The invite said “Dress to Impress.” For most of the crowd at UNICEF’s Designs of Hope gala at the InterContinental Hotel, it meant elegant black. Among those who made impressions: headliner India.Arie, in an orange outfit made by her personal designer, Simpson, who also happens to be her mom (India.Arie’s confessed favorite color is “rainbow”); WLS-Ch. 7 anchor Linda Yu in a strappy, shocking-pink confection she called “my shimmy dress”; Sylvia Perez, also of WLS-Ch. 7, in a stunning floor-length sheath of chocolate-brown sequins made by Chicago designer Barbara Bates, who made it especially for a pre-Oscar news segment Perez did a few weeks earlier. Next to Chicago interior designer Cheryl Sheehan, in a brilliantly colored halter dress, was her husband, Mike, a “total Armani man.” Of course, labels mean nothing to India.Arie. A woman-and we assume a man too-“ain’t what she wears but what she knows.” She learned that from her mom. Another impression made that evening: $275,000 was raised.
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