What comes between Brooke Shields and her...
What comes between Brooke Shields and her Calvins? Her Brookes. The actress/supermodel, who once promoted Calvin Klein jeans, has joined with Batem Enterprises Inc. to produce and market her Brooke Shields Jeanswear Collection, which will be in department stores in July. The line will include jeans and related separates and will be priced from about $30 to $80. Our Miss Brooke launched the line in New York this week with the help of four of her Princeton classmates who modeled the collection. How will you be able to tell your Brookes from your Calvins? Shields’ stuff will be labeled with the signature “Brooke hook” she uses to sign autographs--which is “Brooke” followed with two x’s as in kisses.
Broadway producer Janet Villela was looking a little like the late Joan Crawford not long ago. Villela was wearing a gold bracelet with a huge amethyst created by MGM’s legendary designer Adrian for Crawford to wear in the 1946 film “Humoresque.” Villela explained to Listen that she bought the bauble--which had been a gift to Crawford from one of her husbands, actor Phillip Terry--at an auction to add to her extensive jewelry collection. Villela let Listen see the inscription on the back, which reads: “Dearest: The third slip on our bridge you have built so well. I love you forever and a day. Phillip. 21st July 1945.”
“Why does a painter keep on painting till the day he dies? Why does a musician write music? I guess if he hears the music he does it.” That’s Herb Fink’s explanation for opening five Southern California boutiques in the space of a few months. “Retailers retail, “ reasons Fink, a Beverly Hills fixture for 15 years, who is president and founder of the Theodore & Theodore Man shops on Rodeo Drive. Fink’s newest shop, Contents by Theodore, carrying clothes geared for a “younger crowd” than its namesake, opened three weeks ago in the Beverly Center. A second store, Sonia Rykiel, opens for business next week in the Rodeo Collection. Stores No. 3 and No. 4--Theodore and Theodore Man--will be unveiled in Newport’s Fashion Island in September. And No. 5, called simply Montana (shorthand for French designer Claude Montana), will take over the Hunter’s Books location on Rodeo Drive and Little Santa Monica Boulevard in mid-October. “Why am I doing all of this? I really don’t know why. I think there’s a little insanity,” he shrugs. A pause. Then on second thought, he adds, “My creative juices are running wild--they’re 5 cents a gallon.”
Did you ever want to take a closer peek at Jimmy Durante’s fedora, Rex Harrison’s “My Fair Lady” tweed topper or one of LBJ’s Western hats? If you’re willing to take a trip to Garland, Tex., you can take a gander at all three, plus about 60 more famous and antique hats at the Resistol Hats’ Headwear Museum. There’s also Henry Fonda’s “Mr. Roberts” naval officer’s hat, Humphrey Bogart’s tattered headgear and a snap-brim fedora that JFK preferred. Maddest hatter may have been LBJ, who, Resistol says, ordered his cowboy styles by the gross through a special account at the company.
Levi Strauss & Co. is buttoning up a lot more than just its famous 501 jeans these days. Last year, the Perry Ellis America collection was added to the stock of Levi’s. Now the San Francisco-based company has buttoned up licensing deals with two more designers, Alexander Julian and Andrew Fezza. Levi’s will produce and market Julian’s women’s collection in his lower-priced Colours by Alexander Julian for women line and will market both Fezza’s men’s and women’s lines. Fezza and Julian had previously held licensing agreements for these lines with Tucker International, which went out of business last month. Julian comments: “Being a dedicated customer of Levi Strauss says it all. I’m so happy I’ve been wearing my 501s all week.” Fezza says: “I’m pleased to see that the people at Levi’s are such creative thinkers.” Unlike the Perry Ellis America line, neither Julian’s nor Fezza’s labels will bear the Levi Strauss name.
The mark of Zoran is coming to Los Angeles--at last. The New York-based, Yugloslavian-born designer has been trying to open a boutique in Beverly Hills for months. But building-code restrictions and what he calls the general L.A. malaise (a local cab driver told him it was the “me-ism” mentality--”it’s all me, me, me”) have delayed things and pushed Zoran to his limit. “It looked like a Korean vegetable market--all I want is plain white walls, and I still cannot get it through,” he laments. He hopes that the store, adjacent to Wilson’s Suede and Leather at the corner of Santa Monica and Wilshire boulevards, will open next month. But if you blink you’ll miss it. The entrance will be through the rear parking lot, and there will be only one small sign--”Parking for Zoran”--to indicate that you’re in the right spot. In the Bijan tradition, shopping will be by appointment only because Zoran doesn’t think street traffic works anymore for high fashion. Once inside, what’s to buy? Clothing one step beyond minimal. Zoran calls it “operation zero” dressing: cashmere, cotton and gabardine separates priced from $40 to $3,000. “No zippers, no buttons, no prints.” Zoran defines the perfect customer as “not a name” (although names like Lauren Hutton, Cher and Peggy Lipton Jones are customers), but an “achiever who is satisfied with her job, her love affair and her children, who have to be in a day-care center.” She should also be at least 35, he adds. “At that age she knows what it’s all about.”
If a guy offers you “authentic” Zandra Rhodes dresses from the back of a van, dial 911--or better yet, Scotland Yard. London’s High Priestess of fashion had her workrooms looted on Monday by a very discerning band of thieves. The marauders ignored less expensive items and stole only the most costly Rhodes gowns (100 of them, worth a total of about $240,000). A London police spokesman speculates that the clothes were stolen to be smuggled abroad, “because they are so exclusive and are internationally known.”
