Belle of the bash

Mitie TUCKER gracefully threads her way through a stylish crowd in the courtyard of the Hammer Museum. Dressed in a striking, white Gucci shift and Sergio Rossi 3-inch heels, she looks like a guest at the museum’s annual Gala in the Garden, honoring Miuccia Prada and Mike Kelley.

“I have the right temperament for this job,” says Tucker, whose long honey-blond locks hide the telltale headset of an event producer. “The more chaotic it gets, the more calm I become.”

Her poise is just part of it. If you’re plugged into the fashion party circuit in Los Angeles, you’ve experienced Tucker’s handiwork. Her parties -- whether it be a sit-down charity luncheon for 150 or dinner and cocktails for 600 at the Hammer’s Gala in the Garden last Sunday -- always feel intimate. Little touches such as handing out shawls to guests on a breezy rooftop, as she did at a Gucci charity benefit held at Michael and Eva Chow’s home, create a relaxed vibe. The fashion industry can be notoriously exclusive, and the players often regress to high school antics. Tucker manages to diffuse that cooler-than-thou climate, which is no small feat when the host happens to be Mr. Armani and half of the guests boast A-list creds and the couture clothes to prove it.

“I have to translate a designer’s aesthetic vision into something tangible,” she says. “And, thankfully, the designers I work with are always inspired and have amazing ideas.”

Sometimes, those cues can be creative but cryptic. Take Miuccia Prada’s vision for her Beverly Hills store opening party in 2004. The fashion designer had a concept: a Surrealist, modern Mexican desert.

“My first thought was, ‘OK, this should be interesting,’ ” says Tucker, 40, whose mantra is simply “anything is possible.” With the help of a swath of landscape wallpaper designed by architect Rem Koolhaas, Tucker transformed the drab Beverly Hills post office -- where the party was held -- into an ethereal oasis of sleek midcentury modern chaises, towering cacti and scattered animal skulls. Imagine a social playground co-designed by Diego Rivera and Georgia O’Keeffe. Guests took a cue from the psychedelic setting, and the party felt like a bohemian colony.

Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana had an even more outrageous order for Tucker when she produced a Beverly Hills charity luncheon for the duo. “They wanted a lavish Sicilian living room, but outside . . . on a tennis court,” she recalls, with a laugh. Tucker tented the area (in Steven Spielberg’s backyard), erected palazzo-like stage walls and then brought in Oriental carpets, crystal chandeliers, baroque velvet furniture and thousands of red roses imported from Sicily.

More recently, she built a temporary al fresco garden for the September opening party for James Perse’s new Beverly Hills store and oversaw the elaborate opening of Prada’s “Waist Down” exhibit in July. Who can forget those suspended pirouetting Prada skirts that outshone the cavalcade of famous guests?

Tucker got her start working with the New York fashion production company KCD in 1990, and she still works with it as West Coast affiliate on events such as Chanel’s recent Cruise collection gala at the Santa Monica airport. Yes, that would be the fashion show at which Karl Lagerfeld and his fleet of models arrived in private jets emblazoned with the interlocking Cs logo.

“I learned right away that you can never be too meticulous or detail oriented with a production,” she says. The budget for those productions can run anywhere from $100,000 to a whopping $1.5 million, and Tucker has binders for every event. “When a designer says that he wants a certain vase, you can’t just fudge it,” she says. “I have to find that precise item, no matter what.”

But it was her seven-year tenure as event planner for Giorgio Armani that taught her how to make an extravaganza feel intimate. “Mr. Armani was the first one to do dinner parties on couches or with banquettes and pillows on the floor,” says Tucker, who also worked on the men’s and women’s runway shows in Milan. “He just knew how to make any environment feel warm and elegant.”

Tucker’s own instincts stem from her formative years. The New York native caught her first runway show before she could crawl.

“My mother was a fashion editor in the ‘70s and brought me to shows in a knapsack,” she recalls. Mom worked for Women’s Wear Daily and New York magazine. Tucker also found her way to fashion shoots. “I remember being in the hair and makeup room with Jerry Hall at Francesco Scavullo’s studio when I was a kid.”

“I have never seen Mitie freak out,” says Dawn Brown, vice president of publicity at Barneys New York. Last month, Tucker tented Union Square for the opening party for the retailer’s San Francisco store. “You have to be calm because people can change their minds and want to reconfigure an event with two hours’ notice.”

Even an unexpected visit from the fire marshal doesn’t faze Tucker. Case in point: When the Marc Jacobs store opening party in 2005 attracted enough revelers to clog Melrose Boulevard and reached capacity early in the night, she didn’t panic or try to cajole L.A.’s bravest.

“I said, ‘For every one of those round ottomans that I get out of here, how many people can I get in?’ ” says Tucker, who worked with KCD on the party that featured topless female dancers painted as wood nymphs and a gigantic wall of roses. The answer was 10 guests. “I got five guys, and we started rolling ottomans out.”

In a town known for no-shows, Tucker’s parties always fill up too fast.

monica.corcoran@latimes.com