Glamour, Anyone?

Why is it always cooler to live in any decade but the one you’re in--or from? Why does today’s youth troll the ‘70s for style cues while actual ‘70s children still resent suffering through that ridiculous decade? My own idea of a great era was the 1940s of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” when men wore felt hats, women wore skirts and no one viewed velour sweatsuits as appropriate dining attire.

I’ve found kindred spirits in Niki Schwan and Shelly Shibata, the youthful designers behind Lura Starr, a ‘40s-inspired clothing boutique on Martel Avenue, off Beverly Boulevard. The store is named for a fictional starlet the pair created to grace their fashion label and business cards. Lura (“because we like the word ‘lure,’ ” says Schwan, 23, “as in ‘to lure someone in’ ”) and Starr (“because our line used to be called Starlet, and we felt that she should have a name, not be just a random starlet”).

The two budding Edith Heads originally bonded over the fact that, as children, they both made clothes for their Barbies. “We accessorized her so that she was glamorous,” Schwan says.

Now that they’re making clothes for real women, in real sizes, glamour is still the mission statement. Glamour inspired by the 1940s, to be precise. No flash and trash on these racks. As Shibata, 27, points out: “In the ‘40s, women would bend over and you’d see a tiny bit of stocking. Glamour was in and the movies were just starting to get big.” Pointing to the lobby cards and pinup girls adorning the shop’s walls, Schwan says that “pinup came after the ‘40s, when all of a sudden women could show their legs. The war was over; the men were coming home. They wanted to be sexy and they could show a little more.” (Not to quibble, but I’d been led to believe that moving pictures pretty much got big with the silents, that pinup girls came into vogue during the war, and that women were free to show quite a bit of leg as far back as Prohibition. But I’m not a fashion designer, so my facts may be fuzzy.)

Ask Schwan and Shibata which 1940s movies and stars inspire them, and they earnestly rattle off a string of incongruous titles, celebrities and assertions that have about as much to do with the 1940s as the 1840s. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”--filmed in 1961--”we watch that one over and over. We love Audrey [Hepburn]. She’s like, kind of, our girl from the ‘40s. [Audrey’s first film, “Roman Holiday,” was released in 1953.] And Ginger on ‘Gilligan’s Island.’ ” (Ms. Grant, not counting reunion specials, existed between 1964 and 1967.)

We can forgive the ladies their revisionist history because the clothes these dreamers are creating are, in fact, quite intriguing, evoking past feminine grandeur and an era that, while perhaps not the ‘40s per se, is an innocent hybrid of something approaching a simpler time. A time before the encroachment of leisure-wear scarred the fashion scene forever, leaving us, in our present decade, wandering desultorily through the style maze.

“There is no ‘90s,” Schwan says, causing me to check my calendar in panic. “I feel lucky to be designing in the ‘90s because there is no ‘90s style. I don’t think our children will look back at some retro garment and say, ‘Oh, that’s the ‘90s.’ For us, we’re designing the best of every era.”

And if the world ends at the stroke of midnight in 2000, as popular theory suggests?

“We’ll make sure, at least,” the pair assure me, “that the women feel very glamorous.”