Amen Wardy Closes Newport Showroom

Amen Wardy, who for 15 years has dressed models, movie stars and, it is hinted, First Ladies, has zipped up his Newport Beach showroom and headed to Beverly Hills.

The well-known couturier closed his exclusive shop at Newport Center Fashion Island during the weekend and will run his business from his year-old Rodeo Drive store.

“It’s a one-man operation, and it was too hard for me to go back and forth,” said Wardy, 51. “The drive was killing me. Life is too short.”

He’s confident that his Orange County customers will follow him to Beverly Hills. He notes, for example, that six women from Orange County stayed at the pricey Beverly Wilshire Hotel near his shop one recent evening so they could visit Wardy’s boutique the next day. Wardy says he’ll continue to send a van full of designer apparel to his longtime customers here.

Although Wardy won’t name his clients, he is rumored to have outfitted many celebrities for last year’s Academy Awards and dressed Joan Rivers for her late-night talk shows. In 1984, he put on a fashion show in a circus tent in Newport Beach that attracted “20 of Mrs. Reagan’s friends.”

Rick Oliver, general manager for Fashion Island, would not say who will rent the space vacated by Wardy. “It was a mutual thing,” Oliver said of Wardy’s leaving. “Times have changed. This wasn’t working for Amen any more, and we needed to move on with more interesting retail.”