A Woman of Two Worlds
Socialites on the Beverly Hills party circuit are surprised when they ask the publisher of their local society magazine what part of town she lives in.
“I live in the ghetto,” says LaVetta Forbes.
“Oh, you mean in the flats, down past Wilshire?” the bejeweled women sometimes reply.
No, responds Forbes. “I mean the ghetto, off Normandie, down past King Boulevard.”
Forbes, a gregarious woman with a well-developed sense of irony, is publisher of Beverly Hills 90212, a glossy magazine devoted to chronicling the moneyed set in Beverly Hills, Bel-Air and adjacent upscale neighborhoods.
Its pages are filled with colorful commentary and color pictures of party-goers flocking to nonstop fund-raisers and balls. Full-page portraits of wealthy women in designer gowns and furs are sprinkled among advertisements for diamonds, cars and expensive restaurants.
Work for Forbes is hobnobbing with the wealthy in posh hotel ballrooms and private mansions. Home is her one-bedroom cottage in South-Central Los Angeles.
“I go into houses that cost $10 million, $20 million. Then I go back to my little house,” Forbes said with a grin.
“The ladies say, ‘Aren’t you afraid down there?’ They always seem to draw out the words ‘down there.’ Some of them have never been south of the Coliseum. Some of them have never been to the Coliseum, because it’s ‘down there.’ I just laugh.”
Hers is the house without graffiti on the fence, Forbes said, because neighborhood kids painted it for her when it was new and now they keep an eye on it.
She has an office in Beverly Hills. But much of the work on Beverly Hills 90212 is done at home.
Launched seven years ago as a bimonthly, the magazine claims a readership of about 60,000. Its circulation is unaudited, but Forbes said it is delivered free to homes around Beverly Hills and sold at newsstands.
Forbes, 57, never set out to be a publisher.
She was introduced to the social world through her involvement with the Music Center in Los Angeles and by her work at a clothing design studio. She operated it for more than two decades in Beverly Hills; she says she is the first black businesswoman to set up shop there. Her specialty was designing evening gowns for society ladies and for such show business figures as the Supremes.
One day she proposed writing a society column to the editor of a Westside weekly newspaper.
“Ever since I was 12 I’d wanted to write,” Forbes explained. “The newspaper editor was nice--but he said he didn’t think I could get into the parties his paper was interested in.”
Forbes knew he was wrong.
“People always kind of thought I was a character, so they’d throw in one crazy guest for the evening and that would be me. Getting invited to parties was not going to be a problem.”
Noticing that Beverly Hills had no locally oriented magazine, Forbes mortgaged her tiny house, arranged a line of credit with a printer and launched her own. She named it for the ZIP code she used at her gown shop.
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Her first issue came out in August 1990--two months before the hit TV series “Beverly Hills, 90210” went on the air. Early editions were rocky, Forbes admitted. In fact, she said, it took two years before she was happy with its look.
That’s why her most recent edition boasts “5th Anniversary Issue” on its cover, just beneath the huge photo of a smiling Merv Griffin.
There’s no way the magazine will be confused with Vanity Fair. The cover story is a glowing salute to the year’s “30 Most Exciting Women.”
That annual listing honors society women for their philanthropic work. The compilation includes Bel-Air’s Nancy Davis (cited for raising more than $1 million for a multiple sclerosis charity) and Julie Hutner (active in homeless and AIDS work), and Beverly Hills’ Renee Kumetz (a donor to breast cancer research and Native American education).
“I was surprised and delighted,” said honoree Carole Kaye, a Century City resident (praised for her work with the City of Hope, the Reiss Davis Clinic and the Los Angeles Music Center). “It’s a very polished, very professional magazine.”
Although some readers have noticed that advertisers are sometimes included on the “most exciting” list, Forbes said she picks honorees based on the scope of their charity work.
“I’ve been offered $15,000 for a woman to be in the ’30 Most Exciting Women’ issue and I turned it down,” Forbes said. “If you start selling your pages or your cover, your magazine has no credibility.”
Parties and other social events that Forbes does not personally attend are reported by contributing writers. Fashion arbiter Mr. Blackwell--who was pictured on the magazine’s first cover--is a columnist for Beverly Hills 90212.
“I asked him to write for me. He said, ‘How much will you pay?’ and I said I could pay $75,” Forbes recalled.
“He said, ‘My dear, I’d be embarrassed to walk into a bank with a $75 check’ and said he’d write it for free. People just want to help me succeed.”
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Contributor Jody Jacobs agreed. She’s a former society editor for The Times who said she’s been a friend since she met Forbes while working as West Coast fashion editor for Women’s Wear Daily.
“I’ve followed her career over 25 years,” said Jacobs, now retired and living on the Central Coast. “She’s a very gutsy lady. She’d always done clothes for people who live in another world. I work for free because I’m very fond of her.”
Veteran society photographers who create the carefully posed portraits of women featured in the magazine are paid, however. An unflattering picture can really hurt the credibility of the magazine with its high-society readers.
One of her contributing photographers is Lester Sloan, a respected former Newsweek photographer. Because he is African American, Forbes said she calls ahead when she sends him on assignments to society matrons’ mansions. Otherwise, “they might call the police,” she said.
Forbes said her magazine does not make a profit--although it is close to reaching the break-even point. She is in the process of changing the publication cycle to quarterly to make it easier to report on international high society.
“People here go to Dubai like I go to Oakland,” she said. “This really has become a global community.”
Some things are slower to change, however.
Forbes worries that some Beverly Hills merchants may be reluctant to advertise because of her race. And occasionally eyebrows still go up when other guests spy her at social events, she said.
But the old days--such as the time a party-goer walked up and handed her a cloakroom claim check thinking she was hired help--seem to be over.
Forbes, a New Orleans native and the mother of an adult son who is a banker, said she politely told the man that she was looking for the cloakroom attendant too.
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These days, Forbes is thinking about expanding by creating a newspaper for South-Central Los Angeles that focuses on good news instead of on things like drive-by shootings and political infighting.
The Forbes name is a good one for a publishing empire, she said.
“Kip Forbes, the baby son of Malcolm, introduces me as ‘My cousin LaVetta’ when I’m on his yacht,” she said. “People look surprised, but they give a big smile because they don’t want to offend him.”
Forbes said she has no plans to leave her South-Central neighborhood, where she has established a reconstructive dental program for children of poor families.
“Living here keeps me grounded,” she said. “I’ve got the best of both worlds. I know the garbage man. And I know the richest man in L.A.
“If we all stay in our own group, we’ll never get together.”
