New York Guru of After-five Attire Attracts Special Clientele

The world of Fabrice is slanted toward the night. The designer dresses p.m. glitter, even for day, choosing dinner jacket and slacks for an afternoon interview.

“It’s a little overdressed,” he says, looking down at his white brocades. “But I love to be overdressed.”

To dissect the ascent of this Haitian-born designer, one need look no further than the hours he prefers. When starting in fashion a decade ago, he barely acknowledged daylight.

“I had an incredible night life,” the New York designer says. “I was out every night, sleeping during the day. That was my life. So whenever I pictured someone wearing a Fabrice, of course it would be for evening.”

Fabrice’s flashy $2,000-to-$8,000 evening gowns have been known to appear the same evening on different backs; for example, models Cheryl Tiegs and Christie Brinkley came to one black-tie event identically Fabrice-clad some years back. At recent July 4th Statue of Liberty festivities in New York, Shirley MacLaine, Cicely Tyson, Barry Manilow and Peter Allen all wore his designs, says Fabrice, who also entered menswear last year.

Known for buoyant color and hand beading, the designs Fabrice showed at the Maxfield boutique last week ranged from architectural cocktail dresses to flowing gowns. He calls himself a “post-modern designer,” lately taken with sweeping Grace Kelly looks, graffiti-splashed bustiers and tuxedo-themed gowns.

“The sexiest dress is usually cut like menswear but shaped to fit a woman,” he says of his tuxedo-collared, cut-to-the-waist gowns. “Women love that.

“I do feminine,” he adds, “but I don’t do bows and ruffles.”

Fabrice’s work captures a sophisticated moment in fashion--it’s lively, classic and not innocent. He thinks his boldness comes from a Haitian background: “Haitian art has a primitive, aggressive look,” he says in his Caribbean lilt.

The grandson of a Haitian ambassador to France, he grew up in a Port-au-Prince suburb until his family moved to New York when he was 14. Fabrice studied textiles at Fashion Institute of Technology, then designed fabrics before introducing his own hand-painted evening collection in the mid-1970s.

His early designs (he says he’s been inspired by Christian Dior and Zandra Rhodes) found acceptance at New York’s Bergdorf Goodman.

Now 35, Fabrice says he feels “secure” enough to carry out his design whims. “I just feel comfortable right now to do whatever I feel and to do it right. This is actually the beginning of probably the best stuff I will do.”

Part of that security means making menswear--although he thinks his efforts are ahead of the market.

“I don’t think the menswear industry is ready for me yet, because I’m doing menswear in a couture manner, where things are all made by hand and fabrics are very expensive.” Translated: Men don’t like to pay $2,000 for a tuxedo--luxurious hand braiding or not.

“I’m designing menswear to accommodate my own life style. But somehow, by the time I’m finished and I have to price it, it becomes a little too expensive for most people,” he says, a little miffed.

“It’s going to take a while to educate the male clientele.”

No such problem with women, however, whose appetites for the costly gowns show no sign of subsiding, he says.

“Most of my women customers have a lot of money. What can I tell you? They have a style of life that requires a lot of dressing.”

Fabrice won’t divulge sales figures but says collections are growing in size as well as intricacy. His early work didn’t zip, snap or button, Fabrice says, “but now I have a staff of people who can spend time building anything that comes to my mind.”

The suggestion that he’s at the stage of needing a design assistant turns his usual good humor into a jitter.

“I should. But I don’t think I can think of letting anybody work on something with my name on it,” he says. “It’s a very touchy subject for me. I want to see a woman wearing my dress.”

Design, Fabrice concedes, is “a lot of ego.”