AP + Vienna + LIFEBALL

May 21, 2008 on 10:26 am | In SW-PR, SW-Events, - Cheng |

I don’t even know where to begin…LIFE BALL 2008…what a ride…

Tara at check-in at the Double Tree Hotel where we received our boarding passes. Our wild trip started Thursday, May 15th at the Double Tree Hotel before we boarded the Austrian Airlines private plane to Vienna for the 16th Annual LIFE BALL 2008.

This year’s theme: Landing on Planet Life Ball. Gery Kreszler, organizer of LIFE BALL, chose the theme to represent outsiders and aliens in society and of course, the guests dressed accordingly as extraterrestrials and some form of alien or robot. Two things I saw a lot of this weekend:

Make-up and actually, not “no smoking” but smoking. In my mind, I thought, please, no smoking but even though the signs may say it, it surely wasn’t followed.Tara and I met the ever so talented Aubrey Chung, make-up stylist and fellow New Yorker. A frequent attendee of Life Ball, Aubrey guided us throughout the event and was always looking after us. We HEART Aubrey!

Aubrey in the middle

And ironically, we found out Aubrey did Costello Tagliapietra’s make-up during their last two fashion shows - small world…Aubrey performed his magic on our Agent Provocateur Testimonial for LIFE BALL, EVE and she looked gorgeous. An Austrian reporter asked EVE what she thought of LIFE BALL and she responded saying how much she supported the cause and that in her “past life, I was a hippy so I am all about love.”

But I’m completely jumping ahead of myself. The day we landed, Friday, Tara and I were greeted off of the plane by a long red carpet and the paparazzi.

Of course, it wasn’t for us so sweeping by wasn’t all that difficult! We were quickly shuttled off to the hotel where we got ready to head over to the MINI COOPER photo shoot with Joe Corre.Some place on the top floor of a warehouse and parking facility, we found them…them meaning, the biker models, cuffed inside the MINI COOPER …and Joe happily being cuffed next to them!

After the photoshoot, Tara and I headed to City Hall where the big extravaganza was taking place. The preparation for such a huge production was insane. I’ve never seen anything like it - imagine 40,000 people coming to City Hall to watch this performance and the make-up artists told me that they were doing over 200 models for the entire performance. The infamous celebrity stylist Danilo, was in charge of all hair for the show and Bobby B oversaw all make-up. It was truly wondrous to watch them all in action…

A glimpse of the theme for the Agent Provocateur show on Saturday…

Friday night was the welcoming cocktail party where I had the honor of meeting Mick Jones from the Clash and Big Audio Dynamite. He was excited to be performing on stage with Joe Corre on Saturday. Also, attending was Debbie Harry sitting in a corner with Jody Watley. Both Debbie Harry and Jody Watley performed on Saturday and were powerhouses on stage.

On Saturday, it was preparation. We had the press conference where Linda Evangelista and Kim Catrall spoke with Joe Corre and Gery Krezsler and Kevin Frost of amfAR. Linda will always look like the supermodel she is and Kim shocked us all when she broke out in German causing applause and admiration with her grace and kind words. Kevin Frost, President of Global Initiative for amfAR commented that when they asked Kim Catrall to attend they almost didn’t expect she would be able to attend since she was touring with her new movie Sex and the City however, she only asked one question about attending, “What time should I be there?”Saturday night was intense…to give you an idea of the size of this event, here is an image of the red carpet leading to the stage. With about 40 thousand people watching outside and television crews airing this internationally.

One of my favorite parts of the show was watching Chicks on Speed, I saw them last at the MOMA in New York City during a POP RALLY event and saddened to see only two of them perform their energy with Amanda Lepore was phenomenal.

Here are more images from the night…

Signing off…from Planet Life Ball…