Back in 1998, late Harper’s Bazaar editor in chief Liz Tilberis and designer Donna Karan hosted the first Super Saturday shopping fund-raiser for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund in the backyard of Tilberis's Hamptons home. To source items for the sale, the pair raided their own closets, asked their fashionable friends to do the same, and invited companies to donate high-end designer merchandise. Then they invited guests to come shop at discounted prices, with sales benefiting the charity.
The event took off in a big way, drawing major celebrity support and media attention, and it continued to grow over the years. In 2014, after 15 years in New York, the group brought the popular shopping benefit to Los Angeles, where it’s had two annual incarnations. Now it’s expanding again: For the first time, Super Saturday will head to Las Vegas this year, taking over the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian and Palazzo, as well as the Fashion Show Las Vegas mall on September 19 and 20.
Rachel Zoe and husband and business partner Rodger Berman will host the Las Vegas weekend event, which will include retail incentives from luxury brands including Michael Kors, Tory Burch, Diane von Furstenberg, Fendi, Ted Baker London, and Topshop. Most participating retailers will donate a percentage of weekend sales to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.
Attendees can also meet Zoe at a signing for her newest book, Living in Style. The two-day event will also include brunch at Barneys New York, a pop-up spa from Canyon Ranch SpaClub, a Pepsi lounge, runway shows on an elevated stage, and Sephora makeup touch-ups. A gift with purchase—two tickets to the show Rock of Ages—is available as a shopping incentive for people who spend more than $750.

In addition to marking an expansion into a new city, the Las Vegas event marks a departure in the fund-raiser’s traditional format.
“This is the first time that we are putting a new twist on our traditional Super Saturday—hence the name Super Saturday Vegas-Style,” says Ovarian Cancer Research Fund president and C.E.O. Audra Moran. “Super Saturday New York and Los Angeles each bring together more than 100 designers for one day at a large open venue where they donate their merchandise and then sell it for below retail with all sales benefiting the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. For Super Saturday Vegas-Style, we are inviting the retailers to participate by donating a percentage of their sales in their own stores for an entire weekend to Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. We think that this new model may allow for even broader participation and could easily be replicated in any shopping mall in the country."
She says that September, which is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, corresponded with various other activities organized by the group. She says that, like Los Angeles, Vegas is known for both shopping and a philanthropic community, and therefore was the right pick as the next move in the expansion.
"The Venetian, the Palazzo, and the Grand Canal Shoppes have been generous sponsors of Super Saturday Los Angeles for the past two years," she says. "They agreed that this unique event has tremendous growth potential and embraced our desire to offer the Super Saturday experience to as many people as possible. Together, we conceived Super Saturday Vegas-Style.”
Moran adds that Super Saturday continues to demonstrate tremendous growth—drawing 2,000 attendees across the events in 2014. And she says that it’s also ripe for continued expansion.
“The first Super Saturday in 1998 raised $200,000. In 2014, Super Saturday bicoastal events in New York and Los Angeles raised over $4 million [combined],” she says. Going forward, Moran says she’s hopeful the group will see the Vegas event demonstrate success and that it will become an annual event on the scene there. Beyond that, she says, “We see great potential in bringing this new Vegas-Style model to other cities.”
