He’s a Hot Dog
Spuds, that bulldog with the black eye who’s been whooping it up like one of the boys in the Budweiser TV commercials, is about to have a change in image. For an upcoming series of ads, Spuds will dress like an international playboy, Listen hears from Wanda Fudge. She’s designed a new set of costumes for the dapper dog, including a bikini bathing suit, a wet suit, a yachting outfit with traditional blue blazer, a formal tuxedo and, for lounging, a silk paisley robe with a white ascot. Spuds is already getting into the part. Fudge says the beast pulls up in a stretch limousine when keeping appointments for fittings at her Melrose Avenue store, Kids In Costumes. She’s had fun putting on the dog, but the job comes with its challenges. “There’s a great deal of careful engineering involved,” she says. “I can’t forget the extra hole for the tail.”
THE NAME IS RELATIVE
The shopper, buying four pairs of Fogal stockings at $34 a pair, said she came from Chicago to visit her sister. But it wasn’t until afterward that she finally dropped her relative’s name. “Her sister turned out to be Marlee Matlin,” Joan Wills of the Fogal shop tells Listen.
IN THE SWIM
For her new movie, “Take Two,” actress Robin Mattson (“Santa Barbara” soap fans know her as Gina) is playing a swimwear designer who models her own suits. It’s a role she’ll base on real -life L.A. designer/model Brenda Welch. Mattson first spied Welch on the cover of a fashion magazine, and she will wear six of the designer’s latest styles in the movie. They range from a ‘40s-inspired, one-piece suit with rhinestones dangling from the shoulder straps to two-piece suits made to be worn rolled down from the waistline to who knows where. (Mattson’s spokeswoman, Deborah Kelman, says Welch has designed suits for Cher and Apolonia. Get the picture?)
A NEW WRINKLE
If Jane Fonda, Raquel Welch and Victoria Principal can do it, why not Lindsay Wagner? So there she is, TV’s former “Bionic Woman,” smiling prettily on the cover of a new how-to paperback. Ah, but this isn’t another workout, yoga or highly principled diet/exercise book. This is, as its title proclaims, “New Beauty, the Acupressure Facelift.” Once you get past the photograph of Wagner looking like her old bionic self, you meet up with her in a number of black-and-white shots looking more the freshly scrubbed type. It could be she’s thriving on the 20-minute system to massage away “sags and bags,” as she calls them. Or it could be she’s thriving on a change of scenery. A brief back-of-book biography ends with the information that “when not working in Los Angeles, Lindsay and her two sons enjoy the quiet mountain life outside Portland, Ore.”
LET’S HEAR IT FOR L.A.
With five “Born To Shop” books covering five international shopping cities to their credit, authors Suzy Gershman and Judith Thomas have whittled it down to one beeline list--the Golden Shopping Bag Awards. And Los Angeles came out a two-time winner. With such stiff competition as Paris, Milan and London to contend with, the experts judged Pasadena’s Rose Bowl Swap Meet the best flea market and Beverly Hills’ Torie Steele Boutiques as the best “mini-magnate” mall. Other top awards went to Bergdorf Goodman for the best department store in the world and Catherine in Paris for the best duty-free prices. Then for the folks who’ve gotta go shopping, even on their way to the store, Pan American, where Hermes scarfs go for a low, low $100, was awarded the best airline shopping award.
THREE ON ONE
It was black leather for Lainie Kazan, silver beads for Sarah Vaughan and nautical stripes for Barbara Cook. That’s the word from the Forgotten Woman store in Beverly Hills, where all three singers did some shopping lately. Kazan went for a full-length coat by Maxima, half-belted in the back with broad shoulders and a high collar. Cook was in a more sporty mood, and her selections included Nancy Heller cotton knits. Our favorite sight-unseen purchase, however, is the Criscione evening gown that Vaughan bought for a TV commercial she’s doing with Mel Torme. It’s described as cocoon-shaped, beaded from head to toe, with a V-neck that can be worn front or back and a skirt slit on one side (which can be worn left or right, right?). Now the question is: Will she wear the V-neck in the front and the slit on the left during the TV spot or vice versa?
WHOOPI’S MENAGERIE
If there was any question that Whoopi Goldberg likes animals, consider this string of purchases. In recent weeks at Tops Malibu, Goldberg bought a menagerie of fetishes shaped like coyotes, lizards, frogs, buffaloes and bears. She also bought a carved wooden folk-art coyote and ordered two painted fish chairs. Owner Judy Walker tells Listen that the actress also wanted something a little bigger: She ordered a “full-size wooden giraffe--for her backyard.”
