South Coast Plaza Marks 20th, Shares the Limelight

How do you say “Happy Anniversary” to America’s premier retail center?

With heady gifts, of course: If you’re Cadillac Motor Car, you underwrite South Coast Plaza’s 20-years-in-business gala with a $50,000 donation, quite enough to serve up the chic agenda enjoyed by guests Saturday night at Crystal Court in Costa Mesa.

And if you’re Town & Country magazine (and ecstatic about the Plaza’s 22-page advertising splash in this month’s issue), you fly your jet-set publisher Fred Jackson from Manhattan to play debonair host beside equally debonair Henry T. Segerstrom, managing partner of C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, owner of South Coast Plaza.

But if you’re a retail center that knows its business (and with gross sales of $500 million in 1986, there’s no doubt that you do), you give proceeds of the “Anniversary Ball,” estimated at $70,000, to the Newport Harbor Art Museum, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

“The Crystal Court was designed for black-tie,” Segerstrom said, laughing, as he welcomed 320 guests, at $500 per couple, from artistic and corporate circles to the court’s regal rotunda, its dome washed in light to simulate a blue sky with billowing clouds. Guests applauded him gleefully, as they sat near some of the world’s toniest shops--the newly opened Orrefors crystal among them.

“Birthday parties are always exciting,” Segerstrom said during the champagne reception, his arm around wife, Renee, in breathtaking emeralds and a cloud of her own--a white taffeta pouf topped with a black-lace bodice by Carolina Herrera. “And it’s particularly rewarding to be associated with the Newport Harbor Art Museum . . . two special birthdays that coincide.”

Of the plaza’s world-class niche in Orange County, Segerstrom said: “I have tried over the years to find and secure stores I thought would be good for the upgrading of the life style of this community. And Crystal Court has given us a fresh beginning.”

Museum board chairman Rogue Hemley was “delighted,” he said, “to share the museum’s anniversary with South Coast Plaza’s. It’s thoughtful of them to make us the beneficiary.”

After welcomes from Segerstrom and Jackson, the first dinner course was served--icy caviar soup with a tiny tulip of Absolut vodka--and guests settled back at tables redolent of gardenias to watch a slick ‘60s fashion show commemorating the decade South Coast Plaza and the Newport Harbor Art Museum were founded.

Models with ‘60s hairdo’s flipped and flounced, their doe-eyes ringed in black, paraded original designs by Rudi Gernreich, Courreges, Travilla, Galanos, and Yves Saint Laurent, whose Russian ensemble was flown in from Paris. Musical hits such as “The Age of Aquarius,” “These Boots Were Made for Walking,” “The Twist,” and “Camelot” were piped over the sound system, delighting nostalgia buffs.

“Loved those minis,” noted Town & Country’s Jackson, looking at thigh-high skirts by Courreges as he sipped soup at the head table with T&C; editor Sandy Greenville Sheehy (who plans a write-up on Orange County for a spring issue); the Segerstroms; Hemley and his wife, Judy; museum board member Harold Price and wife, Sandy, and museum director Kevin Consey and his wife, Susan.

“I still have a Courreges coat,” Renee Segerstrom told table guests.

Backstage before the show, commentator Barbara Trister--a board member, along with Henry Segerstrom, of the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (from whence the ensembles came)--said the fashions “could all be worn today.”

“The skirt lengths are identical,” she said. “The leopard prints are the same. Even the dance ‘the Twist’ is coming back. You can’t put a price on these clothes.”

Crowning the show was a collection of little black dresses designed by couturier Karl Lagerfeld, emblazoned with glitter to evoke images of Cadillac’s “fenders, bumpers and fins,” Trister announced. (With this presentation, Cadillac’s Peter Levin--visiting from Detroit--hopped out of his seat to pose for paparazzi with the comely models).

After the show, guests continued with their dinner, catered by Rococo: shrimp swimming in lime butter, rack of veal scattered with morel mushrooms and a dessert to throw away the calorie counter for--a wedge of “Chocolate Oblivion” torte dished up with berries and almond-laced whipped cream.

Among those seen rubbing elbows and twirling around a high-tech dance floor until the wee hours were former museum board chairman Jack Shea and his wife, Marion, who last week were hosts to the Hemleys in their Rue de Rivoli apartment in Paris after the Hemleys interviewed Renzo Piano, one of seven architects being considered to design the museum’s new building.

Also on the anniversary scene were Segerstrom’s sister, Ruth Ann Moriarty, with her husband, Eugene, and son, Richard; Anton Segerstrom, operations manager of Crystal Court; Toren Segerstrom; museum curator Paul Schimmel and his wife, Yvonne; Jim Henwood, general manager of South Coast Plaza, and his wife, Sharon; Jim Le Neve, architect of Crystal Court; Marty and Arthur Svendsen; Dori and Jack de Kruif; museum trustee Sam Goldstein and his wife, Pam.

Others included Lillian Fluor, stunning in gunmetal satin; Tom Santley and his wife, Perta, a knockout in hot-red silk with black sequins; Nancy Zinsmeyer; Michelle and Frederick Rohe; Gerry and Jack Dwan; Barbara Glabman; Tom and Marilyn Nielsen; Peggy and Robert Sprague, and Cal State Fullerton President Jewel Plummer Cobb.