Supermodels Profit Down Under
No wonder model Linda Evangelista was a no-show at the Anna Sui store opening here last week. Women’s Wear Daily reports that Evangelista and Claudia Schiffer were busy lending their beautiful selves--for a reported $200,000 each--to help promote a store opening in Australia. (Coles Myer Ltd., the country’s largest retailer, can afford supermodel rates. It just reported net profits 11.1% more than last year’s, to $271 million.)
As Schiffer knows firsthand, overseas personal appearances are not only lucrative but can make for international headlines. Remember the scandal over Schiffer’s private meeting with the president of Bolivia? She was in the country to promote the opening of a lingerie store.
You Can Take the Girl Out of Beverly Hills but . . .: We watched the season premiere of “Beverly Hills, 90210” Wednesday night in hopes of spotting a radical post-graduate wardrobe change. (Our own college girl started the new semester with one more nose ring, a buzz cut and 15-pound work boots.) But summer isn’t quite over for the graduating West Beverly High class, whose members frolicked on the beach in short-shorts and Daisy Mae tops--everyone, that is, except the baddest little cast member of them all.
To music that sounded a lot like the theme from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” Brenda Walsh (Shannen Doherty) headed for Mom’s Minnesota alma mater dressed for a date at the Peach Pit. While her dorm-mates wear a preppy look that died in the late ‘70s, Brenda is resplendent in a skimpy flowered rayon sun dress and a choker.
“Don’t hate me because I come from Beverly Hills,” she snaps at her new friends. It’s going to be a long semester.
Shape Shifters: The forerunner of today’s body oils that turn into powder, or powder eye shadows that turn into cremes, is Tangee. Wildly popular in the ‘50s, Tangee lipstick is bright orange in the tube but turns a natural-looking, lip-colored pink after you put it on. The formula was invented in the ‘20s, and for the last 20 years, a New York company, Anders Lowe, has manufactured and sold nothing but Tangee. “We get hundreds of calls and letters from women who’ve worn it for years and years,” says company owner Bill Schulman. A tube is $8; three tubes cost $16. Call 800-LIPSTIX.
Out With the Old: The Paris fashion house of Courreges has announced that designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac will help the firm’s 70-year-old founder with the ready-to-wear collection, leaving Andre Courreges more time for architecture, painting and sculpture.
Courreges became famous in the 1960s for introducing architectural, futuristic clothing with geometric motifs on micro-miniskirts and flat-heeled white go-go boots. Castelbajac, 43, has his own ready-to-wear label and has worked for theater and film, most notably as costume designer on Woody Allen’s 1976 film, “Annie Hall.”
The first Courreges-Castelbajac collaboration will be the 1994 spring-summer collection.
Naughty or Nice?: A West Coast Santa Claus spent $20,000 on dozens of pairs of black satin pumps this week for the women on his/her Christmas list--all (mostly) in the name of charity.
Trimmed with slender red ribbons, the $395-a-pair shoes are made by New York-based Susan Bennis Warren Edwards, a label favored by such ladies of style as Demi Moore and Barbara Davis. The company is donating $200 from the sale of each pair to AIDS charities.
Who’s the generous sole? Warren Edwards wouldn’t say. But if you aren’t on the list and must have a pair of these shoes, he will happily send you the company’s mail-order catalogue, (800) 634-9884.
If Only They Copied DKNY: An alleged counterfeit jeans operation is the target of a lawsuit filed by Levi Strauss & Co. in federal court in Florida.
The suit alleges that two Fort Lauderdale businessmen ran an international ring that stretched from Iceland to Mexico to China. The company estimates that, since 1990, more than 2 million pairs of fake Levi’s jeans have been seized around the world. But the recent case is “one of the largest counterfeit jeans rings we’ve ever uncovered,” said Thomas B. Nagle, chief of security for the San Francisco company.
A police raid turned up bogus certificates of authenticity and detailed instructions for making the fake jeans.
Around Town: What do the regulars on the A-list screening circuit wear besides beards, ponytails and bald spots? Lithe young studio publicists go for jeans, boots and makeup-less faces. The nine-to-fivers (film execs, agents, the press) sport unconstructed jackets and self-important expressions. And us? Anything black and a bad attitude. . . . A bronzed Marc Jacobs rested up poolside at the Chateau Marmont hotel over the Labor Day holiday before returning to New York to start work on his long-awaited collection, which, he suggested, might premiere sooner than the proposed fall ’94.
Inside Out is published Fridays.
