The honorees arrived in costume. Gisele Bündchen wore a plaid shirt, jeans and a cowboy hat. Karlie Kloss came as Holly Golightly, pearls and all. Between them on stage stood Za’Niyah Huffman, a Lotus House alumna holding her Youth Volunteer Award, in a black beaded dress with toy spiders in her hair.
That photograph is the whole argument of the Lotus House gala. On Thursday, October 29, 2026, the Miami shelter held its 16th annual gala at The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse in Wynwood, under a Halloween theme of Sparkles and Costumes, and raised $1 million for women and children experiencing homelessness, Haute Living reported.
Bündchen and Kloss are members of the Lotus Endowment Board. Both received the organization’s It Takes a Village Award for their leadership and hands-on work with the shelter. “I’m so grateful to be part of the Lotus House family,” Bündchen said while accepting the honor. Kloss put the same idea differently: a village, she said, is something people build together.
What $1 million supports
Lotus House opened in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood in 2006, founded by Constance Collins. The organization describes itself as the nation’s largest women’s homeless shelter. It has sheltered more than 13,500 women, youth and children in nearly two decades, served more than three million meals, and given more than 400 newborns their first home.
More than 520 women, youth and children sleep there each night. In 2025 alone, Lotus House served more than 1,450 people, providing 182,000 bed nights and 10,000 counseling sessions. Eighty-six percent of Lotus Village guests left the shelter system for housing, the organization reports.
The gala also gave the Community Impact Award to Miami Innovators Who Care, a group organized by board members Seth Cassel and Rachna Bhasin, and remembered Libby Klein with the Legacy of Love Award. Three short films during the evening followed Lotus House alumni from crisis to independence.
The money raised will support the shelter, the National Women’s Shelter Network, and the Children’s Village, the 71,000-square-foot center that opened in 2025 beside the shelter. The Children’s Village houses nonprofit partners under one roof, offering education, therapy, healthcare and social support to Lotus House families and to the wider Overtown community, with a stated aim of helping families stay housed before a crisis arrives.
“From our earliest days, our vision has been to give women and children the safety, care and opportunities they need to build a brighter future,” Collins said.
A shelter gala in costume could read as a society page novelty. The numbers underneath it are the story: 520 people in beds that night, 400 babies whose first address was a shelter that worked, and a second building next door built to keep the next family from needing the first one.
The Social Register’s event directory tracks the season’s galas, benefits, and society evenings. Plan your next evening there.
