This Takes the Cake

Guests left Elizabeth Taylor’s 60th birthday party at Disneyland last week clutching a gift bag filled with three items: a white sweat shirt bearing a copy of the birthday girl’s picture, a bottle of her White Diamonds perfume and a miniature souvenir birthday cake packed in a fast-food-style plastic box.

The sweat shirt and the perfume have a long life span, and with some treatment, so could the cake. Delta Burke joked that she was going to have her two chocolate cakes (one inscribed with a lavender “60,” the other with the initials “E. T.,”) “shellacked or whatever you have to do preserve them.” The actress thought the cakes “looked like hockey pucks” and would make great “memento paperweights.”

Fruit Fight

Buzz likes to recognize creative party-throwers when we find them, like local designer Ken Girouard of Malibu, whose firm Two Left Feet makes “Fruit Flops,” flip-flop sandals adorned with plastic fruit and flowers, and “Fruit Cups,” bustiers decorated with the same.

Girouard was sued for trademark infringement in 1990 by underwear giant Fruit of the Loom for using the word fruit in his product name. He had reason to celebrate last September when a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled in his favor, but Fruit of the Loom is appealing the decision.

The designer wasn’t awarded legal fees, and found himself in need of quick cash to pay for court transcripts to fight the appeal. So last week, 300 of his close, personal friends showed up for a “Beer Bust and Fund Raiser” at the Gold Coast bar in Santa Monica.

Entertainment was provided by Miss Fern, a Long Beach singer who, in Girouard’s opinion, has “a better voice than Patsy Cline.” She sang hits such as “These Fruits Are Made for Walking” as friends sold raffle tickets for prizes, including a champagne cruise, trips to Las Vegas and San Diego, lottery tickets and T-shirts (made by Hanes) that read “No Guts, No Grapes.”

Girouard figures he raised about $850, and has gotten a new law firm to take on his case. “It was so much fun,” he said, “I think I’ll do it again. Maybe I’ll raise money for a stereo. I need one. Just kidding.”