Tory Burch, Lisa Perry, Vera Wang and Jamie Tisch at The Breast Cancer Research Foundation's 2013 Hot Pink Party. ©Patrick McMullan

Last night, Elton John, Liz Hurley and Kate Hudson headed up a star-studded evening of philanthropy at the Waldorf Astoria in honor of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation’s annual Hot Pink Party.

The theme was “¡Viva Fiesta!” and the notoriously over-the-top event pulled no punches when it came to décor. The venue overflowed with kitschy Mexicana: miniature donkey piñatas hung from balloons in the hallway, while in the Grand Ballroom, brightly colored tablecloths festooned with paper flowers and flashing party favors sparkled like a swagged-out Quinceañera.

The evening’s festivities were MC’d by Liz Hurley, dressed in a cleavage-baring ballgown covered in pink sequins (and whose outfit rivaled the Grand Ballroom itself for its sheer blindingness).

Sequin overload aside, the evening was held in support of a noble cause, celebrating the achievements of individuals who have supported the hunt for the cure and raising over $5 million dollars for breast cancer research.

Long-time BCRF supporter Judith Schlager received the Roz and Les Goldstein Unsung Hero Award, in recognition of her work helping others cope with their breast cancer diagnoses. The 3-time breast cancer survivor spoke eloquently of her struggle and her advocacy for breast cancer research—and of the importance of giving back.

“There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women,” Ms. Schlager said, invoking Barbara Walters (and calling to mind Taylor Swift’s less than charitable jab at Tina Fey and Amy Poehler).

Sir Elton John. ©Patrick McMullan

Next came Kate Hudson, whose sleek black gown provided a nice rest for our eyes. Ms. Hudson was tasked with presenting the evening’s main honor, the Sandra Taub Humanitarian Award, to ANN INC. CEO Kay Krill. Since 2005, ANN INC, helmed by Ms. Krill, has been one of the most committed and vocal supporters of BCRF, raising money through their Ann Taylor Cares and LOFT Cares card programs and donating over 13.4 million dollars to the cause.

“It’s so touching and meaningful, I can’t tell you, because it affects me personally as well as the company,” Ms. Krill told us after receiving the award. “This is the most meaningful thing I think I’ve ever gotten.”

Fabrizio Freda and Elizabeth Hurley. ©Patrick McMullan

The main event was, of course, Sir Elton John. On a stage decked out with fake palm-trees and a fake moon, Sir Elton–looking fabulous in black sequins and a pink blouse–gave the 1,500 seater room a performance worthy of Madison Square Garden, cycling through favorites like Tiny Dancer, Rocket Man, Crocodile Rock and Your Song (the only notable emission was Candle in the Wind, but that might have been too much melodrama to handle at a cancer event).

“It’s amazing the way he’s able to transport people,” said architect Ate Atema. “Normally at an event like this people are schmoozing. But people were lost, they were just all in the moment.”

As the concert winded down, we slunk over to the VIP table to do some schmoozing of our own. There we observed Michael Kors and Donna Karan bustin’ a move to Crocodile Rock, while Kate Hudson canoodled with hubbie and Muse front-man Matthew Bellamy. While a gigantic bodyguard stopped us before we could ask Ms. Hudson if Tiny Dancer had given her Almost Famous flashbacks, we did manage to snag a word with Donna Karan, who told us about her struggles with breast cancer.

“Sloan-Kettering and breast cancer, it’s been my whole life,” said the visibly emotional designer. “I wouldn’t be who I was if it was for breast cancer unfortunately. My boss died of breast cancer and my husband died of cancer. Cancer’s been all around me my whole life. And Sloan-Kettering’s been sort of my second home.”

On our way out, we spoke with Leonard Lauder, husband of the late Evelyn and Acting Chairman of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

“Tonight was a great triumph. It was a triumph for the women of the world," Mr. Lauder told The Observer. "And they’re going to be healthier and happier for this evening tonight.”

And as for Sir. Elton?

“He was magical. And all of his friends who know him really well said: he’s really on tonight.”

