Charity auction nets $1.1 million for AIDS

MILAN — Crystal-studded boots that Michael Jackson intended to wear on his planned comeback tour fetched euro10,000 ($14,650) at a celebrity fundraiser chaired by his sister, Janet.

The charity event, held on the sidelines of Milan Fashion Week, attracted such fashion luminaries as Donatella Versace and model Linda Evangelista, as well as rapper and producer Kanye West.

Organizers say the event late Monday netted a total of $1.1 million (euro750,000) for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR), a nonprofit organization that supports HIV/AIDS research.

The event included a charity dinner in a central Milan palace and continued into the early hours of Tuesday with French DJ Bob Sinclar serving his famous mixes on an upstairs dance floor.

“I’d just like to thank everyone here in the global fashion community who’ve done so much to help amfAR and to support HIV/AIDS research,” Ms. Jackson told celebrity diners, who paid anywhere from euro1,500 to euro8,000 ($2,200 to $11,500) apiece to attend the dinner. “When this terrible pandemic began everyone … who was infected died of AIDS. Today with your help millions of people are living with HIV.”

She remembered the 5,000 who die of the disease every day.

Evangelista recalled the death of her first booking agent due to AIDS in the early days of the epidemic. “Those were desperate times for so many of us. I watched him die and helped bury him, not understanding any of it,” Evangelista said. “The fashion industry was especially hard hit by AIDS.”

But amfAR CEO Kevin Robert Frost celebrated the first “flicker of hope” that the AIDS epidemic may one day be contained, the news last week that a two-vaccine combination tested in Thailand had cut the risk of being infected with HIV by one-third. Researchers say the results are not good enough for immediate use, but the results were widely viewed in the AIDS prevention and research camps as a hopeful sign.

“That, my friends, is the power of research,” Frost said. “So believe me when I tell you, there is a way out. We believe with the right investment, we can bring this epidemic to an end in our lifetime.”

During the auction, Sudanese model Alex Wek helped stir interest in the Giuseppe Zanotti-designed boots that featured 3,000 multicolored Swarovski beads, which Jackson planned to wear on the opening night of his comeback.

“Growing up in southern Sudan, I did not know a lot of pop stars. But Michael did touch a lot of people,” she said in tribute to the singer, who died in June before his much-anticipated comeback could begin.

A custom black leather jacket designed by the Canadian twin designers Dean and Dan Caten of the DSquared2 label set off a bidding war between rapper West and Diesel designer Renzo Rosso. Rosso prevailed with a bid of euro36,000 ($52,740), the highest price paid for any of the auctioned items.

Model Noemie Lenoir, who flew in from New York for the event, was supposed to auction off a chance to sail aboard the yacht “Born for Sports” as it attempts to break the trans-Mediterranean record from Marseilles to Carthage in Tunisia. Instead, she improvised an auction of an evening out in her company.

“Come on, cheap people, more money,” she urged, as the bidding reached the winning level of euro11,000 ($16,115).

The yacht-racing experience later went for euro18,000 ($26,370). The auction — which among the other items included a Fendi bicycle with GPS and a leather-encased bike chain that earned euro16,000 ($23,440) and a private DJ lesson with Bob Sinclar that brought in euro28,000 ($41,000) — netted a total of euro155,000, or $228,000.