Tip your hats to the ladies who lunch.
After two years of a paired down event held at five different locations, Central Park Conservancy’s annual Frederick Law Olmsted Awards Luncheon, fondly known as the “Hat Lunch,” was back under one huge tent full of celebs and socialites donning their finest fascinators.
Soap legend Susan Lucci attended the fundraiser for the first time, wearing a black hat with a white flower from couture millinery, Suzanne, in tribute to her late husband Helmut Huber, who passed away in March.
“It’s the first time I have ever worn a fascinator,” Lucci told us. “I lost my husband not long ago. He was fabulous and I love him to pieces and miss him like crazy. I knew I was going to wear black. But also it’s Spring so there is a touch of white in the flower. I thought that would be appropriate.”
Lucci and Huber were married in 1969.
Lucci told us that she would drive through Central Park every day during her 41 years playing Erica Kane on “All My Children.”
“Even if I didn’t know my lines yet, I’d put my script down just to look at this beautiful park in every light of day and every season of the year,” she said.
Also mingling through the sea of fancy toppers was “Law & Order,” star Stephanie March wearing a pink fascinator from Cigmond Millinery.
March told Page Six her favorite park memory was of a recent snow sculpture she dubbed, the “Snoctopus.”
“It was a huge snow octopus with the suckers, with the big eyeballs,” March explained. “I have about a thousand pictures of it. And I thought, only in New York can somebody turn a Covid winter into ‘Snoctopus.’ It was really fun.”
Martha Stewart was spotted looking sharp in a white hat with two flowers on the side as she hung out with publicist Susan Magrino.
Also making the rounds of the event which raised nearly $4 million were powerhouse socialites Gillian Miniter, Elyse Newhouse, Muffie Potter Aston, Fe Fendi, Alexandra Lebenthal, Lela Rose, Margo Nederlander, and Women’s Committee President Yesim Philip.
But the socialite who really stole the show was Ruby, an Australian albino rabbit (wearing fur, sadly no tiny hat), who spent the lunch in a large handbag eating grass fed by his dads, luxury hat designer Eric Javits — whose great-uncle was famed Senator Jacob Javits — and fashionisto Di Mondo.
But they weren’t the only men in the room. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who attends annually, was also in the crowd. “The city is back,” he told us.