Just Where Do Those Designer Loans Go After Mrs. Reagan?
Nancy Reagan’s borrowed designer fashions might end up in a resale shop, a museum, a fashion “archive” or--just maybe--the closet of an unsuspecting consumer, fashion experts said Tuesday.
As questions about Mrs. Reagan’s wardrobe persisted for a second day, the exact fate of individual designs loaned to the First Lady over the last six years was unclear. The designers who made the loans weren’t talking and other members of the fashion industry could only speculate.
But Barbara Trister, chairman of the Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley’s fashion advisory committee and a longtime observer of the apparel industry, said that clothes loaned to celebrities are sold at a discount from their wholesale price after being returned to designers.
“If they’re a standard size like an 8, they (designers) will sell them at half off or 20% off,” Trister said. She added that a donated item might be shipped to a retail outlet, if the item had been returned to the designer and “there was a shortage.”
But Trister noted that Mrs. Reagan is a Size 4, an extremely petite size that fits few women. In that case, a dress might be given to a shop that sells used clothing, she said, or to a museum.
Designer Bill Blass, one of those who donated clothing to Mrs. Reagan, refused to say Tuesday what he does with returns. But a spokesman for him, Craig Matiello, said “any clothing that’s borrowed, it’s returned to an archive”--a retrospective collection of Blass’ work maintained by the designer.
“If we don’t save it, nobody else will,” Matiello said.
Blass said “it’s very commonplace for designers to loan and/or give clothes to people.” He said Mrs. Reagan has “done a great deal for the fashion industry as a whole and should be recognized for that.”
A spokesmen for designer David Hayes of Los Angeles said Hayes would not comment.
Jean Louis, an 80-year-old retired Hollywood designer whose fashions were worn by Marlene Dietrich and Loretta Young as well as Mrs. Reagan, said Tuesday he has never charged the First Lady for his work.
“I didn’t ever send her a bill because I was very proud to have Mrs. Reagan wearing my clothes,” he said in a telephone interview from his home in Montecito. “I was very proud of this,”
After questions arose about her fashion borrowings in 1982, Mrs. Reagan announced that she would send gowns to the Parsons School of Design in New York for distribution to museums.
Ann Keagy, former chairman of Parsons’ fashion design department, said Tuesday that she received two shipments of clothing from the White House and that the fashions were distributed to 13 museums where students and designers could have access to the clothes.
Keagy retired that same year, and a spokesperson for Parsons said Tuesday that no one recalled receiving further shipments.
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art was among the institutions that received Mrs. Reagan’s clothing. Edward S. Maeder, curator of costumes and textiles, said the museum received three donations in 1982: a red Adolfo outfit Mrs. Reagan wore at her husband’s swearing-in; a gold lame blouse with multicolor silk lame skirt and a red wool knit jacket, also by Adolfo; and a two-piece green wool jersey day dress, by Blass.
Inaugural outfits automatically go to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, Maeder said, but two copies of the outfit are always made, and the Los Angeles museum got the second.
Maeder said the museum was never informed that the shipments would not continue. “Nobody said it was stopping,” he said. “It was just that we received those three pieces, and that was that. We never pursued it.”
At the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, Don Petrillo, who oversees the school’s clothing collection, said the school received no clothes from Mrs. Reagan. He recalled that “about two years ago somebody came through with a list of schools that were to inherit one garment each from Nancy Reagan.”
But although the institute was on the list, he could not remember any follow-through on the plan.
On Monday the White House confirmed that Mrs. Reagan had continued to borrow fashions from designers after 1982 but had not reported them on financial disclosure forms as she had promised. The acknowledgement came after Time magazine reported Sunday that the First Lady had borrowed more than $1 million in designs since that year.
Elaine Crispen, the First Lady’s spokeswoman, defended the loans as necessary because of Mrs. Reagan’s heavy social schedule.
“You take 10 state dinners per year for 8 years, you have 80 gowns--not that she hasn’t reworn some gowns. But still, even 40 gowns, that’s a lot of gown material on a President’s salary with no clothing allowance.”
Crispen added: “I’m certain a lot of women in public life loan or borrow or get discounts.”
On Tuesday, questions about the loans continued to dominate White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater’s briefing. At one point, Fitzwater was asked if President Reagan was “concerned” that his wife “broke her promise” to report the loans on Reagan’s financial disclosure forms.
Fitzwater replied: “The President doesn’t have any response other than to think that it’s a cheap political shot at the First Lady.”
Asked why Mrs. Reagan did not list the loans, Fitzwater said, “I have no idea.”
He asserted that “there is no tax consequence” resulting from the loans because any tax liability would fall on the donors, not the recipient of the gowns. “There is no legal problem. There is no ethical problem,” he said.
The spokesman said that Fred Fielding, former White House counsel, and the head of the federal Government Ethics Office signed a joint letter offering “advice” that the loans be reported. The policy was reaffirmed by the ethics office on Tuesday, he said.
Times staff writer Lee May in Washington contributed to this story.
