Actress Brooke Adams recently took her friend...

Actress Brooke Adams recently took her friend Phoebe Cates shopping at the North Beach Leather store (Madison Avenue, not Sunset Strip, branch), and together they bought identical, shirred-front cocktail dresses. We hear from Romie Davis, a spokeswoman for the store, that the two friends promised to check with each other before wearing the dress. “In order to avoid fashion’s greatest embarrassment,” Davis says. Can you guess what that is?

Ever-versatile Jeff Hamilton, whose name you may recognize for his menswear designs, will be the first to tell you. These days, he’s got other fish to fry. Hamilton recently styled outfits for a chef, a set of waiters and waitresses and the parking valets for Bocca, a new restaurant in Los Angeles. “I’m a co-owner,” Hamilton explains, adding that he made the outfits, all variations on hand-painted, pink “marbleized” leather mixed with white cotton, to match the “pink marble pastel” decor of the room.

Courteney Cox, a leading egghead on the “Misfits of Science” TV series, is about to plug the long-running-in-L.A. play “Tamara.” And nobody even planned it. Turns out Cox will appear in a party scene on the science sitcom wearing an oversize T-shirt with scenes from “Tamara” outlined in rhinestones on the front. The TV show’s costumer, Nancy Renard, says she found the shirt at Fred Segal and chose it for Courteney just because she liked it. Courteney, who has seen the play, says it’s now her favorite T.

When a customer walked into the Grau boutique singing to himself, the store music stopped. “The tape we were playing had just ended, and I was too busy to change it, so I said to the guy: ‘Could you sing a little louder because I don’t have time to run back and fix the music,’ ” recalls Lisa Kramer of the Melrose Avenue store. That’s how she met Michael Jackson’s brother, Randy. But she really didn’t know who he was until after he tried on a shirt by store designer Claudia Grau, decided to buy it and gave Kramer his charge card, she says. “I’ve been a big fan of the Jackson Five, but I still didn’t get it,” she confesses. “So I asked Randy for more ID, and he gave me his driver’s license, and when I saw his picture all the pieces of the puzzle finally fit.” Jackson also bought a sleeveless dress with a drop waist, Kramer tells Listen. It was for a girlfriend who was shopping with him.

When we sighted Mayor Tom Bradley in a red-orange jogging suit, smiling as he perched atop an exercise bicycle on a billboard at La Cienega Boulevard and Stocker Street, Listen nearly drove off the road. His Honor, it seems, put on his workout duds to pose for a picture now plastered on 25 billboards around town promoting the upcoming L.A. Marathon. The billboard is one of those “cutout” numbers in which the subject extends beyond the usual billboard plane. On first sighting, it’s quite an eye-opener.

If Frank Sinatra had happened to stop by the Plunket-Keys boutique the other day, he would have recognized at least three familiar faces. His daughters, Tina and Nancy, and his first wife, Nancy, were all shopping at once. They were buying dress-up clothes in black, we hear from the store’s designer, David Keys. Nancy “senior” bought a black silk taffeta jacket. Nancy “junior” chose a black lame suit. “And Tina bought the most,” Keys tells Listen. She chose two beaded outfits in black and gold, one in black and silver, a black silk-organza cocktail dress with gold lace and a gold leather jacket. “She asked me to make a couple of other things for her,” Keys adds. You guessed it, folks. She ordered them in black.

We thought we’d heard enough rehashing and predicting about the New Year--until we learned of a comment from Los Angeles designer Anne Cole. The swimsuit designer told New York’s Eleanor Lambert that she regards Giorgio Armani as 1985’s most influential fashion force. Not so provocative. But then she added that Princess Diana had been a negative fashion influence due to “her confused fight against royal dress regulations. The result was a childish cross between a British Mod and a youngster dressed up in mother’s finery,” Cole said. And here we thought the princess was the cat’s meow.

It takes more than a Marty Award to prompt Michael Alesko to dress up. The designer for Seattle-based International News menswear arrived in black sweat shirt, boutonniere, slacks and high-top tennies for the award ceremony, which is the California Mart’s annual tribute to the best West Coast menswear designers. “Since this is a formal occasion, I brought my very special formal attire,” the bearded, teddy-bearish Alesko told Mart menswear director Ron Arden. When Alesko was announced winner at the Monday night affair, beating six other nominees, he strolled up and down the runway, his white shirttails dragging six inches below his sweat shirt. The veteran designer says he gave up suits years ago. “The last few years, I’m pretty much what you see,” he shrugged. “I’m probably overdressed, don’t you think?”

How are clothes chosen to grace the covers of record albums? Sometimes quite by accident, it seems, as in the recent case of Patti LaBelle. LaBelle, who’s known for her love of shoes, recently asked DiFiori owner Orson Mozes if he would bring a batch of shoes from his Beverly Hills shop over to a record studio where she was cutting a new album. Mozes says he not only showed up with a selection of shoes, he also arrived with some of the leather designs his store carries. LaBelle bought a pair of black stamped leather boots and then fell in love with a matching jacket and handbag. Then, according to Mozes, LaBelle said she’d be wearing the jacket for her album cover’s photo session. When the record company paid the bill, Mozes figured she wasn’t kidding. Listen wanted to know, however, whether LaBelle was sporting that wild Art Deco hairdo that’s almost become her trademark of late. Mozes said: “Her hair was just normal, it was in curls coming down around her shoulders. In real life, she’s not as flamboyant as she is on stage.”

Tough life when you’ve got to wrap up in the full-length fur coat your sweetie gave you for Christmas so you can go clothes shopping--with him--for a trip East you’re taking together. This was the script handed to Vickie Steves, real-life leading lady of Mark Goddard, who plays Derek on “General Hospital.” Goddard took Steves to L’Aspect, the women’s clothing boutique in the Beverly Center, we hear from Edward Alvarez of the shop. And she spent about $2,500 on “a couple of leather separates,” along with a black, cut-velvet and silk organza evening dress, Alvarez tells Listen. “She wanted them for New York,” he adds. If only every script could be so sweet.