DELICATE MATTERS
“We’re lucky to spend a day together — any day,” Diane Sawyer said about life with her husband, Mike Nichols. “I’m usually phoning it in from Cambodia.”
But this was Valentine’s Day, and Sawyer was together with Nichols in Beverly Hills at a Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel luncheon, where Nancy Reagan presented them with the Colleagues’ Champion of Children award.
The afternoon — which was sponsored by Saks Fifth Avenue and included an Oscar de la Renta fashion show — gave Nichols an opportunity to poke fun at his own relationship. He told affectionate tales of hotel rendezvous with Sawyer.
“I’m able to take her messages at the hotel and rinse out her delicate underthings,” he said.
“I love what you do with my underthings,” Sawyer replied. “Except for the starch.”
Saks was at it again that evening, sponsoring the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s 21st annual Valentine Ball. Bay area bluebloods such as O.J. Shansby and Charlotte Mailliard Swig, Jim Hormel, Erika and Austin Hills and Dagmar and Ray Dolby turned up.
Meanwhile, John Galliano — who never met a party he didn’t like — couldn’t make it to one in his honor in London, the same night.
He was supposed to act as guest of honor at the opening of the Imperial War Museum’s tribute to Christian Dior, “Forties Fashion and the New Look,” but was tied up in his Paris design studio. So it was up to Pierre Cardin to represent the Dior spirit.
Cardin spent much of the evening reminiscing about the designer and scrutinizing the jackets and skirts he remembered sewing with his own hands as a young member of the Dior atelier, where he worked for three years.
He also studiously refused to comment on Galliano’s new Dior designs.”Mr. Galliano is young and is creating today’s fashion; it’s different,” said Cardin.