THE NATURE CONSERVANCY NEW YORK GALA

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The Nature Conservancy
Premiere of
“Design for a Living World”
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Isaac Mizrahi

Some 500 guests swarmed the elegant galleries of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum for a special preview of The Nature Conservancy’s ground breaking exhibition, Design for a Living World this week. A traveling exhibition, Design for a Living World features objects created by ten visionary designers and made from sustainable, natural materials. The Nature Conservancy collaborated with prominent designers from the worlds of fashion, industrial and furniture design. Each designer focused on a natural material from a specific place where the Conservancy works to create beautiful, sustainable objects of art and design. The exhibition features designs by Yves Béhar, Stephen Burks, Hella Jongerius, Maya Lin, Christien Meindertsma, Abbott Miller, Isaac Mizrahi, Ted Muehling, Paulina Reyes for Kate Spade and Ezri Tarazi. Among the creations featured in the exhibition are fashions by Mizrahi – a cocktail dress with matching floor length coat and a vampy pair of high heels made of Alaskan Salmon skin; precious jewels by Ted Muehling made with farmed black pearls and vegetable “ivory” and Paulina Reyes for Kate Spade’s innovative handbags made with sustainable woods, cotton and jipijapa, a fiber made of palm leaves.Mizrahi sporting his usual head-covering bandana was busy accepting congratulations on the critic’s reception of his new reality series The Fashion Show and signing copies of the gorgeous Design for a Living World coffee table book by award winning photojournalist Ami Vitale which featured all the designers’ creations.Among the chic crowd of conservationists and design fans were Bravo TV Real Housewives’ Maximiliano Palacio a former polo player and now actor/model ; socialite Sara Herbert-Galloway, real estate magnate and art collector Lawrence Benenson, Errol Rappaport with Cindy Marinangel, David Noh and designer Michael Love.The exhibition is now open to the public at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum and will continue through Jan. 4, 2010.
Photo By: Ann Watt