Easy Does It : When the Bush Clan Sets the Style, Casual Will Be Chic in the Capital

George Bush’s promise for a “kinder, gentler” nation apparently will apply not only to how the President governs the country but also to the way he and his wife, Barbara, will hold sway over the capital’s society.

“A party at the Bushes’ is like going over to a neighbor’s house with friends, not at all intimidating,” said Bill Strauss, director of the Capitol Steps, a musical satire group. “When we came, we drove in the gate and he came over the wall and waved, and said, ‘Hey, guys, come up and play horseshoes.’ He was playing with the Secret Service.”

The Bushes’ social style--the way they entertain, whom they see, what they wear and eat, what music they prefer--will influence how Washington hostesses and many Americans conduct themselves in the next four years. And change is on the horizon. The Bush style will be decidedly different from that of the Reagans, who were revered for restoring glamour and glitz to a town then overcome by the drabness and malaise of the 1970s.

While the Bushes will not be a throwback to Jimmy Carter’s barbecues and solid-Southern guest list, they will bring social style back toward the middle of the spectrum, with less stuffiness and a more varied cast of characters than had been characteristic of the Reagans’ socializing.

The Bushes have been in Washington and around politics for so long that Ann Simpson, the wife of Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), believes that guests in the Bush White House “will feel less in awe. They’ll be great admirers, but less in awe. It will be very comfortable and cozy.

“The public has seen a very serious side of George Bush, but he’s a very fun-loving person. And you see it when they’re with their friends and family.”

Socially, the Bushes have been sandwiches and sweat shirts, kids and dogs, burgers and buffets, skits and songs. Their five children and 10 grandchildren are frequent guests. If all the seats are taken at one of their buffet suppers at the vice president’s mansion, Barbara Bush (“Bar” to close friends) has been known to plop on the floor and eat.

Of course, no First Lady sits cross-legged on the floor at a state dinner. In the White House, protocol demands certain standards of formal dress and dining, and the Bushes do the formality thing well.

But the Bush era will be marked by a new mood of folksiness and informality, overseen by a First Lady with unself-conscious white hair, a matronly figure and a hearty laugh. As a social role model, she will be more grandmotherly (warm and fun) than glamorous.

Bursting With Inspiration

Discussing their style, Mrs. Bush recalled a day six years ago when her husband woke early in the vice president’s mansion, bursting with inspiration to call the British ambassador and his wife right now to invite them to dinner and the play “Annie” that night in the Kennedy Center’s presidential box.

“I said, ‘George, it’s 7 o’clock Saturday morning,” Mrs. Bush said. “I don’t think you ought to call them now.’

“Well, he waited 45 minutes,” she said, noting that Bush usually dials the phone himself, rather than assigning some underling to do it. The ambassador, Sir Oliver Wright, and his wife, Marjory, were new in town then, having just arrived at the British Embassy, located across the side street from the vice president’s residence in northwest Washington.

“It turned out it was their anniversary. We didn’t know it,” Mrs. Bush said. “We had sandwiches, ate off our laps and went right off to this early thing. She (Lady Wright) didn’t speak to her husband for weeks because he had promised her he would give her this wonderful, romantic, big dinner out. Instead, they came over the fence for sandwiches.

“But I mean, he (George Bush) has a personal touch about him. It’s not calculated or planned, just gut instinct.”

If George Bush is unpretentious, Barbara Bush already is a breath of fresh air for women who found Nancy Reagan’s perfect hair and size 6 designer gowns an impossible standard. Faith Popcorn--the New York market consultant for BrainReserve who predicted the downfall of New Coke--now foresees popular acceptance of the Older Lady, thanks to Barbara Bush.

“We’re calling it the Elegant Older, as a classification of people,” Popcorn said. “It’s like a great pride in one’s gray hair, a more mature figure, showing some lines, showing a lot of humor about one self and also not deriving the way one sees one self from how sexy one might appear.

“This is a very healthy moment. Women have always been struggling with how to look younger as they get older, and she’s saying, ‘Don’t bother.’ She may be taking it a little far, and I think the hair coloring industry may not like it. But what’s wrong with looking 60 instead of looking like an anorexic 12-year-old?

“I think people are going to feel a lot more comfortable with their age, that it’s OK to be older as long as you’re healthy; it’s OK to be heavier as long as you’re healthy, that you should be true to your own body type. I think it’s an important message for women because women just torture themselves trying to look younger and thinner.”

Ulla Wachtmeister, the Swedish countess, ambassador’s wife and Bush friend, says: “Mrs. Bush is very beautiful in her own way. I’m sure many women will identify with her. She’s just a very genuine lady and very comfortable. She radiates happiness and informality.”

