Small Things
Enid Harris thinks little girls definitely ought to be seen--maybe in a full-length fake leopard coat or a red plaid jacket with what could be called matching jodhpurs, except only one leg is plaid. The other is houndstooth check.
The pattern mix led one store buyer to ask: “That’s a mistake, isn’t it?” recalls Harris over coffee and croissants in her Santa Monica cottage. “Actually, it’s my biggest seller.”
Only last year, the blue-eyed brunet, who likes to combine her grandmother’s genuine pearls with a T-shirt and jeans, was an unemployed Hollywood costume designer during the writers’ strike. When she turned to a friend for advice, he suggested she try clothing design and “start small.” So she did, with a line of playfully sophisticated garments for female fashion plates, Size toddler to 6-X.
When she was ready to approach retailers, Harris says, “there was no sense wasting time. I wanted to start at the top. I knew I was onto something unique,” which is how her wares, retailing for $20 to $160, ended up in Fred Segal and Maxfield on Melrose Avenue, Bloomers for Kids on Sunset Boulevard, about 100 other stores nationally and Saks Fifth Avenue’s fall catalogue.
Harris loves children but she can’t stand traditional kiddie concepts, such as “pink and blue frilly dresses. Children have no personality in those things.” Inspiration comes from her own closet and travels in adult circles. Back from New Orleans where she was designing costumes for a Disney television pilot, Harris is now talking about putting the vivid colors she saw there in a future collection.
Her previous lines--which include anything from a chic suit and velveteen hat to a simple slip dress in washable silk--are hip rather than hokey. “It’s how I dress,” Harris explains. “I just took my own clothes and shrunk them down.”
She dislikes trendy--as in pint-size motorcycle jackets--almost as much as frilly. It’s not a word she would use to describe even her faux animal-print pieces: “Leopard has been around forever. I don’t see it as trendy. I see it as wonderful fun fashion. I think little girls should be spoiled. They should wear creative, expressive clothes. It’s an extension of costume design for me. I go into their little personalities and bring them out.”
A local product, Harris is a graduate of Birmingham High School in Van Nuys and studied art history in Europe. In pursuit of the perfect career, she went from makeup artist with Jon Peters in his celebrity hairdresser days to executive secretarial positions at both ABC and Paramount. She left “the glamorous, rarefied atmosphere” of the studios for a learning stint at Western Costume. “All of a sudden I was sizing waistbands and had dust in my eyes from hanging period-piece underwear,” Harris muses. “Sometimes I would cry, but I wanted to break out from being a secretary.”
Despite her screen credits (“Fall Guy” with Lee Majors, “Commando,” starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the CBS-TV series “O’Hara”), Harris feels her kiddie concepts “are more wearable than dramatic.” She was so sure she was onto something special, she went through all her savings to start her company. “I had been shopping for a house,” she says.
But so many moppets are sporting her faux leopard and mismatched jodhpurs, she predicts she will have enough money to go house hunting again next year.
