The Great Hat Party & The People Who Made It Possible
DG’s anniversary party was great fun. We will have photos soon, but first I want to thank all the people who made it possible:
Loft Appeal, which lent us the furniture for our big, beautiful, and very empty former bank lobby. Loft Appeal is a furniture store, with two places in downtown L.A. At its Hewitt Street store it sells contemporary furniture (including the world's best sofa bed, from American Leather, which I wrote about here) in the front and has a prop house in the back. On Saturdays and Sundays, the back is open to the public for a big "garage sale," where you can buy everything from a giant globe from Armageddon and a huge ray gun/laser cannon from Sky High ($5,000) to a lovely tabletop mirror from Samantha Who? (which we borrowed for the evening), plus all sorts of normal furnishings at low prices. The entire staff is great.
Spring Center Inc./Spring Arts Tower, which lent us the big, beautiful, and very empty former bank lobby and was extremely helpful in dealing with my newbie party-planning questions and schedule revisions. A wonderful combination of friendly informality and professionalism.
Beauty Collection, which sells all sorts of great beauty products both online and in its three L.A. area stores, which gave us insurance for the evening.
The inimitable Brady Westwater, who put together Fashion Walk in two weeks and put me together with Rich Reams at Loft Appeal and Kevin Taylor at Spring Center Inc. He also made the arrangements with Beauty Collection. Brady fielded a million phone calls and emails and even gave us a hand moving a couple of car loads of party supplies (and a mini fridge) into the building. He also lent us his own mini fridge for the evening.
The Pancho Barnes Trust Estate and Lou D’Elia and Mike Salazar, who not only let us use the beautiful Hurrell photos but also (thanks, Mike!) spent many hours scanning and correcting the images for digital display. At Lou’s suggestion, I’ll be putting the slide show on the site so everyone can enjoy it.
Ejen Chuang, who ran our photo booth and set up a screen for our video, and Karol Franks, who shot party pics and gave me all sorts of help setting up. You’ll see their work soon. Aside from being talented photographers, they're both the kind of calm, practical, smart people you want on your team.
POM Wonderful, which gave us wonderful POM for Kit’s delicious “POM Pillbox” mocktails, and Jennifer Grossman and Dole, which gave us pineapple juice for the "Pineapple Panama." (More on the mocktails later.)Nancy Rommelmann and Ristretto Roasters for giving us yummy coffee for our door-prize bags.
Now You Know How and Jensen Sussman at SweetTalk Publicity for donating How to Blow Dry Your Hair DVDs (stay tuned for a DG contest to win one).
Fabulous DG intern Crystal Hubbard, who demonstrated a remarkable ability to carry hat boxes, arrange cupcakes, and generally make herself extremely useful while wearing a glamorous black dress and very high heels.
Ted Coe, Kate’s fit and easy-going son, who spent several days with us moving furniture from Loft Appeal And Groomzilla’s husband Brian Chase, who provided both furniture-moving services and a pickup truck. Laura Main Collins provided an easel so we could display one of Lou’s limited edition Hurrell prints.
Pam Postrel for designing our beautiful invitations on a moment's notice and revising them equally quickly when the address changed. Mindy Blum for making special devotional candles featuring Hurrell images. (Maybe we should sell these at the next party.) Pam and Mindy also lent us the previously mentioned mini-fridge.
Kate Hahn and Andraé Gonzalo for signing their fun book Forgotten Fashion. If you couldn’t come to the party, you can still get a signed copy of the book for $9.95 plus shipping. Order it here: Of course, the party’s theme would never have worked without our fantastic hat designers--Louise Green, Allison Parson, and Arturo Rios, whose work you'll see more of when we have a photos--and Wendy Ann Rosen’s wonderful hats and hat boxes. Getting to know these interesting, talented people was one of the great pleasures of putting the party together.
Jonathan A. Logan, whose cool leather designs had nothing to do with hats but added to the Fashion Walk atmosphere and helped defray some of the event costs. As someone who owns a large wardrobe of leather jackets (contrary to popular opinion, Nick Gillespie did not invent the Reason-editor-in-leather look) and a couple of pairs of leather pants (one of which I wore for my TED talk on glamour), I loved seeing Jonathan’s work.
Carwash Kim, whose “clothing relocation project” added a vintage touch to the evening’s wares. I met Kim when she was meticulously cleaning up after the event she curated during the previous week’s Art Walk and was delighted she wanted to join our space.