Armani Typecasting

Menswear designer Alexander Julian is steamed. He toiled for six months on the wardrobe for Robert Altman’s new film, “The Player.” And, wouldn’t you know it, someone else is getting all the glory.

Twice now, the film’s star, Tim Robbins, has been described in tony publications as portraying “an Armani-clad studio executive” a description that is almost redundant in this town.

“Alexander Julian did all of the men’s costumes,” says a spokesperson for Altman, explaining Armani-clad is “just the new studio-speak. They didn’t literally mean he’s wearing Armani.”R

* KEEP YOUR PANTS ON: Rapper Marky Mark, who’s known for dropping his drawers on stage, now has his own line of underwear. The white cotton boxers are covered with MM’s name and sell for $26 at Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch concerts.

* FOUR AYES: If you’ve seen People magazine’s March 16 cover, you know Nick Nolte is the sexiest man alive, or, in the magazine’s dubious grammar, “a man’s man that women can’t resist.” Seems they can’t resist his glasses, either. Cheryl Shuman, owner of Starry Eyes in Sherman Oaks, who bills herself as Nolte’s “personal optician,” says she’s received hundreds of calls “from women wanting to order the glasses for their husbands and boyfriends.” Nolte wears an authentic 1940s frame with gold-filled rims and mother-of-pearl nose pads. Reproductions of the frame, by Robert La Roch, are $150 to $300, depending on the gold content.

* EVERYONE’S INTO POOL: The place to be seen these days is the Hollywood Athletic Club on Sunset Boulevard. All the tabloid regulars have put in appearances--Madonna; her gag man, Kevin Costner; and her ex-man, Sean Penn. But on a recent Saturday night a no-Madonna-connection contingent of Kennedy-Shrivers trouped in and dashed for one of the six private rooms. There were 16 of them, according to a startled witness. And they weren’t there for a workout en masse. The Hollywood Athletic Club is a pool hall. “The only heavy lifting that goes on is raising a martini to the lips,” says a club spokesperson.

* GLAM JAM: First to arrive at the Ole Henriksen skin-care salon on Sunset Boulevard earlier this week was model extraordinaire Naomi Campbell. She came, via chauffeured limousine, to have her peau primed for her part in a Michael Jackson video that Herb Ritts is shooting. Turned out in an Azzedine Alaia black leather jacket and spring’s de rigueur platform shoes, Campbell was whisked into Henriksen’s private treatment room. Then, minutes later, sans chauffeur and platforms, in walked a jeans-clad Madonna, utterly blond, who made nice with the women in the waiting room before her facial. When the two emerged, they chatted like old friends and probably compared pores.

* WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE: Lisa Eisner, lady-about-Los Angeles and sister-in-law of Disney kingpin Mike, is gracing the cover and first four pages of the new J. Crew catalogue. She was chosen says a J. Crew spokesperson because she is “down to earth . . . the embodiment of the Crew customer.” Lisa and her fair-haired tots cavort on Martha’s Vineyard dressed in khaki pants and chambray shirts. The look may be very J. Crew, but it’s very un-L.A.