Feet in the Footlights
You might call it a soapy shoe show at the Beverly Hilton Hotel when the Italian Trade Commission gathered up cast members of “Falcon Crest,” “Dynasty” and “The Colbys” to model shoes made in Italy. After the show, one question remained: What do Emma Samms, Ted McGinley, John Callahan and Claire Yarlett wear on their feet in real life? Flats by Carrano, loafers by Cole-Hahn, sneakers and “thin sandals that weren’t Italian,” says shoe sleuth Cindy Zlatkin, who helped organize the show.
After-Hours Shopper
Robert Altman had the store to himself when he went shopping after hours at Wilder Place the other night. Listen hears from shop owner Jill Wilder that Altman appeared at her door while she was uncrating a collection of papier-mache jewelry by designer Nina Meledandri. “He said he had to leave for Montreal in the morning so I let him in,” Wilder reports. He chose a serpent-design necklace for his wife, Wilder says.
AIDS Benefit
If you see Joan Rivers at the Rosamund Felsen art gallery tonight and she asks: “Can we talk?” she probably won’t be joking. Rivers is special guest at an AIDS benefit. Other luminaries on the VIP list for this “Artists Against Aids” evening are David Hockney, Ed Ruscha and Lita Albuquerque. Tickets are $150, reservations are required, and the dress is black tie optional.
Firm Still on Its Toes
Obviously the executives at Capezio think Los Angeles is only a hop, skip and a jump away from New York. So they threw a second party here Thursday night to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the company. (The first was staged earlier this year in New York.) As with any good birthday gathering, there was food, fun and special prizes. They went to Rudolf Nureyev, Bob Fosse, Jac Venza and Fred Astaire, who, as recipients of the company’s 1987 dance awards, received $5,000 each. All very nice, but what we found intriguing was the information that Salvatore Capezio was only 16 years old when he opened a shoe repair shop across from the Metropolitan Opera House in 1887. In 1910, still not letting any grass grow under his feet, he created a pair of toe shoes for ballerina Anna Pavlova, who, we are told, “publicly expressed her delight at the results.” The Capezio-L.A. connection dates back to 1934, when a store opened here.
Post-Oscar Note
And the name of the designer is . . . Bob Mackie. For those longing to know, he’s the man who created Oprah Winfrey’s Oscar-night gown. Daniel Orlandi, Mackie’s assistant, tells us from New York that he originally met Winfrey when the designer appeared on the popular talk-show hostess’s program last December. The black jersey gown, decorated with silver and turquoise jewels on the top and two rhinestone bands running down the front, was about four weeks in the making. This is the first Mackie design for Winfrey, “but hopefully not the last,” Orlandi tells us.
Designs on Winning
You might say “Platoon” producer Arnold Kopelson’s wife, Anne, has herself a lucky dress designer. She wore evening gowns by Ronald Mann to the recent Golden Globe and the Oscar events and walked off on the arm of an award winner. Both times, selecting the outfit was a Kopelson co-production. For the newer dress, of red satin and lace, the couple went shopping at Neiman-Marcus and from there phoned designer Mann, asking that he meet them at the store. They’d seen one gown of his that they liked and wanted to look at others, Mann recalls. “It was Mr. Kopelson who decided on the red dress,” Mann says. “He has a large influence over the color and the style she buys.”
If the Shoe Fits . . .
It wasn’t exactly what Thom McAn had in mind when the shoe maker ran a Marilyn Monroe look-alike contest to celebrate its new line of Marilyn Monroe-inspired pumps, priced about $20 to $25. The recent competition in Daytona Beach yielded six finalists, including one husky young man named Jack Fife. The contest was aired on MTV, with viewers voting on a 900 call-in line. They voted for Fife--with 66% of the vote. “None of the women were even close,” spokesman Joy Donahue tells Listen, describing the winner as “a big bruiser, but really cute.” Donahue says the contest was so “hang loose” that no one even found out which town in Ohio the man is from, or what he does. All she could tell Listen was that Fife did accept the $500 diamond earrings offered as the prize.
