63 Parties and Not a Thing to Wear

It’s high season on the fund-raising party circuit, which means invitations hurtle through our mail slot, imploring us to appear. This would be fine, if the invites didn’t also command us what to appear in.

Sure, we aced the fashion basics years ago, mastering “black tie,” “formal” and “cocktail attire.” But the nuances of correct dress have multiplied this year, depending on which of the 63 simultaneous “Turn of the Century” dinners we attend on Monday to benefit the Los Angeles Public Library.

Each soiree will be held at “one of the city’s most elegant homes,” with each host serving up fine wine, food . . . and an authentic auteur.

The dress codes are dizzying: Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam is the featured guest at a gathering requiring “cocktail attire” at Wallis Annenberg’s Century City villa. “Casual elegance” is requested for an evening with Pulitzer Prize winner A. Scott Berg at the Beverly Hills home of Joyce Rey. For Brenda French’s medieval banquet in Pacific Palisades--featuring “Guenevere” author Rosalind Miles in period costume--we are inexplicably asked to wear “business attire.” These we can handle.

But what if we choose to hobnob with financier Paul Erdman, whose hosts Susan and Michael Niven want us to “wear the color of money”? Or Jackie Collins, whose Brentwood host, Gabrielle Davis, asks for “romantic evening attire”? And what the heck is “California chic,” the dress code for dinner with novelist Bebe Moore Campbell?

We have pondered our options. Much as we like literary events, we like comfort even more. So we may choose party No. 57: an evening with Rafer Johnson in the Studio City digs of Jean and Alex Trebek, who simply ask that guests dress “casual and nice.”

For tickets, $300 each, call (323) 466-8977.