Share this on

Housing Works Hosts the Fifth Annual Design on a Dime

Ticket and furniture sales from 46 designer vignettes raised big money at the benefit's opening night at New York's Metropolitan Pavilion.

Annie Block -- Interior Design, 5/11/2009 12:00:00 AM

Mark Stephan Design

Housing Works knows how to throw a party. A DJ spinning disco? Check. Popcorn machine? Check. A well heeled crowd including Parker Posey, James Huniford, and Jaclyn Smith? Check!

Posey and Huniford are actually the Design on a Dime cochairs, and former Charlie’s Angel Smith, designed a booth for Kmart, the event sponsor along with Sears. In five years, Design on a Dime has raised more than $2 million for Housing Works, the nation’s largest AIDS service organization, founded in 1990 by Keith Cylar, Charles King, Eric Sawyer, and Virginia Shubert, its Thrift Shops throughout the city’s five boroughs totaling nine.

TW Black & Thu Do Design

At this year’s Design on a Dime, there were 46 booths in all, each 10-by-12-foot space outfitted by a different design team with donated and repurposed furnishings, all of which were for sale. There were also 40 artworks by such fashion and fine art photographers as Cig Harvey, Neal Slavin, and Andrew Hetherington up for bid in a silent auction.

Laura Bohn Design Associates

Weaving through the throngs of partygoers, Raul Barraneche, Dominic Lepere, Rima Suqi, and Hall of Famer Paul Siskin among them, a number of vignettes stood out for their aesthetic appeal. Hall of Famer Laura Bohn’s room was particularly chic; Steven Sclaroff’s was characteristically quirky and fabulous; and Hable Construction’s reminded patrons to “reuse, recycle, redecorate.” The Housing Works visuals team, responsible for the shops’ window displays, had funky international flair, while booths by Eldon Wong, Elizabeth Bauer, Jack Levy, Juniper Tedhams, Luis Caicedo, Nathan Egan, and T W Black & Thu Do Design were additional standouts.

Design by Joshua

The event, which ran May 7-9, brought in an impressive $600,000. The funds, along with money raised at the Thrift Shops, shophousingworks.com, The Works Catering, and SoHo’s Bookstore Café, provide financial backing for Housing Works projects like Stand Up Harlem House, a congregate living facility, as well as medical care and job training for homeless and low-income men and women with HIV and AIDS.

Nest

The Thrift Shops are always in need of quality clothing and furniture donations. Please visit housingworks.org for more information. For a slideshow of more vignettes and scenes from the event, click the slideshow below.