Emile Zafrany, of Simon & Co Jewelers, inspects a prospective diamond during Thursday night’s ‘Diamonds Downtown’ event, in which one lucky guest chose a champagne glass with an authentic diamond inside. (It wasn’t these particular guests.)
Hannah Simerson | Times Leader
‘Diamonds Downtown’ event benefits Dress for Success
Click here to subscribe today or Login.
Paul Kabacinski, the winner of a $3,500 diamond, poses with his gem during Thursday night’s ‘Diamonds Downtown’ event after discovering that his champagne glass contained an authentic diamond. In a twist of seemingly immediate karma, Kabacinski won the diamond after providing the decor for the event.
Hannah Simerson | Times Leader
WILKES-BARRE — The Westmoreland Club sure did shine bright like a diamond on Thursday night.
The club hosted Dress for Success Luzerne County’s annual ‘Diamonds Downtown’ event, which featured music, food and drinks, raffles — and, of course, plenty of diamonds.
And what better place to do so than the Diamond City?
“Tonight, we are here to celebrate the real diamonds of the Diamond City, and those are the women that work so hard to get back into the workforce — to change their lives,” said Dress for Success Luzerne County Founder and CEO Linda Loop.
Each guest was given a glass of champagne with a “diamond” in it — but only one glass contained a real diamond valued at over $3,500.
Guests lined up to have their diamond inspected, eagerly waiting to find out if their gem was the real deal. The guessing game finally came to a close when Paul Kabacinski was found to be the owner of the lucky glass.
Throughout the night, attendees also had the chance to bid in an impromptu auction and try their luck at over 23 raffles — all benefiting the Dress for Success mission of empowering women to achieve economic independence.
“We do this in three ways,” said Loop. “We provide a network of support for women, career appropriate attire and the career development tools women need to thrive in work and in life.”
And these resources are more crucial now than they ever were before, she said.
“In Wilkes-Barre, specifically, but also globally, this pandemic has put women back 130 years in the workforce,” Loop said, citing childcare issues as just one of many obstacles women must overcome for successful employment.
“Women are typically the primary caregiver, and if there’s no daycare, a woman can’t work. At Dress for Success, we help those women find solutions — find alternatives — and get the support they need to go back to work,” she added.
Katrina Wallace, vice-chair for Dress for Success Luzerne County, hopes the event was able to showcase all that the organization does.
“It’s more than just dressing the women,” Wallace said.
“Yes, we all need clothes to go into work, but we are so much more than that now. There’s a whole bunch that Dress for Success does that the world doesn’t know about, and I think that people need to realize that it’s not all just dressing women anymore,” she added.