Where does fashion inspiration come from? Listen...
Where does fashion inspiration come from? Listen reader Alexa Scharff thinks she knows the roots of at least one famous design. She wrote Listen that she too is Viennese, as was designer Rudi Gernreich. And Gernreich’s topless swimsuit, she informed us, looks amazingly like the little wool swim trunks with straps that Austrian children wore at the time she and Gernreich were kids, playing among the pastries and at the shore. To prove her point, she sent us the photo we show here, “taken at an Austrian lake during the ‘30s. I am wearing the suit that a lot of other little girls were running around in at the time. It was standard swimming attire.” We agree with Scharff that Gernreich’s 1964 topless sure seems like a remembrance of things in his past. More news on Gernreich comes from Sarah Worman, director of the Los Angeles Fashion Group, which is putting on the Rudi Gernreich retrospective fashion show at the Wiltern Theatre Aug. 13. Tickets for the dinner and show are $250 each. Tickets for the show only are $35 for adults and $10 for students. For ticket reservations, call Anne LeFebvere at (213) 239-9330.
It’s still too early to know whether the new marriage of clothes and Coca-Cola is the beginning of a trend to be followed by other companies such as Pepsi and Seven-Up, but for the moment at least, Coca-Cola clothes are it. Marketed by Murjani International, the firm that emblazoned Gloria Vanderbilt’s name on millions of jeans, the new Coke clothes are fizzy sport styles with the soft-drink logo as part of the design. Listen phoned Mary Perpich, manager of consumer affairs for Pepsi Cola U.S.A., and learned that indeed, Pepsi may consider getting into the act too. Perpich says the company has been approached by several clothing manufacturers over the years, but never made any commitments. “But now that Coke has a fashion collection, we’ve been approached again. It isn’t out of the question.”
If her new jewelry purchases are a hint, actress Carrie Fisher could be thinking of a new career as a fashion designer. She stopped off at the Arlene Altman jewelry boutique in Theodore and bought herself a pair of gold earrings that look exactly like gold zippers. (She must be thinking couture.) Carol Chase of the shop adds that Fisher also bought a pair of earrings shaped just like gold screws. (The better to repair her sewing machine.)
While replenishing our stationery supply at Neiman-Marcus the other day, we noticed a spectacular note card that had an otherworldly aura. It was an unusual, pale silvery gray with a small, out-of-this-world violet inset in which the abstract initials E.T. were placed. The envelope lining was lavender. “That’s what we want,” we told the salesperson. “Just put our initials there instead of E.T.’s.” “Can’t be done,” we were told. “That’s a special design for a special customer, and it can’t be given to anyone else.” Call the manager, we demanded, and out came Michael Anderson, the department’s major-domo. “Sorry,” he said. “I designed that for E.T., and it cannot be duplicated for anyone else, although I’ll be happy to design something else for you.” At this point, we decided to phone Steven Spielberg and ask if E.T. was indeed shopping at Neiman-Marcus these days, or whether he was up there where Spielberg last sent him. But Anderson stopped us. “There are other E.T.s in the world,” he smiled, “and Elizabeth Taylor is one of them.” Of course, we replied. We knew it all the time.
‘I’m calling from a pay phone,” Marianna Lucido whispered from her Cosmic Curl hair salon on Washington Boulevard in Venice. “Christopher Atkins is here having his hair permed, and I don’t want him to hear me talking about him. It might embarrass him.” It turns out that Atkins, the erstwhile “Dallas” regular, spent three hours having his Cosmic Curls put in place that day. He needs them for a television musical variety show he is hosting, explains Stephanie Lucido (Marianna’s sister and business partner), who actually put in the curls. She adds that Atkins’ agent liked the look so much he now has his own Cosmic Curls.
Britt Ekland went in like a lamb but came out like a lion on the day she shopped at L’Aspect in the Beverly Center. Edward Alvarez, the store’s in-house designer, tells Listen that Ekland headed straight for a jungle-print safari suit with shorts and a matching shirt. She bought a beige linen duster to wear over it. Then she headed for a flock of exotic-bird-print styles and perched a pants outfit in her package before she paid her bill and flew out of the shop.
Designer Yves Saint Laurent grabbed all the headlines for his recent fall couture collection in Paris, but it was Guy Laroche who nabbed the French fashion industry’s prestigious Gold Thimble award. Laroche was singled out for designing “the most beautiful, creative and elegant collection” of the season. Some of his looks included velvet sheaths covered in satin and black suits. The couturier picked up the award for the first time in his 36-year career, which included three years of free-lance designing on Seventh Avenue before he opened his own couture house in Paris in 1957. Most of his fellow couturiers have won the Cartier-designed, eight-inch thimble at least once.
Hang onto your hats. Dr. Jules Stein’s widow, Doris Jones Stein, did. And now, for her trouble, she has a costume and textile center at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art named for her. The Doris Stein Research and Design Center will open late this year. Among the 109 hats Stein donated (along with $800,000) are some 40 examples by Schiaparelli, Lilly Dache, Jeanne Lanvin and others that Stein has been saving since the late 1930s. These will be added to the museum’s hat collection, which already includes more than 2,000 items, dating from the 18th Century.
From our It Pays to Be Beautiful file: It even pays to be semi-beautiful. Audi England, a high school senior from Lakewood, N.J., collected a $50,000 modeling contract from the Elite agency when she was named a semifinalist in the agency’s “The Look of the Year” contest. She was one of 65,000 competing for the title. But England’s prize is a mere drop in the beauty bucket compared with what first-place winner Frederique van de Wal of Holland collected. Her share is a two-year contract worth $200,000 in bookings from Elite. Not to be overlooked is Kimberly Jon Adams of Los Angeles. She was judged as the closest thing to the look of the year. Second prize and a $125,000 contract with Elite went to Adams. The whole event, hosted by Jayne Kennedy and Andrew Stevens, took place on the island of Mauritius near Madagascar.
