FIG to Honor Fields
It will be one year until Barbara Fields is officially named “Woman of the Year” by the Fashion Industries Guild of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, but she is starting work on the honor now.
“It is like planning a wedding,” said Fields, who will take the honor on Oct. 4, 2008, at the guild’s annual gala.
As “Woman of the Year,” Fields, who has owned and managed trend forecaster Barbara Fields Buying Office since 1984, will take the reins of fund-raising for the 51-year-old guild. Fields hopes to raise more than $1 million for the West Los Angeles hospital’s Pediatric Acute Care Unit.
The record amount raised by an FIG dinner was the $1.6 million brought in when Maurice Marciano of Guess? Inc. was honored. FIG has raised more than $20 million for the hospital in the past.
The fund-raising will be a time-consuming affair, said Fields, who hired a full-time assistant to handle some of the work that will go into the fund-raising. She also will have some powerful people at her side. FIG’s dinner committee will help with fund-raising, and it is staffed with fashion-industry people such as Kenneth Weinbaum, the FIG president and the 2006 “Man of the Year”; Ilse Metchek of the California Fashion Association and Richard Clareman of Self Esteem Clothing, both previous honorees; and Hal Kaltman, owner of Hal Kaltman Textiles, a past president of the Textile Association of Los Angeles and a longtime supporter of the guild.
For more information, contact Jean Thorsen at (213) 627-6474 or jeannyla@gmail.com. —Andrew Asch
