TECHNO-BLAST

A pair of upended and stylized Louis Vuitton steamer trunks served as portals between our world and the color-drenched universe of Takashi Murakami at last Sunday’s gala dinner celebrating the artist’s exhibition at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA.

Over there was animated flower-print wallpaper; over here the evening’s blue-haired honoree, Marc Jacobs; and at each place setting were Murakami-designed place mats worth cadging from your table mates.

Grammy-winning, Vuitton-clad rapper Kanye West followed a screening of his new Murakami-directed music video, “Good Morning,” with a scorching live set. Then a cadre of women dressed like Murakami’s Miss Ko character ushered guests through the trunks, down a short LV-monogrammed passage to the dinner honoring Jacobs, prompting Ryan Seacrest’s dinner companion, Shana Wall, to say: “Now that’s the way to enter a party!”

In addition to Wall and Seacrest, the gala drew Hollywood support from the likes of k.d. lang, Cindy Crawford, Leonard Nimoy, Courtney Love and Owen Wilson. Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi said they’d been invited by their art dealer but didn’t yet have any Murakami in their collection. “We want some, so hopefully they’ll be giving some away tonight,” DeGeneres deadpanned.

Little did she know that anyone quick-witted enough to hold onto their place setting would be taking home a little bit of Murakami merchandise. Dinner was served atop plate-like place mats bearing a variation of the artist’s “Flower Ball” painting, and the main course had hardly been cleared before they began disappearing off the tables in twos, threes and fours as panicked dinner guests tried to snag whole sets. Celebu-chef guest Wolfgang Puck mused aloud that he could see the bright floral motif gracing Spago’s tables.

Dinner guests weren’t the only ones to go away happy; event chair Maria Bell told the crowd that the event was MOCA’s most successful, raising a record $1.6 million.

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