William Ivey Long and Mario Buatta |
Jim Watkins,
Joan Jett,
Lauren Thierry Watkins |
Deborah Antar and
Christopher Weldon |
CHILD LEARNING INSTITUTE
Spring Party Helps
Children With Autism
Story by Roger Webster
Photos by
Chance Yeh/Patrick McMullan
 IG HEARTED
guests and generous friends of the New York Child Learning
Institute (NYCLI) filled the
Mount Vernon
Hotel
Museum
for a silent auction and a Champagne Veuve Clicquot-fueled
cocktail party to support education for autistic children.
WB/11 anchor Jim Watkins emceed a
program honoring handsome interior designer Mario Buatta
and NYCLI’s director Sue Vener.
Lauren Watkins, a former CNN anchor
and mother of an autistic son, produced a sensitive video that
illustrated the good work being done and the happy faces of the
children who are helped daily at the school.
Celebrity interior designers including Queer Eye for the
Straight Guy’s Thom Filicia, Alexa Hampton, Jamie
Drake, Mark Epstein, Harry Heissmann for Albert
Hadley, Lisa Jackson and Richard Mishaan joined Richard
Carpenter, Jackie Colliton, Susan Zises Green, Elaine
Griffin, Liz Orenstein, Barbara Ostrom, Scott
Salvator, Roderick Shade, Priscilla Ulmann, and Kelly
Wearstler to transform luxurious fabrics donated by F.
Schumacher & Co. into pillows for the silent auction, dubbed Pillow
Talk.
Event chairs included Deborah Antar, Oren Warshavsky,
Lydia Hearst-Shaw, Gillian Hearst-Shaw, T. Keller
Donovan and Phillip Alden Thomas.
NYCLI executive director Christopher
Weldon was on hand to shake hands with his many supporters.
Among the 400 guests were City Councilwoman Christine Quinn; Tony
Award winning costume designer William Ivey Long; rocker Joan
Jett; Elite Celebrities model Yfke Sturm;
interior design wunderkind Stephen Siegel; the original Bachelor
Alex Michel; CeCe Cord with her dog Tiger; Eva
Dillon, Michèle Gerber Klein, Jill and Bobby
Zarin, Sotheby’s Royce Pinkwater with her son
Jonathan Kohana, Christine Schott, Lehman Brothers’ Fred
Appel, William Goodman, Sarah Horne, Imad
Izemrane, David Cataletto, Eileen Ekstract and
the New York Post’s newest gossip Elisa
Lipsky-Karasz.
Other committee members included Caterina Hausmann, Cornelia
Guest, Alexandra Lind Rose, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Katie
Kinnell, Andrew Black, John Frank and Debbie
Van Cura.
It was the perfect spring event. One hundred percent of the
proceeds went to benefit the autistic children at NYCLI.
|
