That's What Friends Are For
President Clinton, Diane von Furstenberg Rally the Fashion Set to amfAR's Cause
Security was tighter than usual at amfAR's New York gala this year—it's part of the deal when you've got a former president in the room. Bill Clinton ("still our hottest president," Diane von Furstenberg avowed from the dais) was among the evening's honorees, and proved as good as anyone in the world at getting a high-wattage benefit audience to lend an ear.
With von Furstenberg also being honored, the fashion crowd turned out: Helena Christensen attended as a guest of Olivier Theyskens, whom she'd never met before the car ride over, and Julia Restoin-Roitfeld came en famille; during cocktails, she broke off from her mother, Carine, to greet Stefano Tonchi in a way he might be getting used to: "I loved you on Gossip Girl!"
The program brought some gravitas; Richard Gere, a last-minute sub for Whoopi Goldberg, was one of several speakers to single out the distinguished AIDS activist Dr. Mathilde Krim, who was seated next to the former president and wearing the Medal of Freedom he awarded her in 2000.
There's an element of generational kinship in the AIDS organization's 25-year campaign, as von Furstenberg pointed out: "If you're a baby boomer, it means you were young in the seventies. It was a good time to be young," she said. "We thought we had invented freedom, we thought we had invented so many things—and then came AIDS."
Clinton followed the designer with a hopeful message about health care spending, and as an after-dinner treat, Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, Stevie Wonder, and Elton John got together for the first time in 22 years to perform "That's What Friends Are For." Joked Kenneth Cole, to an audience surely more than willing to believe it: "They have agreed to do it again 25 years from today."
ERROR:
