During Fashion Week, women come and go talking of nothing but color, hems, necklines. Affluent New Yorkers and celebrities alike are front-row fixtures, to the great pleasure of the paparazzi and the underlings who’ve clawed their way into the tents. The stir that an entrance by Renee Zellweger or Beyonce Knowles generates is the perfect warm-up to the drama of the runway. And isn’t it nice to know that there is a teeny tiny dose of equality at the spectacle – utilitarian folding chairs for all (except the fashion students relegated to standing room).

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The chief executive of SL Green Realty Corporation, Marc Holliday, had much thanks to offer his fellow honoree, Dr. Edward Amorosi, at the New York University Medical Center’s Champions of Industry and Medicine Awards Dinner.

Dr. Amorosi treated both of Mr. Holliday’s parents, Morton and Pennie, for separate bouts of cancer: Both survived. “He had a leading hand in saving their lives,” Mr. Holliday said.

Dr. Amorosi, for his part, remained modest about the public recognition he received at the event, attended by more than 600 guests Thursday night at Cipriani 42nd Street. “It’s nice to have all your hard work appreciated, but the intellectual challenges and professional satisfactions of a medical career and helping people get over a serious illness is recognition enough.”

He noted New York University’s participation in a vaccine trial for lymphoma. The goal of the group study is to identify a vaccine that stimulates the immune system and prevents the recurrence of the cancer.

Mr. Holliday’s work, meanwhile, is the commercial real-estate business. His company has started to lease 1.1 million square feet in the redevelopment project Grand Central Square.

The event raised a whopping $2.6 million, earmarked for the New York University Clinical Cancer Center, which opened last year.