Robert de Niro takes the floor

Robert de Niro takes the floor

Carl Robinson, a homeless New Yorker who has lived and panhandled around the Plaza hotel since the 1980s, was there Friday night in light rain. He stood out among the hundreds of guests in black tie and ball gowns who were attending the annual Save Venice gala, many in elaborate masks.

“An event like this should be good for a couple of hundred dollars,” Mr. Robinson said.

The money collectors inside the hotel’s gilded ballroom were doing somewhat better, bringing in $1.2 million. “The money goes directly to restore art treasures in Venice — oil paintings, statues, facades, church ceilings and recently, a 17th-century gondola,” said Lauren Santo Domingo, a chairwoman of the event.

A founder of Moda Operandi, she was wearing a green Oscar de la Renta gown and a bronze Bulgari medallion, neatly unifying all three of the evening’s corporate sponsors. At this party, “we’re not saving any lives, we’re not going to make you cry, and there are no sad speeches,” Ms. Domingo said. “So it gives you a bit of liberty to have fun.”

She was in good company. Other scions of the city’s billionaire class looking to let loose included: James and Nicky Rothschild, Alexander and Bara Tisch, and Tico and Colby Mugrabi. Huma Abedin held court on a blue tufted leather sofa, as Hamish Bowles, the master of ceremonies, chatted with Tory Burch, Lizzie da Trindade Asher, and Peter Brant Jr.

Under a large red-and-gold Venetian flag, Karolina Kurkova, Karen Elson, Jordan Barrett, Carolyn Murphy, and Shanina Shaik formed an attractive bouquet of long-stemmed models. But nobody out-processed the actual princesses: Marie-Chantal and Maria-Olympia of Greece, and Mafalda Saxe Cobourg of Bulgaria.

Outside, Mr. Robinson was making slow progress. “Most wealthy people don’t want to be bothered,” he said, holding a large white tub containing 75 cents.