A Holiday Tip: Easy Does It

‘Tis the season to be “appropriate”--in our gifts, in our behavior and, of course, in our dress. Translation: No more over-the-top, beaded and poufed ball gowns at serious charity galas. Please.

The best froth-free alternative we’ve seen this black-tie season is the classic Chinese sheath that Jane Semel (wife of Warner Bros. Studios President Terry Semel) wore to last week’s celebrity-studded Fire and Ice Ball in Beverly Hills. An exercise in restraint and tailoring, Semel’s cheong sam made everyone else at the event--a fund-raiser for the UCLA women’s cancer clinic--look positively overdressed.

“Although it was a ball,” says L.A. designer Susan Becker, “we wanted to remember it was for a really austere cause--women and cancer. Jane introduced a film that was upsetting, to put it mildly, and she didn’t want to be wearing something frivolous.” It helps too that Semel has “the perfect body” for a sheath dress.

Semel is in good company. Becker’s just done what she calls “a very ‘Woman of the Year’ ” wardrobe for Julia Roberts to wear as a cub reporter in the currently filming “I Love Trouble.” (Julia, you should know, also has a perfect body, not unlike the cub reporters at The Times.)

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Dollar Signs Over Miami: Until workers finish the Versace Jeans Couture store in Miami’s hot, hot, hot South Beach (or “SoBe,” as some call it), shoppers can satisfy themselves with a gander at the Italian designer’s nearby Ocean Drive palazzo . Or get a taste of Jamaica at a new New York transplant, the Island Trading Company store.

Next, drop by Mickey’s, the just-opened Mickey Rourke-Johnny Depp-owned restaurant and bar, where getting a table, one recent visitor says, isn’t the hot ticket one might expect.

The same can’t be said for the Casa Grande hotel. Since it opened in August, the hotel has hosted a steady stream of Hollywood visitors, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis.

When it comes time for us to go south for the winter, we’re checking into the Betsy Ross, a pseudo-colonial inspired by Scarlett O’Hara’s homestead in “Gone With the Wind.” And they say L.A. is strange. . . .

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Sign of the Season: For its annual December holiday billboard, Maxfield had, in the past, relied on happy word play. Example: The Three Kings (Elvis, Don and Kong) or Peas On Earth (bowl of peas, sun and earth). But this week, the West Hollywood store unveiled a more serious communique. The board, near the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Doheny Drive, depicts Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin shaking hands with PLO leader Yasser Arafat. A Bob Marley lyric asks the question: “If puss and dog can get together, why can’t we love one another?”

Tough question. Too tough. We just wanted to know which guy is dog and which is puss. “Yes,” said store spokesman Nadira Herbert thoughtfully, “someone in-house raised that same question. . . .” But so far, the only public outcry has come from a woman who said she nearly crashed her car trying to figure out who the men were. Hello.

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More Billboard Semiotics: At the opposite end of the clothing retailer spectrum, the Clothestime chain has also weighed in with its Thoughts on Life. Scattered across L.A. and Orange counties, the bright red billboards say such things as “Sex is an act.” “Romance is real.” And “Keep him focused.”

We mulled over that one for a good 45 seconds till the light turned green. But after talking to Jane Whaley, Clothestime’s director of public and investor relations, we realized that we’d been guilty of seeing beneath the surface, reading between the lines . . . being there. “Keep him focused,” Whaley cheerily explained, means “to keep your boyfriend on track on what you want for Christmas”--not pressure him to make lots of money. Hmmm. . . .

With the last billboard in the series going up this week, the junior clothing chain lays its cards on the table: “Shop smarter. Park closer. Dress to kill.”

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Leather Under Glass: A jacket by L.A. designer Michael Hoban (North Beach Leather) has been included in a Smithsonian Institute costume exhibit scheduled to open next year in Japan. “It’s definitely the biggest honor I’ve had in my life,” says Hoban, whose leather frontier jacket was donated to the institute’s National Museum of American History in a ceremony in Washington, D.C. “My jacket’s going to be right there along with Thomas Edison’s light bulb and Dizzy Gillespie’s trumpet,” says the man who made leather suits for Elvis, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones.

Hoban and his wife also have a new baby. And starting in July, his collection of men’s sportswear, called Hobo, will be sold at the 500-store Merry-Go-Round chain. Now, fashion magazines that had ignored him in the past are clamoring for interviews with Hoban, who says he’s “too shy to have a fashion show.” But the designer will appear with his holiday collection at trunk shows today and Saturday at North Beach Leather in West Hollywood. All this attention has made Hoban realize, at last, that “I am an artist.” And from now on, he’ll sign the limited editions of his trademark American flag leather jackets.