Mum Is the Trump Card
It’s the frantic week of spring fashion shows in New York, and the clothes in the audience are sometimes as entertaining as those on stage. Ivana Trump turns up daily in a new designer outfit, her blond hair implacably in place. Trump wouldn’t reveal to Listen the name of the designer of her purple pantsuit with purple mink insets in the sleeves. “I don’t want to play favorites,” she explained.
The Sole of the Shows
Manolo Blahnik, the shoe designer, goes to many of the hot-ticket fashion shows in the Big Apple. He’s a fashion plate all on his own, and arrived the other morning in a Prince of Wales plaid suit, a striped shirt, a paisley-print tie and shoes of his own design that had his colleagues enthralled. They were made of butter-soft brown suede and enveloped his feet like gloves, with inserts of stretch fabric to keep them anchored. Andre Leon Talley, an editor-about-town, was seated next to Blahnik and provided quite a contrast. Talley wore neatly pressed denim pants and jacket with a dress shirt and tie.
Hair Style Is in Vogue
Anna Wintour, who was just handed the fashion reins at Vogue magazine, turns up at every important show too. Her working-woman’s attire tends to let her blend in with the rest of the crowd. But her signature hair style, a short bob with bangs, makes her highly visible everywhere. She’s the hottest personality in fashion publishing right now, with many speculating on whether she will successfully transform the magazine into one that reflects her own image, although the speculators do not know exactly what that might be.
Raining on Her Parade
Supermodel-turned-actress Lauren Hutton was on the spot at Angel Estrada’s show in the bowels of Manhattan Tuesday night. Hutton’s short hair, tied into a tiny ponytail at the nape of her neck, was slick from the rain. She wore jeans and a denim jacket.
Pretty in Black
Cher, who wasn’t at any of the shows as far as we could see, spoke to Listen privately about her fashion life in New York, where she lives in Greenwich Village for a few months of each year. “I mostly wear sweat pants, always black, which I decorate myself. And now I’m decorating my ballet shoes too. I put studs or jewels on things to make them more individual, more my own.” The actress won’t be wearing sweat pants when she appears at Robinson’s Del Amo store Nov. 14 to debut her new Uninhibited perfume. Bob Mackie has made 20 outfits for Cher to wear on her perfume tour, she said, and “they all look like things for ‘The Sonny and Cher Show.’ They are black and most are velvet. They’re beaded too.”
A Pearl Position Paper
Barbara Bush may be setting a fashion trend on the campaign trail. Society pearls. From what we’ve seen, Bush won’t leave home without her double- or triple-strand, 12-millimeter, collar-length gleamers. And they’re getting plenty of exposure as she campaigns with her husband, the Republican candidate for president. Daytimes, Bush wears the double strand, evenings she usually goes for the triple. And anybody who thinks they’re part of the family heritage could be in for a surprise. We hear from Melissa Parker, the new vice president of Ciro, a Beverly Hills haven for faux gems, that the Bush pearls have more than a passing resemblance to those by costume jeweler Kenneth Jay Lane. If indeed Bush’s pearls aren’t the real thing, she’s in good company, Parker reports. Priced at $125 for a double strand and $150 for a triple at Ciro, Parker tells us that plenty of Nancy Reagan’s Kitchen Cabinet chums also own a strand or two.
Rules Are Set in Stone
What does a Texas radio talk show producer wear to work while she’s clawing her way to the top? Listen hears from Leslie Hope, the young actress who plays that character in “Talk Radio,” soon to be released by writer-director Oliver Stone, that fashion is not her character’s forte. “Skintight jeans, cowboy boots and too much makeup,” are the uniform, Hope explains. She also says that working with Stone, who won an Oscar for his movie “Platoon,” is about what you would expect. “It’s like boot camp,” she says, but she’s not complaining. “Once you know the rules, there’s no limit with Oliver. He’s inspired.”
Tennies Are the Law
Blair Underwood of “L.A. Law” let go of a few fashion secrets about his show. This season, he told Listen, his suits for the show are by Hugo Boss. But most of the time, if his feet don’t show in a scene, he wears them with running shoes. “We’re on our feet all day and in a lot of scenes our feet don’t show,” he explains. He told us another of his fashion secrets too. In real life he hardly ever gets dressed up. “I like sweats and jeans,” he explains.
Something’s Expected There
We’re expecting quite a fashion statement from actor Joe Cortese as he makes his regular appearances on “Something’s Out There,” the new TV series. After all, acting is Cortese’s second career. He used to be an associate fashion editor at GQ magazine. Between takes for the series, he recently did what fashion editors do best. He went shopping, at Clacton and Frinton, the popular menswear shop where he picked up four pair of ‘40s-style pleated pants. We’ll watch for them on future episodes.
