She Designs the Unconventional for Executive Women

It’s easy to overlook Eleanor P. Brenner, but you can’t say the same about her clothes. She’s no bigger than a minute--not much more than 5 feet tall. But her 90-hour workweeks have built her a business that spans three fashion divisions. She isn’t talking about physical stature when she says: “I want to be a giant.”

With her ideas of how executive women ought to dress, hitting the heights hasn’t been easy. “Mine aren’t conventional clothes, like blazers,” she said. She wore a miniskirt and matching gabardine cardigan jacket when she presented her fall collection at Neiman-Marcus in Beverly Hills.

Brenner wears short skirts to encourage executive women who, like her, are over 40 to bare their knees at the office if they want to. “There’s no age limit, not on fashion or anything else,” she said. “There’s what is comfortable and what makes you happy.”

Along with short skirts, Brenner’s executive styles include longer-length riding skirts as well as leather pants and jackets, silk shirts and sweaters.

To women who ask her how to chose what is right for them, she says: “Decide what image you want to portray. It may be power, chic or a put-together look. What you wear should have to do with your personality as much as your life style. Clothes are your background. What you do is what’s important.”

This fall, Brenner is introducing her latest addition to the empire--body-contouring wool knit clothes. She describes them in such terms as minimal , clean , stark and modular .

Last year she showed her first collection of washable silk weekend styles, including pants, tops, jackets and jump suits. “I hate jogging clothes,” she explained.

Everything she designs is an answer to some fashion wish of her own. Her wardrobe serves her long workdays, continuous business traveling, kitchen duty (she’s published a gourmet cookbook in her spare time) and fund-raising efforts both for political campaigns and the prevention of wife battering and child abuse.

She has a motto: “You can have anything you want.” But there is a footnote: “It will cost you.”

“I hardly ever see my husband,” she said. “It’s like we’re having an affair.” At least when she sees him she’s got something to wear.