It was a night of empathy at last Thursday’s Dream Ball.
The first honoree, Gina Boswell, executive vice president and general manager of Unilever in the U.K. and Ireland, loosened up the capacity crowd — 375 people for dinner and another 300 for the after party — at Cipriani 42nd Street with an inevitable joke about the Pope’s visit to the city and the congestion it caused. Boswell described an imaginary conversation with the pontiff after flying back from her new Unilever posting in London.
“In my jet-lagged slumber last night, I actually dreamt the Pope himself sent me a note that went something like this: ‘Cara Gina, I’m sorry you couldn’t get a hotel room big enough for you and your friends to get your hair and makeup done due to the fanfare around my visit. I’d give you my hotel room, but I’m staying with Reverend Bernie on 72nd Street to keep costs down,’ it began.”
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Boswell later shifted gears into the somber business of the night, raising consciousness — and funds — for the Look Good…Feel Better program, which provides emotional support for cancer patients. It is cosponsored by the Personal Care Products Council, the American Cancer Society and the Professional Beauty Association.
The Unilever executive described the emotional impact when she and the evening’s other honoree, Lesley Jane Seymour, editor in chief of More magazine and executive director of Meredith Corp.’s Beauty Center of Excellence, recently visited a clinic and watched beauty professionals teaching patients how to restore their looks and make themselves feel human, despite the ravages of cancer.
Boswell drove this home by putting herself in their shoes. “I might worry that my hair has gotten frizzy as the day goes on, but I won’t have to worry that I’ve bumped into someone and that my wig has moved. Or that when I cook dinner later that wig will be so hot, I’ll sweat off those eyebrows that I applied earlier,” she said, further asserting, “what moved me most wasn’t just the strength and courage I witnessed as the women had their wigs readjusted so that their bangs were no longer in their eyes. It was the support that they all extended to each other as they traded ‘war stories’ and tips about how to navigate their difficult new world. They were able to find the strength in beauty and the beauty in strength.”
Boswell’s award had been presented by Alan Jope, president of Unilever’s personal care business, who stood out in a monotonous sea of tuxedos. True to his Scottish roots, he showed up formally attired in a kilt with regalia, including a dagger tucked inside his boot.
The empathy theme continued when Drew Barrymore took the stage to present Seymour with her award. The Hollywood star turned beauty entrepreneur recalled how the two of them made a trip to Kenya 10 years on a project for Marie Claire magazine to reveal the dire needs of children in the slums of Nairobi. “It was a training ground on opening my heart to these kids I was working with. It was training for motherhood,” Barrymore said.
The star had appeared exuberant offstage before the presentations began, as she told how her new eyeglass line is ranking number one at Wal-Mart. On Oct. 27, her book of autobiographical essays, entitled “Wildflower,” is due out, and Nov. 6 is the scheduled release date of “Miss You Forever,” a movie that Barrymore is starring in that tells the story of two women — one is due to give birth and the other is dying.
When Seymour came to the microphone to accept her award, she noted that Barrymore “took a subway to get here because of the Pope [traffic].”
Seymour added, “she came to the slums of Kenya because girls were hungry and in need of education. These kids didn’t know who she was but they followed her around because of her inner light and her inner spirit.”
Seymour noted how a history of lucky coincidences, or as she said kismet, have had an impact on her life. One of the most remarkable coincidences was when she discovered another Lesley Seymour — this one in Queensland, Australia — who was fighting cancer and finding support in the Look Good…Feel Better program there. Seymour turned the name sharing into a window that allowed her to tell the story of someone who was suffering on the other side of the world. The magazine executive observed, “the coincidence of our identical names just underlines the terrifying randomness of this disease and who it decides to strike — the Lesley Seymour in Australia, and not the Lesley Seymour in the U.S.”
Her remarks were followed by a poignant and heartfelt speech by cancer survivor and 2015 Dreamgirl Mary Shertenlieb. The night was capped by an auction of colored balloons, representing different levels of donation, and driven by a stream of jokes from Ali Wentworth — “Somebody doesn’t need Viagra tonight, he bought a silver balloon,” she cracked.
The auction raised $137,950. The total was $1,504,385, compared to $2,126,558 in 2014, when Look Good…Feel Better notched its 25th anniversary.