As a launch to Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Gucci staged a luncheon Oct. 1 at E. Baldi in Beverly Hills in honor of the Women's Cancer Research Fund. There, WCRF founders Rita Wilson, Marion Laurie, Quinn Ezralow and Kelly Chapman Meyer joined 50 others to learn the latest thoughts on the effect of diet and environment on cancer.

"If you're going to talk about cancer, you need to talk about environmental toxins," Chapman Meyer said. "They're in the water, the air, the food that we eat." And by the time keynote speaker Marisa Weiss finished her talk on the subject, guests were ready to race home and purge their refrigerators of potentially harmful foods. Weiss is a breast cancer oncologist and founder of the information-filled website, breastcancer.org.

Weiss said, "Every time we take a product in, it can have an impact on our cells. Whatever we're eating, drinking, what we breathe in, use — as in suntan lotion or makeup — or take — as in medicines — it's an easy opportunity to make a healthy choice."

WCRF seeks better ways to prevent, diagnose and treat women's cancers. Other speakers included Rachel Beller of the Beller Nutritional Institute and Heinz-Josef Lenz of USC's Keck School of Medicine. Also attending were Laura Lendrum, president of Gucci America; Jennifer Meyer; Sarah Emanuel; Nina Montee; Shelli Azoff; Frances Fisher; Camila Alves; Patrick Vos of Gucci, Beverly Hills; and the Keck School's Peter Laird and Dean Carmen Puliafito.