All the Right Props for Your Life at the Top

If you’re one of those people who has a license-plate holder that reads “Damn I’m good!” then you probably feel you deserve the best life has to offer. But just what is the best?

The Robb Report knows. The magazine’s June issue reveals the seventh annual “Best of the Best” list of products and services voted on by readers.

A discriminating lot they are. The best wristwatch? Easy--a Rolex. The best luxury car? The Mercedes S600. The best champagne? Cuvee Dom Perignon. The best spa? La Costa. The best cowboy boots? Tony Lama. The best writing instrument? Montblanc.

The list offers few surprises--after all, who’s going to nominate Bic for best writing instrument?

But it was interesting to see that New York’s Plaza Hotel ranked as the best U.S. hotel, considering it didn’t do well on another list. The most recent Zagat Survey did not count the Plaza among New York’s Top 10 hotels. It didn’t even crack the nation’s Top 100 (although it did receive a grade of “very good to excellent”).

Hmmmm . . . maybe it’s worth taking another look at Motel 6 . . .

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Eco Italian-Style: What do fine Italian men’s suits and ecology have in common? It’s a stretch, isn’t it?

The new Ermenegildo Zegna store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills opens June 1--that’s the fine men’s suits part.

At the event Zegna management will announce support of the Environmental Media Assn. (which came about via the Permanent Charities of the Entertainment Industries), a clearing house for environmental information and expertise for the show-biz community--that’s the ecology part.

But this is not just another company looking to connect with a politically correct cause.

According to the invitation, between 1932 and 1939, Ermenegildo Zegna, the founder of the company that bears his name, began buying up acreage--much of it barren--around his Italian village to restore and preserve it for future generations. He even had a half-million trees planted in the area.

Today the land at the base of the Alps is called “Oasi Zegna” and is still looked after by the Zegna family.

So it seems they know from the environment. The store will also donate 15% of all proceeds through Father’s Day, June 18, to EMA.

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Runway Primer: While watching the Gianfranco Ferre fashion show, the highlight of the recent AIDS Project Los Angeles fund-raiser, we realized just how jaded we’d become. After seeing so many drop-dead gorgeous models parading on catwalks over the years, we don’t even think much about what happens on the runway.

But that changed when we were seated next to a fashion show novice--or virgin, as he preferred to be called. What was he curious about?

* How come the female models are walking so oddly? (Impossible high heels and a slick floor are a deadly combination.)

* How come the male models walk like normal people? (They get to wear sensible flat shoes).

* Are those breasts real? (They don’t move, so probably not.)

* Is she going to fall out of that? (Probably.)

* Are you supposed to be able to see her butt? (Yes.)

* Who wears this stuff? (People with too much money and lots of places to go.)