Dr. Elizabeth Lundén

They could cover the token for $150,000, and they had a lot of money to run the operations for a couple of years.

However, the Met decides to put all that money in the annual general budget of the museum.

And it's gone.

So for next year, they had to get their $30,000 again.

Oh yeah, that's exactly how it sounds.

And you know Eleanor Lambert, she's not lacking ideas.

So because she couldn't go to these designers again and ask for money for the industry, okay, can you donate this one more time?

She's like, let's throw a party.

What do we do in New York City?

We get rich people to go to parties and donate money.

So we're going to do this fundraising and we're going to call it the party of the year.

The first party happened in November 18th, 1948 at the Rainbow Room at the Rockefeller Center for $50.

There was a big dinner.

It was pageants, so they had like a runway where society women and models would just parade with some of these costumes, especially if they were aligned with the theme of the gala of that year.

Then they had something that I loved.

That was the photographer's row.

So you could get your picture taken for $5 by one of the magazine photographers or for $25 if you wanted a fashion expert.

So they had raffles.

People could purchase numbers for these raffles and they could win a grab bag.

And the grab bag consisted of donations from different department stores, designers.