Presenting sponsor Gucci garbs a constellation of stars at the 2018 LACMA Art+Film Gala
In addition to the 2018 LACMA Art+Film Gala honorees — artist Catherine Opie and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro — and the Mid-Wilshire museum, which added a record $4.5 million to its coffers Saturday night, there was another clear beneficiary: presenting sponsor Gucci.
The Italian luxury label, which has been a longtime sponsor of the event, not only seemed to have dressed just about every A-lister in the house — as well as Opie and Del Toro (despite the latter joking at the lectern that he’d been dressed by Big & Tall) — but also managed to deftly underscore its myriad connections to the City of Angels by throwing a fragrance party at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery the night before. (The Gucci Guilty ad campaign, which launches in early 2019, stars Jared Leto and Lana Del Rey and was shot at various locations around L.A. — including the cemetery.) That in turn follows the drop of a 2019 resort capsule collection inspired by the Chateau Marmont, a frequent haunt of Gucci’s creative director Alessandro Michele.
It might be tempting to simply dismiss the above photo gallery of well-heeled celebrities as nothing more than fashion fluff, but one of the night’s takeaway factoids highlights just what all those opening wallets can mean.
Referring to the stretch of Wilshire-adjacent real estate just east of Fairfax that includes the under-construction Academy Museum as well as LACMA’s new, yet-to-be-built, Peter-Zumthor-designed building, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Director Michael Govan noted that “$1 billion in private philanthropy is going into these three blocks.”
Yes, that’s billions with a b.
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