Toys for Tots Gets a Lucky Roll of the Dice

If you’ve got the dice, might as well let ‘em roll. That was Natalie Tass’ thinking when she hosted a party Saturday at Josh Slocums in Newport Beach to benefit Toys for Tots.

Tass, who owns Front End Vintage Clothing store in Newport Beach, asked each of her 250 guests to bring an unwrapped toy . . . and something else: “I collect vintage dice, so everyone was to bring a pair. The best ones won gift certificates to the store,” she says.

The winners? Handmade cubes of stainless steel and wood, and a set that blinks.

Guests didn’t gamble with what they wore. Taking a cue from the store--which sells clothing from the 1940s and ‘50s--and from the swing music of Big Sandy, most showed up in zoot suits, hot-rod T-shirts, flamed jeans and sterling necklaces.

“A lot of girls wore vintage dresses,” Tass says. “I didn’t need to decorate the restaurant because my clients were the decorations.”

Jeb Hawlish arrived in his coolest accessory: a chopped 1951 Ford.

The party also served as a kickoff for the opening of Front End Fabulous Furniture, upstairs from the boutique. It sells home furnishings, from alcohol shakers and roulette wheels to a vinyl diner set with boomerang fabric.

“And big, huge dice, still in boxes,” Tass says. “It’s a flash from the past.”