Heads turned at Armand Hammer’s Inaugural Week...

Heads turned at Armand Hammer’s Inaugural Week party at Washington’s National Gallery of Art as guests wondered if that was not Beverly Sills’ younger, slimmer sister that they were seeing. “Say that again,” the diva told Listen. “It’s music to my ears.” In fact, Sills had just spent six months losing 70 pounds--”starvation; there’s no magic, just hard work”--and was now happily rediscovering the joys of her old size-10 wardrobe. This night, for example, Sills was resplendent in scarlet silk and carrying a matching glittery evening bag shaped like a Faberge egg. “I had a whole closet full of concert gowns that I could no longer wear,” Sills said, adding that the insurance on said wardrobe was “something like $200,000.” Sills said that she gained weight after she gave up singing five years ago, in part because suddenly, as general director of the New York City Opera, “I was doing a lot of fund raising, eating six meals a day.” Plus, Sills said, “singing is a very athletic profession.” There’s strict discipline, what with hours of coaching and rehearsals each day, and “sopranos are always falling down stairs. You get a lot of exercise.”

Stefanie Powers buys fragrance the way some people buy doughnuts. A dozen at a time. She recently stopped in at the Georgette Klinger Salon in search of a dozen bottles of Kathryn, a scent named for the company’s president, Kathryn Klinger. “We had nine bottles, so she took them,” says Cathie Kiek of the salon. More recently, she adds, an assistant of the actress picked up the other three bottles and carried them to Powers in London where she is filming a TV miniseries.

In Washington not long ago, Listen was relieved to discover that the ingenuity of America’s youth truly knows no bounds, none at all. Attending the President’s Youth Inaugural Ball, Eric Belland of Van Nuys wore a sensible business-type suit and a most astonishing hair style. Explaining how he persuaded his baby-fine blond hair to stand straight on end--precisely the look that one might achieve by inserting one’s finger in the nearest electrical socket--the 17-year-old senior at L.A. Baptist High School confided that, “I use gel, mousse and hair spray. And I blow-dry my hair upside down.” Belland said that he called the finished look “unique.”

When Liza Minnelli soft-shoed into town last week for the premiere of “That’s Dancing,” she forgot to pack the Halston gown that she was going to wear. No matter. The morning of the party, she made a call to David Keys of the Plunket Keys boutique on Sunset Boulevard, who whipped up a custom-made black sequined knee-baring dress and delivered it to her by 6 p.m. Her stepmother Lee Minnelli swears that it’s true.

Speaking of Plunket Keys, socialite Della Koenig, a partner in the store, normally attends the couture openings in Paris, which start Sunday. This season she’ll stay close to home in order to look after business. But while Koenig is not going to Paris, Paris is coming to her. The folks at Christian Dior are sending her a videotape of the spring collection from which she will place her orders. Koenig normally receives sketches of the collections, but she likes the videotape idea so much that her vendeuse at Dior has contacted other couture houses, including Yves Saint Laurent and Ungaro, instructing them to send videos too. The Dior cassette will be ready at the beginning of February.

Our regrets:Ron Rifkin, the actor who supplied Sally Struthers with her Inaugural fur, is not an ex-actor. In fact, he phoned to say, furs are simply his avocation. Acting is his true love. And even as you read this, he is at work on a CBS-TV film called “Do You Remember Love?”