Pierre Cardin Takes His Runway to Red Square

Moscow’s Red Square has accommodated many parades over the years, but perhaps none as chic as one planned for Sunday, when 250 of the Soviet capital’s top models show off Pierre Cardin’s latest fashions. The show will be held in conjunction with Soviet Youth Day. Cardin has been operating in the Soviet Union for several years. In 1985, he impressed first lady Raisa Gorbachev with his clothing during the Gorbachevs’ state visit to Paris. By 1986, he had licenses with 32 factories manufacturing his designs in the Soviet Union. * FOOT NOTE: Eric Smith, the eccentric sock designer who refers to himself as the fashion industry’s answer to Pee-wee Herman, Liberace and Jerry Lewis all rolled into one, really does have a serious side. Although he arrived at the recent Woolmark designer awards in a flag-printed metallic tuxedo and plans to use his 90-year-old grandmother as a hood ornament on his eight-door taxi in New York’s Gay Pride Parade this weekend, he spent the week in Los Angeles in “serious business meetings” with Keepers Industries, his sock licenser. His newest product, tights with a built-in knit skirt he comically calls “skights,” will be in stores next spring.

* PARTING PARTY: Romeo Gigli rode a bicycle in the finale of his spring/summer ’92 men’s and women’s show in Florence on Wednesday night. He adopted this freewheeling attitude after gaining majority control of his company. He and his business partners, Carla Sozzani and Donato Maino, have been fighting over the company since last fall. In what turned out to be a celebration of sorts, the Pitti Uomo, a menswear trade show, honored the designer with a show. More than 100 models sauntered or bicycled through the streets of Florence’s San Miccolo district wearing the Gigli collection and the newer lower priced G Gigli line followed by Moroccan dancers, East Indian Musicians and Baroque singers. Among the 2,000 attendees were L.A. restaurateur Mario Tamayo and arts patron Joan Quinn. Noted Quinn: “I felt like I was sitting in a cafe watching the best of Europe passing by.”

* ‘90s-NATURAL: When Jeff Stein and John Lasker promised their Camp Beverly Hills store would close and reopen a month later refurbished with “organically streamlined materials,” they didn’t mean environmentally aware customers would be able to eat the walls of the revamped boutique. Instead, the recently unveiled space, overseen by L.A.’s trendy architect Chris Byk, stresses raw-looking materials such as wood, glass, steel and concrete over the ‘80s look of painted woods and plastics. Even the store’s foliage has organic roots. Stein says the palm trees were freeze-dried then “neutered and embalmed.”

* HAIR OF THE DOGS: When Lupita Jones, the reigning Miss Universe, won her crown, it was placed on top of a sleek and sophisticated chignon hairdo. The tiara, however, must have been too tight and cut off the oxygen supply to her brain. Because since her win over contestants with voluminous trailer park hairdos, she wants to look just like them. Jones visited the Joseph Martin salon in Beverly Hills and begged stylist Joseph Kendall to make her hair “long and sexy.” * ACHIN’ FEET: Nearly nine out of 10 women squeeze their feet into shoes that are too small--and 80% of them suffer pain and disabling foot problems as a result. This painful bit of enlightenment was the result of a survey of 356 women conducted by the women’s footwear committee of the American Orthopaedic Foot and Ankle Society. The results of the survey were presented at a recent society meeting in Anaheim.