A Concerted Effort : For Women Conductors, the Dress Code Combines Freedom of Movement With an Emphasis on Glamour

More than 40 years ago, Otto Perl began designing tuxedos and tails and capes for the young Leonard Bernstein.

The New York tailor designed concert attire for other famous musicians over the years: The late William Steinberg, Sergiu Comissiona, Pinchas Zukerman, Itzhak Perlman and Luciano Pavarotti, to name a few.

But last year a woman--conductor Gisele Ben-Dor--arrived at Perl’s Manhattan shop, asking to be fitted for the pops, Christmas and occasional subscription concerts she leads as resident conductor of the Houston Symphony.

“Women conductors must look more glamorous than men but still be able to move,” said Perl, who designed two ensembles--skirts and pants--for Ben-Dor.

His idea might not sound like a fashion breakthrough, but in a sense it was. As more and more women take the podium to conduct major symphony orchestras, they find themselves having to create a new fashion etiquette.

Some say a tuxedo look is right, others commend ruffles, laces and bows. But they agree on one thing: They want to dress in ways that assert their femininity, not hide it.

Men still run the nation’s top 21 orchestras (those with budgets in excess of $8 million). But increasingly, women are rising through the ranks, finally becoming music directors of their own orchestras.

“Your appearance defines your attitude on the job,” says Sian Edwards, 30, who has conducted opera at Covent Garden and Glyndebourne and is the first woman to be named by the Los Angeles Philharmonic to lead subscription concerts at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. (Her appearances are scheduled for November, 1991.)

Wanting to dress comfortably, yet “look different from a man,” Edwards chooses from a selection of evening trousers and colored blouses. For an extremely formal look, she wears a white cotton shirt with a brooch.

“I have never been pushed around or put in my place because I’m a woman,” Edwards says. “But sometimes I have to confront reality, like when I realize there’s no ladies room backstage because I’m still working in a man’s world.”

“In my work, there’s always the woman thing,” says Iona Brown. Clad in a flouncy black cotton skirt and white shirt, Brown is relaxing backstage after a rehearsal with her Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.

“People are always asking me how a woman can control an orchestra of mainly male forces,” says Brown, who also directs the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. She refuses to do so by dressing like a man.

“I absolutely do not want to convey a masculine image,” she says. “I like being feminine and want to look feminine. I love compliments on my appearance, and love ribbons and bows and frills and wearing pretty things.”

For her recent engagements with the chamber orchestra and subsequent appearances with the San Francisco Symphony Brown arrived with an extra suitcase holding seven full-length evening gowns. She is especially partial to silk taffeta.

She dresses according to the repertory performed.

For a somber symphony of Haydn, she is discreet in black; for a Mozart Concertante, a white-net gown with gold sequins will do. To convey “the atmosphere” of Tchaikovsky, she wears red; for the music of Grieg, green. And for a Spanish feel, she pampers herself in purple velvet.

JoAnn Falletta, 36, music director of the Long Beach Symphony, Denver Chamber Orchestra and Bay Area Women’s Philharmonic in San Francisco, defines her wardrobe by region.

For her Denver audience, she sports a tuxedo. Still experimenting with the Long Beach crowd, she is partial to outfits designed by her late father, who worked in the garment industry. One favorite is a “tuxedo dress,” a satin skirt with a white blouse and velvet jacket that Falletta dresses up with a pink tie.

Tails--purchased from Jack Silver in New York--are de rigueur when Falletta leads the 80-member Bay Area Women’s Philharmonic in a season featuring works by female American composers.

“We all wear standard dress here to get the point across that we are all equal,” explains Falletta.

However, when guest conducting in the South, Falletta sticks to dresses.

“Tails would be misunderstood by the audience as my trying to appear masculine,” says Falletta, whose home base is in Westchester, N.Y. “I don’t want to convey that image, but I also don’t want to wear frills and sequins because they are distracting to the audience.”

Marin Alsop, 33-year-old director of the Eugene Symphony in Oregon, always wears pants.

Alsop says she offsets the severity of her tuxedo with a silk camisole in a royal blue or other bright color.

“This is being sexy at the same time,” she says. She also has a velvet suit with a knee-length jacket lined in crimson satin, as well as a Donna Karan silk suit.

Alsop strives to maintain a balance between masculine and feminine.

Los Angeles-born Victoria Bond, 45, music director since 1986 of the Roanoke, Va., Symphony, says she avoids anything frivolous or “Laura Ashleyish.” Rarely in pants--she did don a silk pair to conduct a recent matinee concert--Bond favors the creations of New York designer Carolyne Roehm. She also possesses the “inevitable” black conductor’s suit.

Houston Symphony’s Gisele Ben-Dor is also experimenting. Skirts get in the way if the podium is too high, she laments. If she wears a short jacket while everyone else is in tails, she looks too casual. If in tails, she says she looks like a “little man.” Ben-Dor wears white cotton blouses with a pleat, but no lace. “Too frilly,” she says. And rather than a bow tie, she opts for a pin with pearls.

“There is no tradition here,” says Ben-Dor.

Dallas Symphony’s associate conductor Kate Tamarkin, 34, is firm in her disdain for pants, finding them unflattering for the concert platform, where she believes formality should prevail.

Instead she favors a long black skirt with a black and white tuxedo blouse, one of several outfits donated by a Dallas Symphony patron/boutique owner.

“Concert-goers accept any kind of behavior from a man,” says Tamarkin, who will lead the Pacific Symphony and San Diego Symphony in concerts this summer. “They can jump or stride or do anything on stage, it doesn’t matter. A woman is expected to be graceful and elegant. Clothing makes all the difference.”

When it comes to shoes, everyboyd puts comfort first. Tamarkin sticks with an old pair, Falletta likes flats and Bond would just as soon wear Reeboks.

Margaret Hillis, 69, does exactly that when conducting her Chicago Symphony Chorus. The black Reeboks coordinate with a black full-length gown with beads on the cuffs and neck. She used to wear a pair of brown Adidas, she says, until that critic. . . .