Post-election politics were very much in the air among guests at the Society of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s fall party Wednesday night at The Plaza hotel.
During cocktails, the din was so loud that many of the well-dressed guests huddled up in conversation. The near-summery night temperatures prompted many of the women in the crowd to wear slipdresses and airy eveningwear in colorful hues with strappy sandals. The fashion quota might have been upped by the fact that Prada was back for the second year as the event’s sponsor.
Along with the MSK Society’s president Claudia Overstrom and the chair of the associates committee Austen Cruz, the designer-savvy attendees included Love Shack Fancy’s Rebecca Hessel Cohen and Annie Taube, Vera Wang’s Priya Shukla, J. Crew consultant Heather McAuliffe, Marcella Hymowitz, and Virginia Tomenson. They and a few hundred others turned up at the well-heeled gathering to support the MSK Society’s 2024 pediatric fundraising initiative — the MSK Kids Wellness Initiative. Some of the fresher faced under-30 attendees were junior members of the society, like junior event chairs Bates Crawford and Francesca Walton.
The Society of MSK raised more than $950,000. An interdisciplinary MSK Kids psychosocial support team focuses on individual and family care through programming that deals with emotional distress, resilience, and coping tools. Founded in 1946, the Society of MSK Cancer Center is a volunteer organization that raises funds for patient care. The center itself specializes in 400-plus cancer types and has nearly 2,000 clinical trials underway at any given time.
Before DJ Twilo kicked off the dancing, dinner guests heard from Marie Barnett, an assistant attending psychologist at the MSK Cancer Center, who is a MSK Funding recipient. Earlier in the evening Cruz explained that the most challenging aspect of planning the event had been “figuring out the best way to showcase the MSK Kids Wellness initiative. We really want everyone in the room to understand how important it is and how we can all make a difference. Dr. Barnett has the best perspective of what these kids need.”
Over drinks, many guests chatted about what the country needs post-election including Andrew Yang, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, who attended the party with his wife Evelyn. The registered independent and cofounder of the third political party Forward, told WWD, “It’s a difficult day. It’s very sad. People around New York are still processing. I think folks realize that we need to do things differently and take a new approach, because what has been on offer isn’t working.”
From his viewpoint, “The challenge is to address the four problems that the American people are experiencing in terms of affordability, their lives, their futures and feeling like their children don’t have as bright a time ahead as their parents had.”
As for whether Yang plans to make another run for president he said, “I get asked that every day. You always consider it.”