Divine Design - A Charity Event for Project Angel Food in Los Angeles

Every year a couple weeks before Christmas time a wonderful shopping event takes place in Los Angeles. It's called "Divine Design." Divine Design is a shopping gala in which numerous designers of clothing, furniture, accessories and other goodies donate their ware to be put on sale to benefit Project Angel Food. In case you don't know, Project Angel Food is a foundation that helps feed and nourish the minds of bodies of men, women and children affected by HIV/AIDS and other serious illnesses.

It is a five day event that kicks off with a star studded premiere like everything in LA. The opening night on November 30, 2006 featured tons of well-known celebrities walking the red carpet into the old Nordstroms building on Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills, a fashion show by Catherine Malandrino, and the annual installation awards for the charity. Oh, and of course there was shopping.

How it works is a person pays an entry fee of twenty-five dollars to get in the door. This is basically just a donation. The entire place is packed with designer furniture, artwork, clothing galore, children's toys and other accessories and all of it is discounted. Now you might be wondering what's so great about a simple little sale? Sure they feed you cookies and hand out Fiji water while you shop, but who cares right? Well, the discounts are good, really good. On the first day the discount is fifty percent. Now that's fifty percent off of everything.

There are no special racks that go on clearance or some are priced this way while others are priced that way. Nope. It's just plain and simple, fifty percent off everything. The second day the discount becomes sixty percent. The third day, seventy percent. I bet you can guess the next one. Yep, day four brings in eighty percent discounts while day five closes with ninety percent off everything that's left.

Now last year it was held in an airplane hanger at Santa Monica Airport. My fiance and I went for the first time and happened to go on the second to last day when everything was eighty percent off. I thought we were going to buy the place out. Our pink tote bags were filled to the max, this year we decided to go again and try to get some more Christmas shopping done as our Vegas shopping spree didn't quite finish the list. We were quite disappointed. It was smaller than last year, the merchandise was almost entirely women's wear and there was just a very different feel to it. While this year it was much more organized, it looked like a department store instead of a factory, it was saddening.

We went hoping to once again fill our pink totes and found not a single thing fall into them. We left within fifteen minutes. Oh well, we said, at least we had a nice lunch earlier and made a donation. This year, if you were looking for women's wear you might have hit the jackpot. If you were looking for men's clothing or furniture you'd be better off going to Target.

But despite our disappointment this year, it is still a good event and worth the time and money to go to if you're near LA and get the chance to next year. Remember, Project Angel Food: Divine Design. And if you forget it will probably be on the news because it always is.