Blue Ribbon--Past to Present

Coco Chanel and Gloria Swanson, in a drawing by Chanel couturier Karl Lagerfeld, will be on the cover of invitations arriving soon for the “past to present” gala the Blue Ribbon of the Music Center hosts Sept. 16 on the lot of 20th Century Fox.

Before she left for her house in the North Woods of Wisconsin, Blue Ribbon president Sandy Ausman waxed ecstatic that most of the past presidents of the Blue Ribbon, founded in the late ‘60s by Mrs. Norman Chandler, will attend.

The co-chair trio--Anne Johnson, Joan Hotchkis and Annette O’Malley--are staging the evening to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Chanel’s first visit to Hollywood, when she came at the invitation of the late Samuel Goldwyn to design Swanson’s wardrobe for the film, “Tonight or Never.”

The party will introduce the new Chanel male fragrance “Egoiste.” And the gala will play against a backdrop of film clips from the glamorous 1930s in a nightclub setting designed by Lagerfeld.

Past Blue Ribbon presidents planning to attend: Helen Wolford from Maui; Maggie Wetzel from San Francisco; Keith Kieschnick from her holiday home in the Napa Valley; Anne Douglas, Nancy Livingston and Joanne Kozberg, all of Beverly Hills.

And the committee is hoping Lagerfeld comes from Paris. He’s sending about two dozen European models.

GALA OPENING: Said dynamo Barbara Davis, the wind frisking her blond hair poolside at the Regent Beverly Wilshire: “It’s going to be as if it were our private Christmas party in our home. . . . You’re going to die to come. It’s by invitation only--you can’t pay to come. It will be for people who have been generous to diabetes, and I know they will be generous to the Escada shop.”

She was describing her coup --buttoning down the black-tie fashion/dinner gala Oct. 23 at the hotel to launch the opening of the Escada West Coast flagship store in Beverly Hills at the hotel’s prize corner on Wilshire Boulevard and El Camino Drive, the former Tiffany site and before that a Western Federal Savings and Loan branch.

Escada chairman and CEO Wolfgang Ley beamed at her enthusiasm: “As a European, I feel guilty because we do not do enough to help people with disease; we in Germany are great admirers of Americans.”

Neither will give an exact figure, but Ley said Escada, a world leader in international fashion with projected 1991 volume of $850 million, will underwrite the night, plus contribute generously to the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes in Denver.

Said Davis, “It’s a night to fight a disease.” Ley said both he and his couturiere wife Margaretha (a former model for Jacques Fath) will attend. Princess Diana wears Escada. Don’t be surprised if Barbara Davis persuades her to come. She already has yeses from Betsy Bloomingdale, Shakira and Michael Caine, Susie and Ted Field, former Presidents Ford and Reagan, Joanna and Sidney Poitier, and Elizabeth Taylor.

Co-chairing will be husband Marvin Davis and the Davises’ daughter Nancy Zarif and her husband Nebil. Nancy missed the announcement luncheon because she was in Aspen recovering from ski surgery.

FIRST: The Presidents, an auxiliary of Children’s Bureau of Los Angeles, hosts a benefit just once every four or five years. When it does, the party’s a smash. The Presidents president Mary Jones Marshall is intent on an unique soiree Sept. 11.

The Presidents and friends will be the first to be dazzled by the 360-degree view from the penthouses of La Tour Wilshire at 10280 Wilshire Blvd. “It’s going to be wonderful,” said Mary.

The event is almost sold out. Taking tables are Walter and Pat Mirisch, Robin and Gerry Parsky, Arletta and Donald Tronstein, Virginia and Simon Ramo, Richard and Eileen Eamer, Gerald and Virginia Oppenheimer, Peter and Kacey McCoy, Robert and Justine Bloomingdale.

ON THE ROAD: Clever Metropolitan Associates have covered the film themes of “railroads” and “affairs” as they’ve gathered past years for wine, picnics and film-watching. This summer they chose “streets.” Last weekend they sat on the lawn of Barbara and Bill Steinwedell’s home watching “Sunset Boulevard,” starring Gloria Swanson.

On Aug. 24, they’ll be at Sandy and Maria Mallace’s home for “Road to Singapore.” Earlier this summer Robert and Nadine Skotheim were hosts for “42nd Street,” and Kittie and Bill Ballard were hosts for “High Road to China.”

Chairman Sandy Huntley and wife Roberta were prominent in the crowd of 80.

PAST PERFECT: Louise Dougherty’s party for Macdonald Carey in celebration of his book, “The Days of My Life.”

KUDOS: To shopping center developer Robert S. Wilson, new president of the UCLA Foundation, succeeding John E. Anderson . . . To William H. L. Burnside, new president of the French Foundation for Alzheimer Research, and to Elaine Smoots, re-elected president of the foundation’s Founding Associates . . . To Suzanne de Passe and Marjorie Lord Volk, new directors of the Hollywood Entertainment Museum board . . . To Donna and John Crean, named philanthropists of the Year by the American Cancer Society for their contributions to the Ruth Berle Celebrity Gold Classic fund-raiser to be held at La Costa Hotel and Resort Aug. 23-25 . . . To new secretary to the Los Angeles Consular Corps Andrew V. Ippolito, honorary consul general for the Republic of Liberia and CEO of Discovery Oil, Ltd. He succeeds Walter Danielson, secretary for 15 years and retiring after 50 years with the Swedish corps . . . To new directors of the English-Speaking Union: Nadine Carson, Agnes Anderson, Nancy Elliot, Nancy Adams Holliday, Alden Pearce and James Simpson.