Fashion 87 : Young Talents Have Designs on West Coast Ready-to-Wear Scene

This city’s reputation for sportswear and starlet wear is in good, young hands with the new crop of design talents now entering the fashion scene. They have gathered here from San Francisco, Washington, New York and Paris--even Bakersfield--consciously choosing Los Angeles over more Establishment fashion cities.

As if to shatter a myth once and for all that designers worth their salt only set up shop in Paris or New York, these young Californians now say their West Coast address makes them all the more attractive to the East. Even novices with only two or three collections to their credit are finding their way into the swankiest, most competitive of New York specialty stores. Despite the warm reception there, these designers prefer life along the Pacific.

Things indigenous to the city itself seem to work overtime for these fresh talents. Their artist-designer credentials look particularly solid next to the city’s current image as the world’s most active art center. Several of them were students of painting or sculpture, instead of fashion design. And the emerging designers of ready-to-wear, who started out creating costumes for film and television, have Hollywood’s glamorous-dressing tradition as a strong reference point for their potential out-of-state buyers.

Apparently without planning, this long-acclaimed home of un fashion has taken its place among the fashion centers of the world. And rather than acquiesce, Los Angeles has managed to keep its own look along the way.

Ronald Mann is among new ready-to-wear designers who started out styling clothes for TV, after he studied theater costume design at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa. Last year’s miniseries “Call to Glory” carried Mann’s name among the credits.

This spring, Mann is styling his second ready-to-wear collection. Dinner and evening outfits are his specialty. The clothes range in price from $1,600 to $5,000.

Mann’s styles shimmer, sparkle and skirt the floor with all the drama of Hollywood costumes made for entrances and stage appearances. But, he says he intends to design clothes that women outside Hollywood will wear. He is selling his spring collection at Bullocks Wilshire, Saks, Neiman-Marcus in Beverly Hills and Lou Lattimore in Dallas.

Karl Logan introduced himself as a solo act about 18 months ago. This spring he is scheduled to be featured in New York at Barney’s, a sizzler among Gotham’s fashion hot shops.

He worked for several large fashion companies on Seventh Avenue before he opened his own business here. But he calls Marcia Isreal, founder of Southern California’s Judy’s stores, his mentor. He worked for her when he was a student.

Logan’s romantic sportswear mixes super-modern petticoated short skirts with long retro jackets, fitted through the torso and flanged at the shoulder, to suggest a draped ‘50s-style debutante dress. Prices range from about $100 to $240, and his styles are available at Emphasis and Harari in Los Angeles as well as L.A. Rhythms in Sherman Oaks.

“I want to develop classics within my own collections,” Logan explains when he points out that certain of his designs, including a soft, packable one-size coat, are recast every season. “We all have treasures in our closet. Things we’ve been wearing for years. I admire that.”

James Tarantino is a San Franciscan who apprenticed with Chester Weinberg in New York after attending Parsons School of Design there. A year and half ago he opened his business in Los Angeles. In September he won the Rising Star award, which is given to one designer each year by the Costume Council of the L.A. County Museum of Art and the California Fashion Mart.

Tarantino’s all-linen spring collection is cut close to the body and has a distinctively architectural look about it. Jackets are styled to suggest a cropped vest underneath. Dresses have diamond-shaped cutouts, either across the midriff or the back. Built-in belts help define Tarantino’s body-conscious look as well. “I like playing with shapes,” he says. “I don’t like big, baggy clothes.”

Tarantino chose Los Angeles as his base for the same reason most younger designers do. “You can have a personal life here,” he says. “The weather isn’t a problem. And it’s easier to set up a business.”

Modasport in Beverly Hills and Tango Club in Newport Beach carry Tarantino’s spring line. Prices range from about $150 to $300.

Rafael Montealegre says: “I’m not trying to capture an L.A. look. That calls too many cliche images to mind. I like city dressing more than beach, casual dressing.”

He studied sculpture at the Rhode Island School of Design and owned his own boutique before he focused his attention on fashion design.

The inspiration for his dress style is not Europe or the conservative streets of his native Washington. “I like to watch old movies,” he says. “I watch them with the sound off so I don’t get distracted.” He is concentrating on the costumes.

Montealegre’s show-stopping number for spring is a silky white skirt, tiered and ruffled to just above the knee. He teams it with a navy blue cropped jacket for a nautical look. A crinkled-jersey pantsuit from the same collection has wide, easy trousers and a long jacket. His prices range from $45 to $160, and his clothes are sold at Fred Segal as well as the Tango Club.

Leslie Gayle Karten is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. She studied fine arts, but her temperament demands more functional products.

Karten also studied costume design and went on to dress the TV sitcoms “All in the Family” and “Archie Bunker’s Place,” as well as Francis Ford Coppola’s feature film, “One From the Heart.” Then, she says: “I lost the passion for it. There’s a passion aspect that has to be there in everything I do.”

When she started her own small-scale fashion line last January, she took Zandra Rhodes, London’s artist-designer, as her inspiration. “I want my clothes to be part of the same genre as hers, classic but different,” Karten says.

One of Karten’s first collections centered around a man-tailored shirt with a bib of old, assorted buttons. Her earliest designs went to Neiman-Marcus in Beverly Hills and Bendel in New York. She also styled a separate collection for Lina Lee. These are still among her accounts. Her prices range from about $100 to $170.

Unlike most designers who offer their styles in a dozen or so colors, Karten offers her spring line in ecru with black only. She tacks silky, near-sheer black ruffles to the hem of a knitted ecru-colored tube skirt. She inserts the same ruffled black silkiness to one corner of a knitted, cropped top. Her sweater dressing style, while very casual, echoes Victorian primness and femininity.

She says her designs are a reflection of her. “The clothes have a disciplined wildness,” she believes. “But they’re comfortable looking and casual.”

Marcella Saint-Amant came to fashion after a modeling career in Paris. She worked as a house model for Hubert de Givenchy. Her knitted sweaters and skirts are intended to be “clothes that fit like a soft glove.” Her spring collection, her first, is available at Weathervane in Santa Monica, Mr G in Beverly Hills and Van Dusen-Green in Encino at prices that range from $70 to $300.

Saint-Amant has a strong impression of the Los Angeles fashion look. Clothes are more body conscious, more often shown in pastel colors and insistently comfortable to wear, she says.

A recent transplant to Santa Monica, she says she has already adjusted to a let-it-be approach to fashion and so much else here. She says: “I’m not trying to educate the public about how to dress. That is the last thing on my mind. I just make what pleases me.”