Symphony in Tune With High Fashion
The San Diego Marriott catered an interesting lunch of salad and stuffed game hen for Friday’s “Symphony of Fashion” benefit for the San Diego Symphony--and would have done well to offer the 1,017 guests cardboard take-out boxes.
Cartons of some sort would have been useful because at precisely the moment designer Oscar de la Renta joined his models and the full symphony orchestra on stage, many began searching for spare napkins and handkerchiefs in which to wrap the scale-model chocolate pianos served for dessert. The confections were tucked surreptitiously into handbags while guests offered such disclaimers as “I’ve just got to take this home for my husband,” and “My grandchildren will just love this!” No one, or so it seemed, had any intentions of chowing down on the fattening stuff herself.
A few considered tossing the chocolate pianos like sweet hosannas at de la Renta’s feet, in payment for presenting all of the novelties from his spring collection. An ordering guide from Saks Fifth Avenue-La Jolla, which presented the show, noted that the clothes were available in such chewy tones as pumpkin, tangerine, cinnamon, banana and pistachio. This colorful description failed to note the distinctions in a collection that offered both elegant, Grace Kelly-style evening gowns and Madonna-like fantasies with lots of exposed underwear.
The day caught smiles on the faces of all the principals and most of the guests, thanks to the previous day’s announcement, repeated at the event by symphony President Warren Kessler, that an anonymous donation of $2.5 million coupled with four banks’ forgiveness of loans had completely retired the mortgage on Symphony Hall. The repeated question of the day begged the identity of the mystery donor, but those few who knew just kept on smiling.
The event marked a few milestones for the sponsoring San Diego Symphony Auxiliary, which had come into being precisely 40 years earlier at a luncheon at the home of dowager Grace Klauber. Florence Goss, who founded the auxiliary and served several separate stints as its president, attended Friday’s luncheon in the guise of honorary chairman and told the crowd that the moment left her “much too excited and close to tears.”
The attendance also broke 1,000, another milestone, although the very first show presented by the group attracted a large crowd. Tickets to that first show, however, cost $2.50, while the 1990 installment of this annual ritual cost $45 and up.
Besides de la Renta and his fashions (and his fashionable new wife, Annette Reed de la Renta, whose skirt was widely and somewhat fearfully noted to be very short ), the main attraction was the symphony orchestra, which for the second year running accompanied the parade of clothes.
Snatches from “Carmen” led into the full-length “Bolero,” its strident flourishes underlining De la Renta’s ethnic extravagances in silk chiffon and organza, and adding poignancy to the struggles of a slender model whose gown kept attempting to slide down to her feet.
Event chairwoman Brenda Mittelmann said producing the show had seemed more than usually laborious.
“For the last four months, I’ve felt like an elephant who has been pregnant for three years with every complication, including morning sickness,” she teased, adding, “Now that the day is here, I feel like it’s been a beautiful delivery!”
The program listed hundreds of sponsors, as well as a large committee that included Phyllis Kraus, Sharon Stein, Lisa Chase, Tom Sliwa, Norene Schiff, Veronica Engel, Merrilyn Arn, Jaunita Rutemiller, Kay Rippee, Merle Lotherington, Eleanor Doban, Margaret Hilbish, Margaret Trower, RoseMary Taylor, Roberta Hill and Patricia Lijewski.
JA JOLLA--Gleaning the meaning of “Crystals on the Green” perhaps required the insight of a Nobel laureate, but few of the 700 guests at the Jan. 20 benefit for the Charter Society of Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation concerned themselves with the fund-raisers’ surpassingly odd title. Most were too busy gaping at the sheer lavishness of the arrangements.
The gala marked the grand opening of the Sheraton Grande Torrey Pines hotel, and was co-sponsored by the Sheraton Corp. and North American Taisei, the Japan-owned investor that is the major partner in the property. Principals of both firms were on hand for the ribbon cutting (presided over by hotel general manager Philip Cutting, and quite a number jetted over from Japan in the entourage of Taisei board chairman Hajime Sako, who through an interpreter told the audience “This hotel is ready for your patronage.”
Charter Society President Nancy Copeland said that the $50,000 her group expected to earn from the gala would further the organization’s community outreach program. A particular beneficiary will be the society’s “Young Scientists Series,” which brings high school students to Sripps Clinic for lectures, behind-the-scenes tours and other activities aimed at piquing youthful interest in scientific careers.
As the evening progressed, the gala progressed through several public rooms, commencing in a ballroom foyer in which a picture-framed stage offered a tableau vivant of a 1930s-style golfing quartet posing in their knickers. They represented the “Green” part of the gala’s title, since the green fairways of Torrey Pines golf course adjoin the hotel.
The “Crystals” in the title, on the other hand, were embodied by the massive ice sculptures that adorned the dozen or so buffets in the main ballroom. Giant urns, eagles, mythical beasts, a golfing quartet and other figures all glistened and quietly dripped as guests went about inspecting the seemingly endless and remarkably extravagant offerings of caviars, shellfish, roast meats, fowls and sushi. The sushi table was in fact the site of a second ceremony at which which a keg of sake was cracked open and served in square wooden boxes; the gesture was described by a hotel spokeswoman as a Japanese tradition at grand openings, and one that invites good luck to descend upon the enterprise.
They could have called the event “Ice Sculptures on the Golf Links” and few would have noticed because the lavishness was nearly overwhelming. Massive arrangements of white blossoms--pristine roses, mostly--decorated nearly every table, and the Ray Anthony Orchestra kept things lively by playing a full Big Band program. Later in the evening, the doors to an adjoining ballroom were thrown open and the guests streamed in to admire and attack buffets laden with more than 30 varieties of pastries and sweets.
Violet Ingrum and Jane Anne Jones co-chaired the benefit and welcomed a guest list that included Scripps Clinic President Dr. Charles Edwards and his wife, Sue; Donald and Lois Roon; Peter and Peggy Preuss; Donald and Darlene Shiley; Anne Evans; Jo Bobbie MacConnell with Guy Showley; George and Kathy Pardee; Dr. Roger Cornell, and DeWitt and Carolyn Shuck.
