DERBY TO-DO: Given the frenzy of photographers, television crews and fawning women who swarmed Mark Badgley and James Mischka at the 23rd annual Derby gala held in Louisville, Ky., Saturday night, the designing duo may as well have been George and Brad. The fund-raiser, held a week before the big race to benefit the Kentucky Derby Museum, was a grand Southern society affair, held on the infield of Churchill Downs. Over 1,000 guests — its largest crowd ever — filled the exquisitely appointed tent produced by Douglas Riddle.
Riddle, chairman for the event and president of local design firm Bittners, one of the evening's sponsors, scored a coup with the first-time attendance of Owsley Frazier, a member of the Brown-Forman Distillers' family, whose wealth, real estate and philanthropy are synonymous with Louisville.
The next morning, before Badgley and Mischka left for their farm in Lexington, they were treated to a tour of the back side of Churchill Downs, which houses the thoroughbreds that will run in Saturday's Derby. The pair even got to visit Colonel John, the prerace favorite whose owner, Susan Casner, showed almost as much hospitality to the men as their fans the previous night. And she didn't even know who they were.