International Set Flips Over Lambada in Style

Everybody’s making fashion predictions for the 1990s, but at the Spice Club on Hollywood Boulevard the young L.A. set is already experiencing something new. They’re dancing the Lambada, the Brazilian dance that just hit town by way of Paris.

Sunday was the first Lambada night at Spice. The music from the group Kaoma was pulsating through the room by 8 p.m. Across one wall, video clips played while everybody danced. And what a dance, a sort of thigh-to-thigh samba that requires grace, energy and amazing, twirling hips.

To allow for free movements, the women are wearing short, wide, flippy miniskirts in hot colors--orange and bright green. To emphasize their hips they wear contrasting-color scarfs, tied low, or wide stretch belts. The braver young women wear thong bikinis under see-through tights that are revealed when they twirl or do a deep back dip. Stretch bustiers complete the look, sometimes worn with a ribbon in a matching color tied around the ankle.

The men dress like every woman’s dream of a Latin lover, in wide, loose pleated pants, loose shirts and very wide stretch belts. For an even newer detail, some men wear a scarf or necktie around the waist, just as Fred Astaire did when he flew down to Rio with Ginger Rogers. Bakari, the Brazilian choreographer seen on the dance floor Sunday night, also wore a red scarf around his head.

Nicole Seizas, Miss Jamaica 1989, did the Lambada that night too, wearing black opaque tights under a printed chiffon minidress, with a wide stretch belt designed by Led Zep of Paris. All the dancers were a wonderful cross-section of the new Angelenos who are making the city a unique cultural mix. There were natives of Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Brazil and Iran.

Some of the clothes were by Eduardo Nieto, who designs clothes especially for dancing the Lambada, but most outfits consisted of creative variations on classic Latin dance wear. Vera Vliantzeff an interpreter from Chile, simply cut off the bottom of a black lace skirt to make it a mini and completed the look with a black bustier.

There was a Lambada contest and even a group lesson. After one attempt, any novice at the Lambada could see why you shouldn’t wear a pencil-slim skirt, even if it’s a mini, unless you’re willing to hike it up to your waist and free your legs to move.