RSVP : Proof That Dreams Do Come True
“This is like realizing your dream,” said Lilly Tartikoff as she surveyed a room filled with celebrities, entertainment industry power brokers and super models.
But it wasn’t just the company she was describing. Tartikoff’s dream has been to fund breast cancer research and increase awareness and education about women’s health issues.
In five years she’s done that, and then some.
Wednesday night marked the fifth annual Fire and Ice Ball, a black-tie gala to raise money for the Revlon/UCLA Women’s Cancer Research Program. The event was held in two 20th Century Fox sound stages to accommodate a half-hour show of Giorgio Armani’s spring and summer men’s and women’s fashions.
The $1,000-per-person ball is expected to raise $1.5 million.
But Revlon Chairman Ronald Perelman, generous guy that he is, kicked in another $7.5 million, which will create the Revlon/UCLA Women’s Health Research Program, as well as continue to support the cancer research.
“Mr. Armani wanted to do something especially for women,” Tartikoff said of the designer’s involvement.
“I was thrilled. He’s such a perfectionist--I keep equating him to George Balanchine (for whom she danced at the New York City Ballet). It’s working with another artistic genius. I keep having deja vu. “
Armani found this “a very big compliment.”
Cold temperatures didn’t deter the 1,200 really beautiful people from showing up.
In the audience (instead of on the runway) were models Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, Veronica Webb and Linda Evangelista, as well as Jim Carrey, Robbie Robertson, Penny Marshall, Herb Ross and Lee Radziwill, Mariel Hemingway, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jay Leno, Ellen DeGeneres, Brendan Fraser, Mickey Rourke and Antonio Banderas.
Said Carrey, “I usually don’t do this kind of thing. I came for the cause and the company.”
Following the show, guests entered another sound stage, this one designed by Armani to look like an Italian garden, complete with hedges, fruit-dripping candelabra and people dressed in 18th-Century period costumes.
During speeches, Tartikoff thanked her co-chairs Rupert Murdoch and Perelman.
Isabella Rossellini told emotional stories of her mother Ingrid Bergman’s struggle with breast cancer.
Dinner was a table-hopping festival although some guests actually stayed put during the four-course meal and just craned their necks to see who was around.
The crowd included Michael Ovitz, Jon Peters, Mark Canton, Rob Reiner, Barbara Davis and daughter Nancy Davis, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, Pia Zadora and, from UCLA, Dr. Dennis Slamon and Dr. Susan Love.
