It’s All Sweetness and Life at Fund-Raiser

The Southern California sweet life glowed under the stars at South Coast Plaza Village in Santa Ana on Sunday. The occasion? “La Dolce Vita,” an alfresco Italian summer celebration that benefited the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

The fund-raiser wasn’t as wild as its namesake, the Federico Fellini movie in which Anita Ekberg splashes around in a fountain, but 300 guests gamely gave it their all, tossing in their chips at the casino tables, dancing to Euro-Latin music, dining on Antonello’s Northern Italian cuisine and taste-testing imported wines, all under an umbrella of trees dotted with white lights.

Adding to the fantasy of the evening were cobblestone walkways and tiny storefronts that made some guests feel as if they’d been transported across the Atlantic.

What to wear to a festival in the Village square?

Most women went dramatically slinky and sleeveless, and some men coolly wore the color of the snowcapped Alps.

Dolce, indeed.