Mariette Hartley really believes in those cameras...

Mariette Hartley really believes in those cameras she used to sell on TV. She went shopping on Melrose Avenue the other day and brought along the camera and a friend. The real fun began when they got to the Claudia Grau boutique. Lisa Kramer of the shop says the two women tried on hats, scarfs and a blazer from Grau’s collection of sportswear made with antique kimono fabrics. “It turned into playtime,” Kramer says. “When they had on their favorite hats and scarfs, they asked me to go outside and take their pictures.”

It appears that Claudia Grau’s kimono clothes tickle the fancy of actress Karen Allen as well. Kramer tells us Allen bought a blazer, shirt and dress and came back the next day wearing her new clothes. She had decided she wanted a pair of kimono-fabric pants to add to her collection.

Look at the thanks he gets. Hair stylist Allen Edwards restyled Donna Mills’ hair from a long, layered fall to a crisp, bevel-edged bob. She won the “1985 Stylemaker of the Year” award from the National Hairdressers and Cosmetologists Assn., because so many women around the country came into their salons and demanded the “Donna” look for themselves. And what happened? Edwards, who told us all of the above, reports that Mills is now letting her hair grow back to shoulder length. “She doesn’t want to wear it short,” he says. “It just isn’t her.” But there are no hard feelings. Edwards says Mills brought him up on stage with her when she accepted the award and gave him full credit for his part. And as he figures it: “She got the award, but we both got the prestige.”

When Vanessa Williams was hired by Royal Silk Ltd. to model in two of its catalogues last summer, it was in the midst of her troubles with the Miss America beauty pageant over sexually explicit photographs that appeared in Penthouse magazine. “It didn’t bother us,” Royal Silk vice president Gerry Pike says. In fact, Pike reports that the company received many more letters of approval than disapproval from the public. And he says the clothes Williams modeled became top sellers. One blouse she wore in the February, 1985, catalogue (a classic silk “T”), became the company’s No. 1 best seller of the month. So it’s no surprise that Royal Silk has hired Williams to model again, in both the October and November catalogues. Pike says her “intelligent” green eyes “cement” a reader’s attention to a page and that she gives a “sense of character to a garment.”

Teri Copley, the TV actress with the whispery voice, was lured into the Azar Woods shop by a pair of leopard-print pants she saw in the window, we hear from designer-owner Wayne Woods. But she left with two custom orders in the works. One, Woods says, is an oversize, man-tailored, white organza shirt with melon-colored dots, to wear with white satin Capri pants. The other is a sheer black shirt with black-coin dots on it to wear with black velvet Capris. “She likes the Brigitte Bardot look,” Woods says. “Everything she orders is tight and shape-y.”

More from Azar Woods: George Harrison’s wife, Olivia, on a recent stop at the shop, chose a metal, robot-head pin as a gift for her husband. “She loves jewelry,” Woods says, adding that a shipment of necklaces arrived in the shop while she was choosing the pin. “When she saw a necklace made of turquoise, crystal and rhinestones, she said she had to have it,” Woods says. “She bought it right out of the box.”

Despite multiple nominations, singer David Lee Roth came up empty-handed at the recent MTV Awards. But Listen has decided that Roth was the show’s hands-down fashion winner. His midriff-baring tuxedo--in a Hawaiian print, no less--was topped with a pile of leis. Listen’s honorable mention goes to Eddie Murphy, but not for that strange, bulky, double-sweater outfit he wore. His introduction of Sting as “a true innovator and a natural brunet” made our sequin-weary day.

On Emmy night you might notice comedian Billy Crystal’s wife, appropriately clad in crystals. It seems she ordered her outfit from Ellene Warren especially for the occasion. Warren says Janice Crystal will wear a pink silk suit encrusted in crystals--and pearls--with pink chiffon inserts in the sleeves. What will Billy say? “You Look Mah-velous,” Warren predicts, to quote the title of his record album.

Max Imgruth, the Swiss businessman who invented the Swatch watch, has found a way to make Christmas time fly. He’s come up with a Christmas Swatch. It’s called the Limelight, and it’s described by spokesman Harry Clein as “an upscale, limited edition, holiday version of a Swatch watch with some diamonds and some other stones.” Clein didn’t want to say much more, because the whole project is supposed to be under wraps until Imgruth himself gets to town at month’s end and unveils his holiday timepiece at a “premiere” at the Wiltern Theatre. But we had to know the bottom line--and here it is: $100.

You’ve heard about Constant Shoppers? Well, Denise Smith, who runs the Flair boutique in Encino, says she’s run across the Most Constant One yet. Smith says comedian David Steinberg’s wife, Judy, came back every day for one week after the shop reopened in its new Plaza de Oro location. But don’t worry about big bills, David. Smith says your wife bought “little things” each time. One day it was a digital watch with rhinestones ($25), another day it was “a few simple little togs” for your child. Oh, and then there were the blouses . . . .