Face the World gala raises $1.5M
Rare as hen’s teeth: Charity event raised large sum that will go mainly to organizations for women and kids
FACING UP: It’s rare for a charity gala to raise $1.5 million, even with tickets costing $2,500 and the BMO Financial Group contributing $100,000. For hen’s-teeth rarity, though, the Face The World Foundation did it recently on the boarded-over swimming pool of the family home where Jacqui Cohen founded the foundation 25 years ago. Tom Jones sang in 1991, and larger and lesser successors led to this year’s appearance by figure-skater-turned-drag-queen MILK, a.k.a. Daniel Donigan. The MC was CTV News co-anchor Mike Killeen, whose wife, communications pro Jill Killeen, is on FTW’s board. So are present and past broadcasters Jim Byrnes, Vicki Gabereau, Pamela Martin, Anna Wallner and Joy MacPhail who, with husband James Shavick, owns the gay-and-lesbian OUTtv network. The foundation has reportedly raised and distributed $15 million, mostly to organizations serving women and children.
SEE SEE: As usual, few FTW attendees dressed below the high eights. But Ewa Taubenfligel recycled a 15-year-old D&G confection that, though open at the sides, revealed less than the gauzy gown son Adam designed for 2003’ s more rip- roaring event. The charitable moral: Spending less on your outfit may mean more for those who have less still.
SAVING BABIES: Aided by developer- neighbour Dale Bosa, friend Monica Soprovich and new Order of B.C. member Tamara Taggart, Zahra Mamdani covered her palatial home’s pool and held a gala there. Named Sparkle, it had Tracey Pincott stage a customarily precise show of fashions from Mamdani’s Wear Else store. Howard Blank then urged $250 and $350 ticket holders to contribute $150,000 for the newborn ICU at B.C. Women’s Hospital, and surprised himself when $300,000 came in. Referring to $12 million in hand for a $17-million BCWH Foundation campaign, CEO Laurie Clarke got rueful laughs from snugly coutured women with: “That last $5 million is like the last five pounds.” The night’s serious business, though, was providing the wherewithal for babies weighing less than half that to stay alive.
LEO CON BRIO: The recent Leo Awards gala for B.C. film and television productions and personnel was a project of the Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Foundation of B.C. Longtime Leos president Walter Daroshin produced the 1996 founding event’s top feature film, director Anne Wheeler’s The War Between Us. Like its industry, the celebration sweated through hard times that once had winners pay for their trophies. But, with cameras and good times rolling again, Daroshin togged himself and wife Tina in an Isaia suit and Brunello Cucinelli gown respectively.
POLES APART: After carving many totem poles on Granville Island, Clarence Mills hung up his adzes last month. The Haida eagle clan member now concentrates on garments and jewelry, some made in the hammered-from-behind repoussé manner learned from the late Bill Reid. His hereditary name, Gahghinskuss, means “Out of your own land.” He’ll certainly be that in August when he and city fashion designer Chloë Angus present their Haida-themed designs at the NY Now show in New York’s Javits Center.
HITCHED: Some-time city moviemaker (Mon Amour Mon Parapluie) Giada Dobrzenska wore white for her marriage to Prince Marcantonio del Drago in Prague today. And not just her gown. There was also the cast on the arm a hit-andrun motorcyclist broke in a London pedestrian crosswalk. The couple will reside in Lausanne, where the groom is an investments specialist.
VIVA L’ITALIA: The Vancouver Art Gallery was jammed recently for the opening of Heaven and Earth: 500 Years of Italian Painting from Glasgow Museums. Most of the 40 works featured sacred or liturgical themes, so the few postcard scenes like Francesco Guardi’s portrayal of Venice’s San Giorgio Maggiore and the busy marine traffic stood out. Vincenzo Camuccini’s Roman Women Offering Their Jewelry in Defence of the State absorbed two young fashionables. An old master in the pedagogical sense, Emily Carr University president Ron Burnett would line up himself the following day to have an Order of B.C. jewelry pin join the Order of Canada equivalent in his lapel. He seemed happier, though, that four Emily Carr grads — Stan Douglas, Geoffrey Farmer, Babak Golkar and Brian Jungen — were featured in two VAG exhibitions upstairs.
NONE PLUS: Bar None nightclub has had a 23rd-year spruceup. The Hamilton Street joint’s somewhat muted early days resulted in hair stylist and now-international DJ Kevin Shiu nicknaming it Girl None.
That key deficiency remedied, the fun palace flourished and was acquired in 2008 by Geoff Donnelly’s multi-bar-and-club group, which has now recast it in the contemporary L.A. manner.
DOWN PARRYSCOPE: Gory hues might have debuted when the Clairol firm chose L’Abattoir restaurant beside Blood Alley to launch its Crema Keratina hair colours this week. But Medium Red was as sanguinary as it got.