Discarded to Divine

This is a fabulous event for a great cause, raising money for the care of the poorest of the poor in this city. The photos on the website speak for themselves.
I want to take exception to Holly C’s review, primarily of her experience as a volunteer. I too have volunteered at D2D for the last four years. While I’ve witnessed the inevitable growing pains associated with an event that tripled in size every year for the first three years, I have always been treated kindly, as well as I’ve been treated by the other organizations I volunteer for. There has always been food for volunteers before the event so that they are fed and free to work. The goodie bags are just for the VIPs, those paying twice the regular ticket price.
Volunteers offer their time to help a cause or to share in an experience without having to pay. Anyone who volunteers expecting to be treated as a paying guest should think about buying a ticket instead.

Beautiful clothes, talented student designers, and all for a great cause!
We walked in, got our programs, and were greeted with an array of lovely food and drinks sponsored by Skyy Vodka, Ecco Domani Wines, and tons of great local restaurants and catering companies. For me the standout was the scallop tartare with green apple foam — yum!
We walked around and checked out the silent auction items, which were gorgeous and quite reasonably priced. (All items are created from «unusable» donations to St. Vincent de Paul society.) You could either place bids for these or even «buy it now» a la eBay.
Models walked around previewing the items on the live auction, and then the show started, kicked off by Jennifer Siebel Newsom. As the models walked, the auctioneer, who was great, led the bidding, rallying the crowd when bidding got slow by reminding them of the great cause their donations were going to.
After the show, results of the raffle were announced, including great items like a trip on Virgin Atlantic, a credit at W Hotels, a spa day, a day out at the ballpark, and items from Banana Republic’s new line. Event was extremely well run and the staff and volunteers were all great. I truly hope this event helped St. Vincent de Paul meet their fundraising goals.

The single star above is for the neat clothing and creativity that flowed through this event. The lack of any other stars are solely based on the absolutely atrocious organizational skills of the folks who tried (in vain and not well) to lead the volunteer efforts. The way I saw this go wrong can be summed up below:
Showed up, people didn’t even know where to go to wait for the event. There were about 5 bags of tortilla chips and a couple of bottles of water and soda stacked in the corner of the volunteer «room». The night began with no less than about 60 volunteers all save about 6 who clearly caught on that no one was monitoring them, leaving myself and some friends to man the ENTIRE operation at the end of the night (when the real work began). I came with a group of friends, we were NEVER offered anything more than some weak finger food during the silent auction. That’s supposed to keep us sane for 5 hours? Yup, that’s right. We were there for 5 hours and were never given food and barely water. Someone in my group brought some almonds from home and that kind of held us for the night.
Forget the food for the moment — there just seemed to be absolutely no plan as to how to even manage the event and then the volunteers. You’d expect an event like this that has lots of street cred would be run like a well oiled machine. I think it was just slapped together by a few people who know a few people and have some awesome last name.
I think it is a real shame — this is a great event put on by a seemingly great organization benefitting an awesome cause. And I’m not saying I needed the goodie bag all the other guests got (I get it, volunteers aren’t actually equal), but COME ON! Order some pizza or something! It’s the least you can do.
They just need to get their shit together.
I just got an email about volunteering this year. Unless I get promised at least some astronaut ice cream, my answer is HELL NO.
Maybe this crap review should be for St. Vincent de Paul and not for D to D. Eh, whatever. The highlight of the night was this super cute high schooler who was shopping for a dress for prom. I thought that was neat, and I think she ended up getting something in the silent auction. I guess that shares the star with the clothes.

A kickass event put on for a kickass cause by kickass designers.
Now if only I could afford anything other than the entrance fee.. .
A link to some of the designs:
Based on photos from previous years, this was clearly the first BIG year of the event — with an actual runway and everything. Very nicely done.