Casual Theme Fits Party-Goers to a Tee : Move over, designer duds.
Members of the Carousel Chapter Newport Harbor Guild of the Orange County Performing Arts Center proved T-shirts could be classe when they staged a bash at the Balboa Pavilion on Sunday.
OK, these weren’t ordinary T-shirts. They were oversized cotton numbers featuring a stenciled portrait of four ship-going rabble-rousers raising glasses of bubbly and shouting “Lighten up, Orange County!” (Guild members designed them and sent them out to party-goers for decorating in advance.)
You couldn’t help but lighten up in the second floor ballroom--decorated to look like a salon on the QE II--of the Pavilion. On view, besides the dozens of boats gliding upon Newport Bay: Guild member Betty Cord floating across the room in the T-shirt she had turned into a ball gown by using sequin trim and a pouf of white chiffon, and Tina Schafnitz in black hot pants, a rhinestone belt and a T-shirt blinking with multicolored lights. (“They’re deck lights,” she teased. “And I’m not telling where my power pack is.”)
Before guests dug into a buffet that included baron of beef and the Pavilion’s famous blueberry cobbler, they perused items set up on an auction table, tapped their feet to the nostalgic sounds of the Palm Springs Yacht Club band and oohed and aahed over each other’s casual couture.
The hands-down favorites were the T-shirts worn by Gina and Larry Calinda of Laguna Beach. Gina had put her husband and children “on hold,” she said, to spends hours decorating the figures on her shirt with bits of African cloth, colorful stones and inks. Under her shirt she wore a cinnamon-toned bodysuit. (“I look nude underneath, don’t I?” she said, winking.)
“I went for an African theme,” Gina said with a megawatt smile. (On the flip side of her shirt, Gina had countered the “Lighten up, Orange County” mandate with a message of her own: “Tales from the dark side!”)
What was Gina going to do with them after the party? “Send them to the Smithsonian!” she said, laughing.
This crowd has a thing for T-shirts. “Every year we do this,” said Deborah Fabricant, party co-chairwoman with Harriet Lewis and Brett Chebithes. “This is a fun group. We don’t take ourselves too seriously.”
Lighten up, Orange County!