Fashion 87 : Oscar Night a Showcase for Top Designers

Never mind who designs the stars’ clothes for Oscar night. The question is: Do the stars pay for them?

Well, no, not too often.

Kathleen Turner, Jane Fonda, Marlee Matlin and Sigourney Weaver reportedly will attend the March 30 awards in gowns with four-digit price tags supplied by top designers.

The total number of fashion freebies to be handed out to the actresses, actors, screenwriters, songwriters, directors, producers and others who are after an Oscar this year may never be told.

Lavish Donations

As the designers see it, their lavish donations for such a well-publicized event are good business.

Geoffrey Beene explains: “It’s an honor.” Here’s how the honor was bestowed on Beene:

“ She called me ,” the New York designer says of a recent conversation with Sigourney Weaver. It was followed by a personal visit.

“I showed her the whole collection and asked: ‘Is there anything that pleases you?’ ” he recalls. “She said ‘this,’ and went right to the black dress.”

Weaver chose a strapless gown of black silk crepe with a white satin peplum. A dress as long and narrow as the wearer herself. “Stately,” to use Beene’s word.

“There’s a coat,” he adds. “She needed one for protection.” It is a silk faille evening coat in a black-and-white geometric print from his latest collection.

Beene is prepared to withhold the bill. “We haven’t even spoken of the price,” he says. “If she asks, I will be happy to give her the dress.”

Jane Fonda is going to the Oscar gala in an older gown, albeit a giveaway.

“Jane will wear a dress Valentino gave her in 1980 when she was in Rome,” Fonda spokesman Stephen Rivers reports.

Fonda has already worn the dress on television, Rivers says. It is a one-shoulder, ruffled style in black silk and velvet that the actress first wore to co-host a Los Angeles Olympics variety show.

Of all the designers dressing the Oscar nominees this year, Valentino deserves a special place for his willingness to contribute so much to so

many. There is his gift to Fonda--one of several dresses he has given

her in the past. Beyond that, both Willem Dafoe and his not-nominated girlfriend, Elizabeth LeCompte, have recently paid a call to Valentino’s New York offices.

Dafoe took home two Valentino tuxedos--one double breasted, one single breasted--along with a pleated shirt and several varieties of bow ties and cummerbunds.

“I lent them to him,” says Cathy Glendon of GFT (Gruppo Finanzianio Tessile), a company that distributes Valentino fashions in the United States. Once Dafoe decides on the suit, Glendon says: “He can borrow it, or he might want to buy it.” She can get it for him wholesale.

Along with Dafoe’s Valentino, says Nella Gomez of the Rome-based designer’s Manhattan showroom, “he requested that his girlfriend wear Valentino too.” She has tentatively selected an outfit that the designer will lend to her, if she decides to wear it, Gomez says.

It seems most actors nominated for awards are wearing a tux to the show. Michael Caine’s London tailor, Douglas Hayward, says he imagines his regular customer of 25 years will wear his newest, single-breasted dinner suit, for which Caine has paid.

Caine will wear it, that is, if he attends the Oscar event at all. The actor is in the Bahamas filming “Jaws IV” and might not be free on Oscar-presentations night.

As for the bill, Hayward says: “It’s simple, we don’t discuss it. He just pays me. Michael isn’t into that other game.”

Caine’s way of shopping is unusual. “He calls and tells me he needs a suit, and I take care of the rest,” says Hayward, who keeps Caine’s measurements on file in his Mount Street shop. “Michael doesn’t care about clothes. I have to drag him in for fittings.”

In contrast, Dexter Gordon, the jazz musician who is up for an acting Oscar this year, cares deeply. For the upcoming event, he says he will probably wear the outfit he wore to the New York Film Festival last fall.

“My designer made me a tuxedo that’s a little different than the usual,” Gordon says. “It has a gambler’s necktie.”

The tie, Gordon’s designer, Arthur McGee, corrects, “is more Lord Byron than gambler.” It goes with a black-and-white tweed dinner jacket, a high-cut satin vest and pants with elastic-back waistband like Gordon always wears.

“He wants comfort first,” says the New York-based McGee, who says he is also designing a dress to be worn Oscar night by Gordon’s wife, Maxine, another longtime customer.

Regarding billing the Gordons, McGee says:

“Everybody who gets clothes from me pays for them. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

William Hurt recently bought and paid for a classic tux at Italian designer Giorgio Armani’s New York showroom, an Armani representative says. It is likely, though not certain, that he will wear it to the Oscars.

To avoid look-alikes among actresses nominated for awards this year, costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge has been enlisted to coordinate their outfits. (She will also help with a stage presentation for the Best Costume Design segment of this year’s show, she says.)

Aldredge, who took home an Oscar for “The Great Gatsby” costumes in 1974, says she gives only the broadest guidelines to nominees who ask her advice about what to wear.

“I suggest a color for them, so we can avoid having six people in the same red,” she explains. “Otherwise I say do what you like, just make it elegant.”

Aldredge actually encourages the talent to do as she suggested to Sigourney Weaver: “A lot of people will go to the fashion houses and the designers will give them the dress,” Aldredge says without pause. “It’s good for the designers too.”

Aldredge herself is styling a lavender lace dress for nominee Marlee Matlin. She says she will not include a bill. It is Victorian-like, ankle length but shorter in front, fitted through the bodice with a low neckline and long sleeves.

It seems accepting fashion arrangements is common practice in Hollywood. Big-name entertainers wear clothes supplied by a certain designer or shop in return for a written credit, often listed on screen.

Stars and designers have often worked together with or without pay. For years, Johnny Carson credited Oleg Cassini for his talk-show wardrobe.

Kathleen Turner’s fashion arrangement with Italian designer Nino Cerruti is several years old. He supplies her with gifts of clothes for many occasions, reports the designer’s press liaison Francoise Pommaret.

As an Oscar nominee this year, Turner will attend the gala event wearing a midnight-blue gown that Cerruti gave her, Pommaret says. The gown, which Cerruti designed exclusively for Turner, has an open back and a deep V-neckline. The skirt is very full.

“She likes to take long strides when she walks,” Cerruti explains. He says Turner will wear the dress with jewelry her mother gave her.

Cerruti designed and constructed Turner’s gown from Europe, because he was preparing his fall ready-to-wear collection for his semiannual fashion show and could not get away to meet her in the States, he says. They worked from sketches he sent her.

Most performers seem intent on revealing their true self to the Oscar-event camera. But Tess Harper has another idea. “I’m dressing to play a role, an image I had as a child of the actress going to the Oscars,” she says.

“Fantasy is the aspect I want to represent that night.”

A mutual friend introduced Harper to Hollywood costume designer Robert Turturice, who dresses Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis for “Moonlighting.” He styled Harper’s Oscar-night outfit.

Turturice decribes the dress as Grecian inspired in three shades of gray chiffon with a beaded cord around the waist.

He even made the jewelry, of crystal and dark gray beads strung on clear wire so that they appear to float. Turturice also designed a dress for Oscar nominee-songwriter Cynthia Weil to wear this year.

Turturice, who resists talking about the financial arrangements for his designs, will only talk about his usual payment system: “The norm is, I bill for the cost of the dress separate from the cost of my own services.”

For women atending the Oscars, Turturice says: “You need the drama of a long skirt for that long walk across the stage. A dress with very broad shoulders can look out of proportion on camera.”