Michael Kors and Kate Hudson. ©Patrick McMullan

Mr. John recently referred to Madonna as "a fairground stripper," the latest salvo in a feud reignited when Madonna's song from W.E. beat Elton John's song from Gnomeo and Juliet at the Golden Globes (fun fact: those italicized things were the titles of movies!). Lady Gaga, meanwhile, alluded to Madonna's mockery of "Born This Way" in a letter of truth to her fans. Both of these criticisms seem to stick to Madonna more than they might have in past: criticism from the moral majority or from critics is nothing new for Madonna, but getting lambasted by your fellow pop stars? That's tough.

Ah, Madonna, the year began so well! But the slight misstep you took during your  Super Bowl performance--nearly falling off the bleachers on which you danced to a series of old hits as well as one new dud--seems more indicative of the state of things than your triumphant reprisal of "Like a Prayer." Here's to the right kind of provocation, and a better set of pop tunes, in your new year.

All that gym time finally pay off for Madonna (Getty Images)

After a spectacular performance that had Fergie crying into her pillow and Lady Gaga slapped firmly back in her place, Madonna's Super Bowl halftime show ended with Madge disappearing in a puff of smoke like someone dropped a house on her sister. As backup singers Cee Lo, M.I.A., Nicki Minaj, and LMFAO, dispersed, the phrase "World Peace" appeared  in gold pompoms. We were surprised they didn't read "Fuck you, Elton John."

The feud between the two queens has a history longer than the Capulets and the Montagues, but was recently stirred back up again after the Golden Globes, where Madonna won for Best Original Song. During her acceptance speech, the cameras panned to a stony-faced Sir John (who was also up for the award), who had just finished telling Carson Daly on the red carpet that Madonna "hasn't got a fucking chance" at winning.

Then Elton John's partner David Furnish took to calling out Madge on Twitter and Facebook, and the whole debacle turned vicious.

Though the three reportedly made up, when asked recently if he had any advice for his adversary's Super Bowl performance, Sir John didn't take the high road. "Make sure you lip-sync good.," the singer relayed in an interview with Good Morning America. Then he conceded:

Of course you have to play live, but I don't think you can. In all fairness to everyone who's done it before, I think you may be able to sing live, but it's really hard to play live.

(By the way, this wasn't the first time Elton John has accused Madonna of not singing during her performances.)

Yes, Madonna was mostly lip-syncing through the majority of the performance: throughout the fifteen minutes of strenuous calisthenics and acrobatic maneuvers, she never sounded less than radio-perfect. (The jury is still out on her "Like a Prayer" duet with Cee Lo, which sounded live despite the fact that the 53-year-old never missed a note.)
Watch the whole thing here:

It's good to be queen (Getty Images)

Even if she wasn't singing live, Madonna took her frenemy's words to heart. Not content to stop at "good," Madonna's performance was great; earning her resounding applause from everyone from Fred Durst to Alec Baldwin and The New Yorker's music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, who was liveblogging the event:

I no longer believe that this performance contains any live singing, nor do I care. The song is better than I thought, now it seems as happy as it should have, maybe because of the positive pressure of live performance...

And now it’s “Like a Prayer,” my fifth favorite Madonna song. This crazy-ass video screen field is genuinely wicked. Is this maybe live singing now? Cee-Lo has been brought in to do black lame (I think) gospel robes. This sounds live, and I assume Cee-Lo is here to kill the hook. Madge knows the crowd—choose the song Americans know, and hey, election year, let’s go with prayer.

In conclusion: Did Madonna lip-sync? Probably. (Though we won't say yes for sure, because we don't want to get an angry call from Liz Rosenberg tomorrow.)

Did it matter? Not at all. Despite a few detractors, not even Sir Elton John nor Mr. Furnish could muster any public Haterade for a dazzling performance whose only "Fuck You" moment came not from a Cee Lo reference nor a pissed off Madonna, but from M.I.A. trying to make a statement about...lord knows what.

Maybe we need more lip-syncing during these live shows: it certainly couldn't have hurt last year's Black Eyed Peas debacle. And the perfect vocals allowed us to pay attention to what really mattered: Madonna's bizarrely fantastic costume changes. As comedian Julie Klausner tweeted during the show, "Every man's fantasy of an ancient gay icon cheerleader in front of a marching band just came true."

What could be more apropos during a football game than that?

The induction ceremony for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was set to begin, and the honorees were taking turns in the press room. Nobody seemed to be enjoying themselves very much.
Leon Russell stood on a platform with collaborator Elton John. “Tonight is the culmination of an effort on my behalf to get this man recognized for his achievements,” Mr. John said, unsmiling. He lay a hand on Mr. Russell’s knee as the bearded pianist sat gnomic and unfazed behind black sunglasses.

“Why do you feel he’s been forgotten?” a journalist asked.

“I was afraid of the press,” Mr. Russell said.  “I was never as good at publicity as Elton. He’s the master of publicity.”

Not on this occasion. As the pair left the stage, the mood in the room was glum. “That looked like the American Gothic painting,” said one photographer.

Doors drummer John Densmore, a presenter, hit the stage holding a bottle of water. But upon realizing it wasn’t suitable to include in photos, he threw it at a publicist, who let it wing by her. He wasn’t much friendlier to the photographers. He pantomimed snapping off a few shots, then made a cross with his fingers. “What does that mean?” he asked, rhetorically. “It means stop.”

After letting slip that he was working on “one of those self-centered rock memoirs,” which would “put the rock scene on trial,” Mr. Densmore turned around, showing off the angel wings bedazzled on the back of his jacket.

“It is a cool jacket,” the beleaguered publicist muttered. ”I will give you that.”

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

"President Clinton," Diane von Furstenberg said as she accepted her award. "Still our hottest president." It was the most applauded line of her speech.

The Observer caught President Clinton as he made his way back to his table, where he sat next to Chelsea and her husband Marc Mezvinsky (who, despite the clamoring tabloids, looked very much together). His figure is such that the nickname "Bubba" seems inappropriate at this point, but apart from that his gait and composure were as vigorous as ever.

"I like amfAr -- a lot," the president told The Observer, his iconic Arkansas accent holding true. "It's a very good operation, and they've raised more than $300 million, and they've made real advances in research and prevention and diagnostics. And to me it's something that's really important because of what I do: spreading things that work around the world. It's a very serious operation. Over the years my foundation has worked more closely with them. I really do like 'em."

As Chelsea rested her hand on her father's shoulder, we got to talking about the night's entertainment: Stevie Wonder, Sir Elton John, Dionne Warwick and Gladys Knight, onstage together for the first time in 23 years to perform "That's What Friends Are For." Mr. President, we asked rhetorically, is the show going to be good?

"I hope!" he said.

We weren't the only one to humbly shake the president's hand for the first time. Blake Lively had the pleasure of meeting him as well. We caught up with the "Gossip Girl" star -- or rather, because it's Fashion Week, Karl Lagerfeld's muse and thereby countess in the high court of Chanel. After the performance, we spotted Ms. Lively standing in a flowery dress by herself, arms rested at her side, looking for something or someone that had momentarily blended into the tapestry of opulence that is Cipriani.

She lit up when we asked about the show.

"Oh, my gosh, it was incredible!" Ms. Lively said to The Observer, her sparkling eyes and smile belying any notion that she was not, if fact, ecstatic. "Elton John, Bill Clinton, Stevie Wonder, and, you know, the cause is incredible, you know, to see so many people come out and to hear all the work that so many people have done for AIDS and how many advancements we've made, it's incredible. And just because we've made advancements doesn't mean we have to stop."

We asked if she had met President Clinton, because we were imagining what it would be like to have the two of them together.

"Yes!"

And what was the conversation like?

"I just said, uh... -- I mean, we didn't have much to chat about."

She did, however, have something to chat about with Kyle MacLachlan -- she waltzed over to him as soon as she walked away from The Observer.

"Take care!" Lively said.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

So we zoomed in on film director Doug Liman, a friend of one of the producers. Best known for The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Mr. Liman just wrapped filming on a distinctly different kind of husband-and-wife spy drama: Fair Game, based on ex-C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame's memoir, starring Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, whom he called his "favorite person I've ever worked with," he said. And Mr. Penn? "He's probably the greatest living actor right now," Mr. Liman said earnestly. "I was working with him right after he won the Academy Award, and he was so hardworking and committed to the character and to spending a serious amount of time with Joe Wilson to get all the little details down."

Mr. Liman stressed that his film isn't a history lesson. "If you want the political story, go watch CNN or Fox or read The New York Times," he said. (How evenhanded!) "There's an amazing personal story about a husband and wife choosing to stand up to an extremely powerful White House, and the personal toll that that took-and the toll that being in the C.I.A. takes on a marriage. That's not going to be in the history books, that's not going to be on CNN, that's not going to be on Fox, but that's why we go to the movies."

Mr. Liman, of course, is no stranger to spycraft: The Bourne Identity was based in part on work his father did on the Iran-Contra scandal. But could he live the life himself?

"No," he said, half-smiling, "because I'm a little too gossipy."

Today fans of Ms. Savit’s designs include Beyoncé, Elton John and the teenagers trawling Soho. “I work with Michael Kors, I work with Ralph Lauren, I work with Vera Wang. This is within the past six months,” said Ms. Savitt the other day, dressed in this season’s wide-legged jeans. For over three decades, she was in business with her sisters Michelle and Wynne under the label M + J Savitt, but she struck out on her own in December of 2007.

“It took me 30 years to figure a way to do it,” Ms. Savitt said with a laugh. “One sister [Michelle] was getting married and moving to California and I didn’t want to stay there and work with the other sister [Wynne]. That’s what it boiled down to.

“When I left, I took nothing. I just said, ‘Buh-bye, it’s all you. I want to do my own thing.’” But the exit was not completely seamless. On Oct. 7, 2008, according to papers filed in New York’s Southern District Court, Wynne sued Ms. Savitt for trademark infringement.

“She believed that she owned my name, but she doesn’t own my name,” Janis said firmly.

Recent designs are going in two directions, the first “all based on chains … that look like braided pieces, like a little girl who braids her hair.” Recently she sent some antique cameos to a shop in California that normally fixes up car parts. The resulting bib necklace is edgy, but classic.

The second is centered around classic pins. “Take your mother’s brooch, a diamond brooch—hopefully she had a big one,” Ms. Savit said. “Then you put broad brass and steel chains with it to make it more casual and updated.”

Ms. Savitt’s inspirations include her father, Paul Savitt, an artist who lives in Soho. “He’s the kind of person you can ask about anything and he’ll know the answer,” she said.

A large photograph self-portrait of Mr. Savitt hangs in her midtown apartment near the front door. His eyes are wide and his mouth tight. The image breaks and squirms in certain places as if bugs are climbing out of him. “He’s never shown his work, he’s never sold his work,” his daughter said. “He just warehouses it.”

Not so Ms. Savitt, who is recently exploring a new side of commerciality with a brass cuff bracelet that looks like a can of Budweiser. “A classic American label,” she pointed out. So far she has melded the beer can to the cuff; next she will attach strands of diamonds. “I like the idea of recycling and making it into something cool. Like, ‘I rescued this beer can and turned it into a $5,000 piece of jewelry!’ No, I’m just kidding. ‘I turned it into something beautiful.’”

For the past year, Ms. Savitt has been on a jewelling jag, filling up armloads of boxes and several large tables in her home office with new pieces. But she still finds time to fish and rake for clams, wearing waders in Shinnecock bay with an 80-year-old friend who “knows all the good spots.” She’s also fond of staring at the sky.

“I take the train down to Battery Park, have a coffee there and look out,” she said. “New York’s a great place. ”

PHOTOGRAPH: John Huba</p

Barry Diller who's recently triumphed in court over Liberty Media chairman, John Malone, has a brand new discrimination lawsuit on his hands. [P6]

Salman Rushdie is so over Padma Lakshmi. [P6]

Elton John really likes the way Tom Ford smells. [P6]

Donald Trump Jr. threatened Ivana Trump's new husband, Rossano Rubicondi, with a .45 and a shovel, jokingly of course. [NY Daily News]

Now that he's acquitted of tax-evasion charges, Wesley Snipes is celebrating by spending thousands of dollars on "babes." [P6]

The Who's Roger Daltrey stays young by "shagging" a lot. [P6]

Jessica Stam and Michelle Trachtenberg eat bread! [NY Daily News]

MTV's The Hills is now officially New Yorker-worthy. [New Yorker]

“I sure can’t sing, but I want you to know that ‘I’m still standing,’” Hillary Clinton said with her husband and daughter standing behind her.

Maybe it was the purple drinks, but the crowd ponied up $2.5 million for her campaign last night at the Elton John fund-raiser.

(The Observer's Jason Horowitz has an account of yesterday with the Clintons you can read here.)

Though Jason doesn't mention that Sir Elton changed the lyrics of Crocodile Rock to “me and Hillary had so much fun.”