You Bette it was fun
Talbots PR kahuna Phil Tracey reports that Bette Midler’s annual “Hulaween” hoedown in the Big Apple the other night was a luau of laughs with a legion of luminaries dressed in grass skirts!
Tracey – who rode the wave with 1,000 others into the Marriott Marquis, including gossip diva Liz Smith, former Texas Gov. Ann Richards and vintage Miss America Phyllis George – said the benefit for Bette’s New York Restoration Project was a regular tsunami of fun!
“All the girls got grass skirts and we all wore leis, but some people really took it to the extreme,” he said.
In other words, there were no Talbots Classics in the crowd!
The Divine Miss M, a native islander, got all decked out and “looked amazing,” said the poi boy. And “Today” show gal Katie Couric, the evening’s celebrity auctioneer, wore a floral dress with her hair up.
Other celebs seen chowing on island eats and dodging the hula dancers on stilts: funnygals Rosie O’Donnell and her talk show successor, Caroline Rhea; tennis titan John McEnroe; and even New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who donated two weeks at his Vail vacation home to the auction.
And speaking of the bidfest, one of the donated items we thought was too, too fabulous: Your own one-of-a-kind Manolo Blahnik-designed shoes. Phil said Katie got the bidding up over $30,000!
Sadly, the buyer wasn’t her boyfriend, Red Sox sultan Tom Werner. . . .
