Philanthropy

Six months before his 1980 assassination, John Lennon took his four-year-old son Sean on vacation to Bermuda while wife Yoko Ono ran the family business back home in New York. For nearly five years, Lennon’s guitar had hung, unstrummed, on a wall above the couple’s bed. He canceled his subscription to Billboard, learned how to bake bread, and became a househusband and stay-at-home dad for Sean.

Stephanie Blank has a secret. No, not that. Even TMZ has reported on the ridiculously civilized parting of the ways between the veteran Atlanta charitable fundraiser and her husband of 16 years, Home Depot co-founder and Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank. We’re talking about a real secret here.

Of his legendary style sense, Rich’s fashion director Sol Kent once wryly observed to Atlanta Constitution columnist Celestine Sibley, “There’s nothing so unchic as a woman who looks too new.” Kent’s genius at merging the new with the traditional and his eye for discovering future classics will be on dazzling display at tonight’s tribute to his career, “Be Divine: A Tribute to Fashionata” at the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Midtown. The evening benefiting the Breman also serves as a social set finale for the museum’s six month-long “Return to Rich’s: The Story Behind the Store” retrospective set to close on May 27.

Like a juicy divorce rumor circulating on Tuxedo Road, Southern Season, the exhibition by Atlanta photographer Harriet Leibowitz opening tonight at the Alan Avery Art Company, is certain to generate gossip and a few tantalizing texts. The thought-provoking, sexy, campy, and slightly scandalous show depicts what might be bubbling beneath the shiny surfaces inside the city’s social set. Essentially, it’s Southern Seasons magazine on a hit of acid.

For decades, as the lights dimmed before every Fashionata runway show, Rich’s fashion director Sol Kent would position himself in the wings backstage and whisper to each of his anxious models, “Be Divine!” Kent’s words ended up inspiring “Be Divine: A Tribute to Fashionata,” Thursday night’s sold-out tribute to the city’s long-running Rich’s-hosted style extravaganza at The William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Midtown. The evening served as a benefit for the Breman.

Well, you can’t really top news about a $1 billion stadium with a fancy roof, but there was another big-money announcement about a Downtown project yesterday. The National Center for Civil and Human Rights got $24 million in funding thanks to a creative deal put together by Invest Atlanta and PNC bank.

The honorees being feted and fed at Monday’s sixth annual Women of Style & Substance luncheon benefit for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at the St. Regis hotel in Buckhead could rightfully be lauded for their philanthropic endeavors. But these same eight women also possess the ability to effortlessly glide down a fashion runway in fabulous frocks (and dangerously high heels) in front of a sold-out crowd consisting of hundreds of the city’s most high profile women. This was, of course, after they braved a hellacious valet line that snaked down West Paces Ferry and threatened to collide with oncoming traffic on Peachtree Road (Note to St. Regis management: When your ballroom guests use “Did you park across the street at Whole Foods and run across West Paces Ferry too?!” as a luncheon conversation ice breaker, it may be time to re-evaluate your current valet parking set up).

About midway through her intimate Broadway in the Garden performance Sunday night at the Atlanta Botanical Garden, Tony and Grammy winner Jennifer Holliday referenced her unique surroundings. “My dressing room is over where some cultures are growing!” the Dreamgirls icon told the capacity crowd gathered in a lavishly decored tent erected on The Great Lawn. “I don’t know what they are. I’m a Broadway girl. I kept thinking about Little Shop of Horrors back there!” The Atlanta resident donated her performance Sunday night as a joint fundraiser for Actor’s Express and the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

Jane Fonda hosted her annual benefit fundraiser for the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Power and Potential at Woodruff Arts Center with a screening of her new movie.

Atlanta’s movers and shakers met at the St. Regis hotel today for an event celebrating Usher’s New Look foundation. Though it was all flashbulbs, rappers, and rock stars on what Usher called “the floral carpet,” the entertainer proved to me he was more than just a pretty face and a slick linen suit.