We hear the clotheshorse set is excitedly...

We hear the clotheshorse set is excitedly waiting for Paul Mazursky’s new satire, “Down and Out in Beverly Hills.” And why not? The film has to be about them as much as it’s about anything else. Richard Dreyfuss, after all, plays a slick kajillionaire who made his fortune in . . . hangers. And Bette Midler, for heaven’s sake, plays the hanger-maven’s Beverly Hills princess-of-a-wife. Bets are being made that Midler wears at least a few things worthy of Rodeo Drive. And what’s more, we hear that L.A. fashion designer Irene Tsu is in the film, playing a neighbor of the hanger-rich couple, and that Tsu wears one of her own outfits on screen. It’s a three-piece aqua silk brocade suit with camisole top, sarong skirt and jacket. Tsu also designed the “Down and Out” T-shirts being worn by the crew.

Jamie Lee Curtis, wearing jeans, a T-shirt and suffering from a cold, walked into Aprons Only Etc. on Santa Monica Place and hurriedly custom-ordered two white butcher aprons as gifts, both with mysterious messages. One read: “D’ King Fish.” The other message was so strange, owner Bobbie Boschan can’t even remember it, except that it was in French and contained the word poisson, which means fish.

‘Crazy in the Night” singer Kim Carnes went zany in the daytime this week over some undies she found in Melons on Melrose. Owner Barbara McCoy says Carnes came in and spotted the man-style briefs by Swipes, which come in 15 colors. She bought five of each color, at $4 per pair, McCoy says, tabulating to a grand total of 75 pairs. This may not exactly qualify Carnes for the Guinness Book of World Records, but on the other hand, it tops any briefs encounter we’ve catalogued in this column. Says McCoy: “She bought out all the small sizes we had.”

Hot dang. Ralph Lauren, that old cowpoke, is at it again. This time the Seventh Avenue rustler is resurrecting, of all things, dungarees. Jeans may be out, he figures, but a rose by any other name may smell more sweet. So he’s taking full-page ads, in glorious black and white, to tout this “new” denim invention of his. And the kids in his dungaree ads are positively 1954--teens with “East of Eden” and “State Fair” hair styles, leaning on old picket fences and looking as if they can’t wait to get behind the barn and steal a smoke. We understand. But then again, we remember real dungarees. And trips behind the barn. If Lauren can bring this one off (and he just might), we’ll throw away our stirrup pants and hit the malt shops again.