In another show of camaraderie with luminaries from the top echelons of entertainment and fashion, President and First Lady Michelle Obama joined Sarah Jessica Parker and her co-host, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, to raise money and morale for Obama's last White House run.
The price for entry to the hot-ticket soirée for 50 guests, held at Parker's Manhattan home Thursday night, was definitely in haute couture territory, ringing in at $40,000 per person.
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Among the first stars to come out for the event, simply named "A New York Night," were soul legend Aretha Franklin, screen icon Meryl Streep and designer (and "Project Runway" fixture) Michael Kors, TMZ reported.
By 6:50 p.m., the event was underway at Parker's townhouse on Charles Street in New York's Greenwich Village. Trombone Shorty, who performed recently at the White House, was scheduled to provide the musical entertainment.
As with the smashingly successful May 10 Obama fund-raiser at George Clooney's L.A.-area home, which raised nearly $15 million, Parker and Wintour made room for a couple lucky civilians to join the party. Thursday's winner -- picked from a pool of contestants who made relatively thrifty donations of $3 or more on Obama's campaign site -- was Robin Hunt, a health care professional from Baltimore who works at Johns Hopkins Hospital and brought her mother, Elvita, as her guest.
The event was on track to raise about $2 million for the Obama Victory Fund from ticket sales, and millions more from the online sweepstakes, according to early estimates.
In anticipation of "A New York Night," Parker made her pitch to the public in a clip released June 3, calling Obama "the guy who ended the war in Iraq, the guy who says you should be able to marry anyone you want, and the guy who created 4 million new jobs," and plainly stating her case for making her plea: "Because we need him and he needs us."
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For her part, Michelle Obama, who graced the cover of Vogue's March 2009 issue, didn't sweat the fashion set, telling "The Insider" on Tuesday that she was planning to dress down for the occasion. "I'm going to wear jeans and some flats," she said.
More to come ...