The Graphic IV Art Bra Fashion Show and Art Auction is not your typical fund-raiser.

I was going to write about what happened to our agency the first time we really sat down and came up with a wish list of clients, but my head and heart keep going back to something that happened Saturday night in Austin.

That night about 400 people came together at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum for a rowdy fund-raiser, the Graphic IV Art Bra Fashion Show and Art Auction. The event, sponsored by the Pink Ribbon Cowgirls, a group of young breast cancer survivors, was not your typical fund-raiser.

Attendees were greeted at the door by a model who pointed at her bra and asked, “Want to take this home with you?” A steady stream of off-color jokes and puns, mostly about breasts, was unleashed. Art bras, some designed by local celebrities, were sold to raise money through live and silent auctions. Christy Pipkin, executive director of the Nobelity Project (which grew out of the movie “Nobelity,” which she co-produced with her husband), was there, rocking her new chemo pixie. Gail Chovan, an Austin fashion designer and “surthrivor,” showed off a bra that was made by Deborah Harry, the singer, and sported well-placed little black cowboy hats.

Supported by friends, family and doctors, the survivors shed their inhibitions as well as their shirts. Emboldened by their mission to raise money for the cause, the women strutted around with chests out, having come to terms (theirs) with the mammaries that had made an attempt on their lives. Men were given permission, even encouraged, to make eye contact — so long as they bid up the bras!

Together, the crowd remembered two young models who had died since the last Art Bra gathering. We raised a glass to Molly Ivins, the feisty Texas journalist who succumbed to breast cancer in 2009. Sarah Weddington, the lawyer who argued and won Roe v. Wade, and who also happens to be a survivor, occupied front row seats with her posse. Nearly 20 survivors strutted down a catwalk to pumping music, modeling decorated bras, vamping for the camera and shining from the reflected love of the crowd.

One of the women sashaying down the runway was the daughter of a woman I had chanced to meet earlier in the evening along with her twin sister. All three women stood tall and proud; all three have had breast cancer. When we’d met, Mom told me that her daughter was going to be a model and pointed her out in the crowd. All of 30, her bald head held high, she was fighting breast cancer for the second time in five years.

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Now, a third of the way down the catwalk, she collapsed. People watched, unsure if it was part of the show or if she had tripped. It soon became obvious that this was not part of the script. Her mother rushed forward from her second-row seat, a doctor was called, and event organizers surrounded her. Two women held her feet high so blood would flow to her heart. People took turns doing chest compressions. The doctor ran in search of a defibrillator and we heard, “she’s coding!”

Someone finally found the dial, cutting the music and, mercifully, the spotlights. Someone else led the crowd in a spontaneous prayer. Those surrounding the woman implored her, beseeched her, willed her to breathe. Others stumbled out the door and into the night. Strangers embraced. The ambulance arrived and the young woman, pale and unconscious, was rushed away.

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