Designer Praises His ‘Offspring’ Amid Admiring Fans
There are clusters of balloons and the festive music of Strauss is playing.
The man with the microphone matches the mood as he verbally waltzes along, praising the delights of each garment. One has “a little-girl pinafore look,” another, “a peekaboo neckline.” Yet another is blessed with “fanfare sleeves.”
He is not above tossing out a pun: As the music rises, he comments that a printed linen dress has “a million airs and is priced under $200.”
Age and Status
Designer Victor Costa is having a ball as he makes his latest personal appearance at Neiman-Marcus, Beverly Hills. The audience is filled with devotees. In age and status, they span from teen-agers to grandmothers, from students to full-time social butterflies.
After the show, many move forward to congratulate him, to ask his advice and to share a personal vignette or two. Surrounded by floral-pattern dresses from his spring collection and dressed in a glen-plaid suit, the designer looks like an English squire holding forth at a garden fete.
His smile broadens as a pretty woman wearing a cashmere sweater, pleated skirt and reptile accessories comes rushing up.
“I’m so sorry to be late. I came as soon as I could. I wouldn’t miss this for anything.” It is former Miss America Mary Ann Mobley.
The two have never had a face-to-face encounter, although the designer played a significant role in Mobley’s career.
“I remember making your dress for the Miss America pageant,” he recalls. “I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”
“You’re too young to have made it,” Mobley replies with conviction.
She later says she has been wearing the designer’s clothes for years. “We’re fated forever,” she adds, “because I love your clothes.”
She goes off to a dressing room and returns in the same black, “baby-doll” taffeta dress that another customer, standing only inches away, is trying on.
The other woman--dark, petite and “close to 50,” Costa guesses--has already told him: “You made a dress I’ve had so much pleasure wearing.”
“Part of the pay-and-play crowd,” Costa will say approvingly later, but at this moment, he shows her how to turn down the wired peaks of the strapless bodice to get more exposure, noting with characteristic charm: “Now it’s more invitational.”
Paris Trained
The Paris-trained, Dallas-based designer says while celebrities and patrons of the arts are buying his dresses for important black-tie functions, “PYTs” (pretty young things) are having them bought by their parents.
“There are more debutante balls every year,” he says. “There is a return to the traditional structure of society.
“I love it,” he adds. “I’m very much a traditionalist.”
But over the years, when fashion demanded more “architectural clothes,” for example, Costa did that too. He removed the frills with little trouble, he recalls. “I always have a good time. It’s the reason I survive. I can move with the times.”
This time, he has a collection “with more than 100 styles to choose from,” as he tells the audience at Neiman’s. Prices range from under $200 to $2,600.
Among women perusing the racks is Lauren Bell, who identifies herself as “a writer, stockbroker and mother.”
She is looking for a number of special-occasion dresses. “I’m involved in a lot of charities,” she explains. “I can’t wear the same thing twice.”
Costa’s clothes appeal, she says, because he uses good fabrics and they are well-priced. But there is something else: “They have great cleavage. There are few designers who let you look voluptuous.”
Nearby, a mother and her blond daughter are about to buy a dress the PYT can wear in a beauty pageant. Costa makes a few suggestions about sleeve length, then looks around with pride at all the activity and confides: “I do more than $2 million with Neiman-Marcus.”
Someone compliments him on his clever show commentary and asks if it’s hard to prepare the script.
“I don’t use a script,” the designer responds. “It’s like watching your children. You look at them and all the wonderful things start coming back.”
