiori, in turn, acted as chairs of the Snowflake Project.

Hosted by Al Roker, the Snowflake Gala was attended by U.S. Fund for UNICEF’s CEO and President Caryl Stern. Also spotted at the gala were actors Tea Leoni and David Duchovny.

Hugh Hildesley from Sotheby’s led a live auction. Moneyed invitees bid on items like a private dinner with Star Chef and UNICEF Ambassador Marcus Samuelsson and a photo shoot with shutterbugs Vinoodh Matadin and Inez van Lamsweerde.

Before the night ended, UNICEF raised $1.9 million. An unsurprising sum, as invitees included Jenna Bush Hager, Lauren Bush, Erica Reid, David Lauren, Vern Yip, Muffie Potter Aston, Somers Farkas, Anthony Pantaleoni, Matt Lauer, Dikembe Mutombo, Dayle Haddon, Gillian Miniter, Bryant Gumbel, Gelila Assefa, Wolfgang Puck, Fareed Zakaria, Paula Zakaria, Jaime Jimenez, Deborah Roberts, Michael Belleveau, Sandra Lee, and Dave Lieberman.

Invitees had dinner prepared in part by Marcus Samuelsson’s eatery Aquavit. Popular restaurateurs Jean-Georges Vongerichten and Alfred Portale also livened up the evening’s gastronomic delights.

Several of Tinseltown’s finest beauties converged at Essence Magazine’s Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon last March 6. Names like Serena Williams, Nia Long, Keri Hilson, Vivica Fox, Anika Noni Rose, Joy Bryant, Paula Patton, and Leila Ali attended the soiree, held at Los Angeles’ Beverly Hills Hotel.

Now on its third annum, the luncheon was timed with the magazine’s 40th anniversary. In turn, the hotel’s Crystal Ballroom was converted into a scene straight off Truman Capote’s historic Black and White Ball.

Essence Beauty and Cover Director Mikki Taylor served as the hostess for the event, which paid tribute to females who have made Black Hollywood proud in the past year. Unknown to her, Taylor had also been up for a tribute during the affair, for working with the magazine since it was 10 years old.

Following an overture by rapper Common, the scene was soon set for the Best Breakthrough Performance award. Precious Director Lee Daniels presented it to the film’s lead star Gabourey Sidibe.

Sidibe was then up for an Academy Award, just like fellow guest James Cameron. The world-famous director was present to give the Star to Watch Award to his Avatar co-worker Zoe Saldana.

Mary J. Blige, in her speech for receiving the Songstress of the Year award, openly expressed her newfound admiration for Sidibe. Taraji P. Henson presented the award to Blige after a performance of “Can’t Give Up Now” by Mary Mary.

With Viola Davis, Laurence Fishburne handed the Legend Award to Cicely Tyson. The fabled Harlem native gave a monologue in lieu of an acceptance speech, inciting a standing ovation.

But the night’s most emotionally charged moment came when Jada Pinkett-Smith presented Queen Latifah with the Power Award. The wife of celebrity Will Smith honored the singer-actress with a video tribute to the latter’s early music and artistic growth, which moved everyone to tears.

Before Lady GaGa was born, there was already Grace Jones. In the old days, one trusted Grace Jones to put on concerts bordering on disco theatrics and out-and-out madness. At the anniversary bash of Viktor & Rolf’s perfume, partygoers were able to briefly relive her glory days.

Dutch designers Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren arranged for the legendary diva to mark five years of Flowerbomb, their label’s wildly lucrative fragrance. A thousand guests packed the ballroom of Paris’ Le Meurice Hotel — including the likes of Jade Jagger, Renzo Rosso, Anouck Lepere, Afef Jnifen Tronchetti, Provera Lou Doillon, Keziah Jones, Renzo Rosso, Carmen Kass, Gareth Pugh, Daria Werbowy, Elettra Wiedemann, and Liya Kebede — to celebrate with the duo.

Guests were noticeably on the edge prior to Jones’ arrival, jostling for the best seats in the house. The designers had most of them in the VIP section however, which they shared with pals like Jessica Stam and Karolina Kurkova.

Then, around 12 midnight, Jones sashayed into the stage, wrenching an ecstatic cry from the crowd. Wearing a sable unitard with humongous sleeves, a Philip Treacy mask, and a flat-top hairdo, Grace Jones looked every bit the Lady GaGa precursor. She began her set with “La Vie en Rose,” which she proceeded to pepper with booty shakes and provocative commentary.

At 62, Jones still had the fashion instinct of a young, bold pop princess. Halfway into her performance, she tugged her leotard tightly, forming a thong, and yelled, “I’m ready when you are!”

Finally, it was time to sing the birthday song to the perfume, personified as a gigantic box. She sung it with the designers onstage.

“This is the first time I’ve sung happy birthday to a perfume,” she jested to the audience.

Lindsay Lohan failed to catch the Jones gig, arriving from London just as guests were trickling out.

Viktor & Rolf’s Flowerbomb now ranks among the bestselling fragrances in the world. The designers created the scent in collaboration with L’Oréal.