Garden Complex Blossoms
A new retail complex, called Brentwood Gardens, will bring some of the best of B.H. to the Brentwood bunch. Situated on San Vicente Boulevard at Barrington Avenue, some of the 30 to 40 shops and restaurants will be branches of businesses that previously prided themselves on their Beverly Hills location. Theodore, Modasport, California Pizza Kitchen and the Grill restaurant are a few of the Brentwood Gardens tenants, along with Fred Segal Silver Feet shoe store and the West Side Kids children’s shop. A spokesperson for the complex says one special feature of the whitewashed, Mediterranean-style complex is “a specially lighted and secured parking facility” so that shoppers can feel safe at all hours. The shops will open for business in April.
The Center of the Valley
Valley shoppers will soon be wooed by Beverly Hills entrepreneurs too. Kurt Niklas, owner of the famed Bistro Gardens restaurant, will open a branch of his B.H. eatery in Studio City, at Coldwater Canyon Avenue and Ventura Boulevard, on the site of the now-defunct Tail o’ the Cock restaurant. Niklas’ new place, to be called the Bistro at Coldwater, will be smack-dab in the middle of another new shopping complex called the Center at Coldwater, which, a spokesman for the complex says, “will house only a select few top-notch retail stores, many of them branches of shops in Beverly Hills.”Morita Goes Italian
Pat Morita, star of ABC’s “Ohara” series, arrived at Sami Dinar’s Brighton Way store in a pair of jeans, T-shirt, sunglasses and a hat. “He went out dressed the same,” says Dinar. Not to worry. “He took everything with him.” The everything being a hefty, all-Italian wardrobe: Belfe black leather jacket, Zanella baggy trousers in both linen and lightweight wools, shirts (“in every single color,” says Dinar), cotton-linen sweaters by Umberto Ginocchietti and lots of belts. Morita obviously wanted to cover his bases. He bought Axis casual clothes for weekends and ordered a three-piece Canali tuxedo for formal occasions. The question is: Did the actor ever get to his doctor’s appointment? Seems he was headed there before he started his two-hour shopping spree.
This Excuse Is a Fact
Last week we reported it as rumor, this week it’s officially a fact. Joan Rivers and Donna Rice have something in common--No Excuses jeans. Rivers will replace Rice as the model in the ads, scheduled to begin appearing in the spring, Listen hears from Dari Marder of the jeans company.
Clothes Make the Album
It might be hard for fans to believe, but Randy Travis won’t be wearing Western clothing on his next album cover. That’s the word from Sherman Oaks haberdasher Rick Pallack, who says he’s been asked to give Travis a more contemporary look. Nothing too dressy, mind you. Pallack was asked to submit oversize sweaters and casual slacks only for the as-yet-untitled cover. Now, Frank Stallone (Sylvester’s brother) is another matter. Clothes for his new album are cast in concrete. Or, to hear Pallack tell it, cast in perfect light. “He wears a real ‘40s look: tweed coat with a vest underneath, oversize flannel pants, a hat and wing-tip shoes. The photo looks great. It was shot at the Santa Monica pier early in the morning, just when it was starting to get light.”
Absolut Success
Selling dresses by phone wasn’t exactly what they had in mind at Carillon Importers when they asked designer David Cameron to make a silver mini for an Absolut Vodka ad. But thousands of women have been calling the toll-free number in the ad and asking about the dress, not the booze. It’s a silver lame, sleeveless T-shirt style with the label of the Absolut bottle on the front. “David didn’t plan to make more than one dress; he only bought a couple of yards of fabric,” says Rebecca Shafer of his office. But due to popular demand, she adds, Cameron and the advertisers were planning to talk about possibilities of mass producing the dress and selling it by phone order. Nice piece of timing, since Cameron’s ready-to-wear fashion business remains in Chapter 11, according to Shafer.
A Plucky Beginning
We’ve heard of Batman, Spider Man, Superman, Candy Man, Repo Man. But never Tweezer Man. Until the other day, that is, when we answered our phone to someone who called himself that unlikely name and said in 1982 he had “reinvented” the tweezer with “tips so precise, you could tweeze in the dark.” Dal Lamagna is his real name, and his product, called La Pluck, is made of stainless steel with hand-filed points, he said, adding that he’s sold about 700,000 of the $19 pluckers since he went into business six years ago. They’re now available at Bullock’s and Neiman-Marcus on the West Coast, he said, but Tweezer Man himself is available only at Port Washington, N.Y., which is where he lives.
Spoiled in Beverly Hills
Yes, folks, Beverly Hills still has its own perfume, even though Giorgio has moved to New York. The new local aroma, Spoiled, will debut just like any proper princess, with a party Feb. 25 at Spago and celebrities galore. Spoiled, the official fragrance of Herb Fink’s Theodore shop on Rodeo Drive, has the interesting slogan: “I always get what I want.” Fink tells us the fragrance is aimed at “capturing the mystique of the Beverly Hills woman, who believes she deserves the best in life.” He adds: “A woman who is spoiled is one who is loved by others as well as herself.”
