ladies who picnic; A glamorous L.A. house (and lawn) is the setting for a charity accessories sale and brown-bag lunch.(P.S. Arts fund raiser)

Over the mantel hangs a Picasso portrait; a baronial dining-room table is covered with rows of brown paper bags. Outside, on the lush green lawn, best-dressed ladies in high heels stroll as if barefoot, lunching picnic-style from the paper bags.

"Food is important, even to skinny people," laughs Michele Gan, a private chef and proprietress of the Los Angeles catering firm Serves You Right, as she arranges more bags marked according to their contents. As if to make her point, the beautiful Jamie Tisch alights wearing Yves Saint Laurent and reminds Michele how much she would like her recipe for chicken chili. "I want to make it at least four times before I serve it at a party on Super Bowl Sunday," Jamie says.

What cockeyed glamour is this-a Dada ball? No, this is the third annual Bag Lunch organized by the fashion stylists Elizabeth Stewart and George Kotsiopoulos with host Colleen Bell at Colleen's house in Bel Air, a midday fund-raiser of such warmth and practicality that the highfalutin kinds pale in comparison.

Studio executives, actresses, doctors, and lawyers have left their offices, banks, or studios during lunch hour today to converge in the name of a favorite charity, P.S. Arts, which works to restore arts education to public schools. In the ballroom-yes, the ballroom-dozens of designer handbags from Fendi, Chloe, Marc Jacobs, et al, are up for silent auction with bids starting at 60 percent off retail price, 100 percent of the proceeds going to P.S. Arts. (In addition to the bags, there are wares from the global shopper Sarah Giles, the jewelry importer Kimberly Brooks, and the jeweler Martin Katz, whose delicate wedding bands many of the women here are wearing.) For anyone who has ever despaired over rubber chicken at a typical charity benefit, this is bliss.

Want to try something in this line in your hometown? Find donated merchandise that people will ...