Naomi Campbell's public relations company, N.C. Connect, threw a lunch at the VIP Club in Cannes, where the annual film festival is in full swing, as a benefit for the Nelson Mandela Children's Foundation. Campbell is Mandela's honorary granddaughter. More than 50 well-heeled guests arrived, ready to eat and ready to bid on jewelry, vacations and luxury merchandise that had been donated for the live auction. But they didn't get to do either.

After waiting two hours with nothing but bread, water and champagne, such grumpy guests as male supermodel Tyson Beckford, publisher Massimo Gargia, Denise Rich, Marta Marzotto (whose family owns the Valentino fashion house), Fawaz Gruosi (owner of de Grisogono jewelers) and his wife, Caroline Scheufele (whose family owns Chopard), left lunchless. "The tables were set for lunch, but the management was waiting for Naomi before they'd serve it," said one source.

In one of the most inventive explanations ever devised, the dusky diva's publicist, Rob Shuter, informed Page Six via BlackBerry: "Naomi's stylist disappeared with all her clothes. Naomi has only her underwear. She sat on a boat waiting for two hours for new clothes to arrive. In the end, she borrowed a dress from a girlfriend."

Campbell was said to be staying on the yacht of her old boyfriend, Formula One racing mogul Flavio Briatore, the play- boy who fathered Heidi Klum's first child.

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