Larger Clothes, Easy Styles

In the marketplace, Popcorn predicts that Barbara Bush chic will inspire “less diet food and more interest in designers who design for women size 14-plus. I think the pearl industry will do well,” she added, referring to Barbara Bush’s trademark triple-string of large, fake pearls.

Clara Baines Love, the fashion coordinator and personal shopper at Raleighs department stores in the Washington area, sees Barbara Bush influencing fashion already. Love, who said she wrote her master’s thesis on large-size clothing, discovered there was not a wide selection of it, even though there appeared to be a market for it.

“I’ve already heard several of these women say, ‘I hope the clothes are going to change now that we have someone like Barbara Bush in the White House,’ ” Love said. “It’s kind of impossible to spring to a size 6 overnight when you’ve been a 16 or an 18 all your life. They’re feeling this is somebody they can relate to.”

After the Washington Post ran a photograph of Barbara Bush in a modest, gym suit-like bathing suit, some Bush children were said to be livid about the breach of privacy. But a few readers reacted differently. Post fashion editor Nina Hyde later wrote that the paper received some calls, “not many, but some, asking where to buy that nice ladylike cotton swimsuit Mrs. Bush was pictured in.”

Aniko Gaal, public relations director of the Washington area’s posh Garfinckel’s stores, notes that in pictures she has seen of Mrs. Bush, so far, “she’s in a lot of sweat shirts. Nancy Reagan was more dressed up at all times. Barbara Bush will be more relaxed. She wears some unpredictable things that we have not seen a President’s wife wear. The point we should be making is there will be more of an ease in dressing. Fashion will have less of an influence. The whole general feeling will be more relaxed. The fashion rules will relax.

“But there will always be propriety. When they entertain at the White House, she’ll be in a lovely long gown. She certainly has an exquisite taste level. She wears good-looking suits, understands her body type and doesn’t try to be somebody else. Her way of dressing suits her personality. I don’t think of her as a large woman. She’s tall and well proportioned. If I had to guess I’d say she wears a size 14.”

Mrs. Bush has joked that high-fashion designers don’t offer to lend her gowns, as they did to Nancy Reagan, because they don’t make them large enough. She is clearly not as fascinated with fashion as Mrs. Reagan but does not ignore it, either. Sources say she is trying to lose some of the weight she put on in the campaign. She also has her favorite designers: Bill Blass, Diane Dickinson and Adele Simpson.

Inaugural Gown Under Wraps

Her inaugural gown is a well-kept secret. An aide to Blass sighed over the phone, “We must get 15 calls an hour about this. We’re not talking about it.”

In response to an inquiry, Sondra Haley, the First Lady’s spokeswoman, said that one of the two things that bores Barbara Bush most is people asking about her hair. (The other big bore is people complaining about how much their feet hurt on the campaign trail.) Mrs. Bush has no interest in coloring her hair, which she washes and blow-dries herself every morning.

Vogue magazine deemed Mrs. Bush one of the country’s best gray-hairs, along with comedian Steve Martin, actor Richard Gere and morning TV show host Kathleen Sullivan.

Mrs. Reagan was singled out in Vogue’s “martial law hairdo” category: If one strand moves, it gets shot. Also in that platoon were Soviet first lady Raisa Gorbachev, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, advice columnist Ann Landers and television star Loni Anderson.

The tone of the Bushes’ social style may be set more by the guest lists than the hair and clothes styles. Although there will be plenty of the rich and famous milling around, added to the lists, friends say, will be more people who are important on a community level, such as calculus teacher Jaime Escalante of Garfield High School in Los Angeles.

“With Mrs. Bush’s interest in literacy, you may see more of academia and a little less of the theater. Their interests will be reflected,” said Muffie Brandon, a former White House social secretary in the Reagan years and now an event-planning consultant in Washington.

“There will probably be a lot of mixed ages of people. They’ll reach out to all different kinds of people, because that’s the way they’ve always been,” said Aileen Train, a family friend and tennis partner.

Eclectic Groups of Friends

Because the Bushes have lived in so many places--17 cities in 43 years of marriage--acquaintances from one state do not dominate, as happened with Reagan’s Hollywood and Kitchen Cabinet pals. The Bush “friends” have been culled from around the country and the world during the President-elect’s globe-trotting jobs in Texas, the Congress, the CIA and the diplomatic corps. They have so many friends that no one wants to go on record naming them, for fear of leaving out a major buddy.

But for Mrs. Bush, the circle includes Patricia Burch, who she met through husband Dean Burch, a lawyer and aide to Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford; Jessica Catto, a writer who comes from a distinguished political family and who, along with her husband, Henry, has Texas and Pentagon connections; Andy Stewart, wife of the late Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, and Countess Wachtmeister.

