M’s Cano scores with heavy hitters for big charity event

The thing that usually tips you off is how the valets react to the guest list.

The other night outside The Paramount Theatre, a cluster of them were looking at the list for “Canoche,” Robinson Cano’s first fundraiser since he joined the Mariners last year.

They looked at the list, then each other. List. Each other.

“Oh my (bleeping) God,” one said, then had to step away. It was just too much.

Jay-Z, rapper, producer, husband to Queen Bey and the founder of Roc Nation Sports, which manages Cano. Former Mariner and now-Yankee Alex Rodriguez, along with teammate CC Sabathia. Mariners star pitcher Felix Hernandez and outfielder Nelson Cruz.

Inside and before most guests arrived, long-legged women toted trays of drinks made with D’ussé cognac (Jay-Z owns the brand) and Sparkling Ice Orange Mango. (“That’s gonna sneak up on me,” one man said after taking a sip).

The Mariners may have lost to the Yankees, 3-1, a few hours before, but Cano was over it, and on to raising money for his RC22 nonprofit.

“Now that Seattle is going to be my home, this is something that I want to do here,” he said. (He signed for 10 years — at $240 million.)

“Somebody believed in me; why not give people opportunities so they can believe in themselves?”

Nina Morrison of Sparking Ice (one of the night’s sponsors) said she had made Cano her brand ambassador, and that after he attended opening day for the Mercer Island Little League, he arranged to have one team attend every Mariner home game. “He’s authentic and he has the same DNA that we have,” she said.

The “black carpet” action was slow to start. Former Sonic Lenny Wilkens. DeLille Cellars owners Greg and Stacy Lill. Holland America CEO Stein Kruse and his wife, Linda. Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price, who made news recently for paying his employees a minimum $70,000 a year.

Then a Rolls-Royce Wraith (MSRP: $284,900) pulled up, and you knew the game was on. The valet opened the door and Seahawks strong safety Kam Chancellor emerged, a very tall man in a black hat.

The valet climbed into the car and froze. “This is like a space capsule,” he said. Chancellor motioned him out, climbed back in, drove it along the curb a few feet and left it there. (Minutes later, Felix Hernandez pulled up in a Wraith of his own.)

Mariners pitcher Tom Wilhelmsen and his wife, Cassie, came “just to have a great time.”

Was he a Jay-Z fan?

“Who isn’t?”

Well, maybe the media that were waiting outside. Jazz entered the Paramount (alone) through a stage door and sat at a table at the front of the room, his security guy standing against the wall, drinking a Red Bull.

In the room (where to start?): Mariners Chairman and CEO Howard Lincoln, Jose Gaitan, Howard Wright, King County Executive Dow Constantine (who took a photo of his wife, Shirley, with A-Rod).

The parents of the Garfield High School Symphony Orchestra were escorted up to the second level to watch their kids perform.

“Our seats were worth every penny because we got in for free,” said Charles Kooperberg, whose son, Brian, 18, ditched his French horn before the event to stand in front of the theater with a bagful of baseballs. (Most obliged)

Down on the main floor, former M’s President Chuck Armstrong and his wife, Suzie, yucked it up with A-Rod, who had walked down from his hotel with a woman in red.

“He said, ‘This is our anniversary,’ ” Armstrong told me later. “’Twenty-two years ago, you drafted me.’” (We all know how that turned out).

Watching Armstrong cross over to talk to Jay-Z, a staffer cracked: “He’s got 240 million reasons to do that.”

The event, which benefited City Year, the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, the Boys & Girls Club of King County and Seattle Children’s hospital, raised $1.1 million — helped by a gold bottle of Armand de Brignac (“Ace of Spades”) Champagne signed by Cano that almost went for $2,000 — until Jay-Z and A-Rod agreed to sign it. Then it went for $5,500.

The ‘H’ is silent, the dollar signs are not

It wasn’t that long ago that the Hermès store was just another jewel in the luxury bracelet that makes up The Shops at The Bravern.

Now, it’s a 10,000-square-foot, two-story maison that drew President and CEO Robert B. Chavez out to Bellevue last Thursday for an opening dinner with special clients. Those who didn’t fly in (and many did, from New York and beyond) were Arthur Rubinfeld, chief creative officer at Starbucks; Microsoft app genius (and space traveler) Charles Simonyi and his wife, Lisa; and restaurateur Brian Canlis and his new wife, Mackenzie.

Chavez described the night as inspired by the “flâneur,” the French literary figure who passes his time strolling the boulevards of Paris. The program was designed by Belgian artist Charles Kaisin, who buzzed around the room like a ringmaster.

It was a little “Eyes Wide Shut,” with waiters delivering each course wearing a different mask. They filed into the dining room, lined up around the tables and then, with the ring of a bell, served each guest. Each course was covered with an intricately folded cardboard: a box with a horse on top. A house, lit from inside. Gorgeous.

Guests also received a wrapped paperback copy of La Fontaine’s “Fables,” with the inside pages folded into a letter. Go around the tables and the letters formed a passage written by Bruno Gaudichon for Hermes’ “Wanderland” exhibition, now touring Europe.

“It’s not just a dinner, it’s an experience,” Chavez told me. “And that’s what we do every day.”