George and Barbara Bush also have many shared friends, among them Texans James A. Baker, nominee for secretary of state; Robert and Georgette Mosbacher (he was Bush’s campaign finance chairman and has been nominated for secretary of commerce); C. Fred and Marian Chambers, and Bobby Holt, co-chair for the inaugural. William Stamps Farish III and his wife Sarah, friends from Texas, hosted the Bushes to a brief vacation at their Florida home immediately after the election. Bush is going on a turkey-shoot at the Farish’s Texas ranch the day after Christmas.

From Congress there are: Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.) and his wife, Antoinette; Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) and his wife, Linda; Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) and his wife, Gayle; Sen. Simpson and his wife, Ann, and Rep. Guy Vander Jagt (R-Mich.) and his wife, Carol.

Other friends include Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady; Washington lawyer Richard Moore; environmentalist Russell Train and his wife, Aileen, and New York socialite Mildred Hilson.

At Kennebunkport, Bush’s closest fishing buddy is a middle-class retiree, Bob Boilard. Neighbor Betsy Heminway is a close friend. Jerry Weintraub, the Hollywood producer, is a Kennebunkport summer neighbor and big buddy. On a recent Saturday night, Weintraub treated the Bushes, Dan and Marilyn Quayle, and a couple hundred staffers, press and friends to a premier showing of “My Stepmother Is an Alien” at a Washington theater. Bush walked in eating a box of popcorn and sat in the same row with the movie’s co-stars, Dan Aykroyd and Kim Basinger.

Room for Children to Play

Also prominent at most Bush get-togethers have been members of their family, especially their five adult children and their spouses. Count on seeing a lot of them at White House parties. The 10 grandchildren are often spotted playing on the grounds of the vice president’s residence or the family compound in Kennebunkport.

Barbara Bush reportedly is planning to include a children’s play room in whatever redecorating she does of the White House family quarters. While the grandchildren are expected to visit the White House often, Barbara Bush already has told the family there will be no small children running around state dinners.

What Bush friends have said repeatedly in interviews was that the First Family will “create an environment where people feel comfortable,” said Patricia Burch, “and they’re going to do this whether the guest is the outstanding teacher from California or the president of France. They like everything from very, very formal dinners to soup and hamburgers for lunch, or Mexican food.”

Humor is often a major element when the Bushes entertain. On three social occasions, including a dinner for Australian Prime Minister Robert Hawke, the Bushes hired The Capitol Steps, a musical satire group that pokes merciless fun at government poohbahs.

“One thing about Bush, he always tells us that he wants us to do every song we have about him, no trimming the details,” said Strauss, Capitol Steps’ director. “He sings some of the lines along with us.”

One verse Bush enjoyed singing at a Christmas party was in a song based on Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle.” The verse had Bush singing, supposedly to Reagan, “I wanna be like you, Ron; I wanna be just like you.”

Said Strauss: “We do sense a tremendous amount of affection from the people around him. They’re warm. George came in wearing a Lacoste shirt with a towel around his neck. He rubbed his hands together and said, ‘OK, who wants a Coke?’ ”

Bushes Exude Relaxed Warmth

The personal touch is the key to Bush parties, friends say, whether it’s fresh cut flowers from Barbara’s garden or George flipping hamburgers. When the late Justice Stewart would visit with his wife, Andy, they brought their dog, who was “a good friend of the Bushes’ dog,” Dick Moore recalled, adding, “There’s always a lot of merriment when people gather at the Bushes. It’s just totally relaxed.”

Barbara Bush especially is praised for her easy-going warmth. Friends say that at a crowded party she has a special talent for making guests feel as if they are the only person in the room. At the recent super-spouse lunch in New York for Raisa Gorbachev, Mrs. Bush cracked jokes while members of the press photographed her, Mrs. Reagan and the Soviet leader’s wife. Mrs. Bush’s remarks set the tone of ease.

“She’s very caring and thoughtful,” said Countess Wachtmeister, one of Washington’s premier hostesses. “On holidays, she thinks of inviting the office worker who is alone with a child.”

George Bush so prizes informality that on a recent Saturday night after the election, he was the only man not wearing a necktie when 10 guests arrived to go out for Chinese food at an inexpensive restaurant in suburban Virginia.

“We walked in,” Moore said, “and he said, ‘Oh, neckties! Bar, didn’t you tell them not to dress up?’ ” It hadn’t occurred to Bush that, now that he was the President-elect, even old friends wouldn’t show up for a casual evening out without wearing a tie.

But Bush relented and went upstairs to put on a tie.

Times Staff Writer John Balzar contributed to this story.