Hot on the Scent of Oscar de la Renta

If it’s Friday, this must be Torrance.

Oscar de la Renta was on the ninth stop of his 21-city tour. Last week, it was the West Coast--Portland, Seattle, San Francisco and, finally, Los Angeles--the Robinsons-May Del Amo store to be exact.

The gig? Launching “So De La Renta”--his new $200-an-ounce perfume and its family of spinoffs, from a $28 shower gel to a $15 deodorant.

“I travel a little bit like a suitcase--I go wherever they take me,” the designer joked wearily.

Thanks to his nonstop globe-trotting on behalf of every new product that bears his name, De la Renta is now as well-known for his fragrances as he is for the fabulously expensive and feminine dresses he designs--both the New York ready-to-wear line and the couture collection for Pierre Balmain in Paris.

For his L.A. stop, the 65-year-old prince of charm was elegantly turned out in a charcoal-gray suit from his men’s collection, a wool houndstooth tie from his own line, and a paisley pocket square he picked up somewhere in his worldly travels.

The lunchtime appearance on the main floor of this Robinsons-May, one of the company’s top-selling fragrance “doors,” as stores are known in the perfume business--is much anticipated. And De la Renta is nothing if not accommodating to his fans.

With his black sedan parked just outside the store’s back entrance, De la Renta and his entourage look almost thrilled as they ride the escalator to the main selling floor at the assigned time. His arrival causes a crowd of several hundred women to break into applause.

One area of the cosmetics department has been outfitted with a bubblegum-pink carpet to match the new perfume’s package, a glass table topped with a white orchid and a reproduction 18th century French chair.

But for the duration of this rare designer appearance, there was not a moment to sit.

Some women had been waiting an hour for a squirt of “So” and an autograph by its maker. As one of the designer’s two model escorts handed out De la Renta’s photograph, another passed out fragrance samples.

“He looks classy,” said June Richards, a De la Renta devotee who found out only after arriving at the store that the designer was going to be there. Every year for the last five years, Richards said, her son has given her a bottle of Oscar, De la Renta’s first and most successful scent, introduced in 1977. (Two other women’s fragrances and one for men have been introduced since then, but only Oscar remains among the 20 top-selling designer fragrances, according to the Fragrance Foundation, a nonprofit arm of the industry.)

By the time De la Renta leaves, Richards has bought one of the new $42 gift sets of spray and lotion. Arcenet Justiniano, one of the many women on hand at the Torrance store to greet De la Renta, also snapped up one of the $42 sets. From her post at the front of the line, she gushed: “I think he’s a charming person. I always keep track of his interviews in the press.”

Stella Orvadia of Torrance went for the $58 gift set (spray, lotion and talc)--her third purchase since the new line debuted. “He’s one of my favorite designers,” said Orvadia, who has worn every fragrance he ever made. She’s also worn his clothes and dines regularly on his signature bone china.

In barely 30 minutes, De la Renta is done. He concedes that the event doesn’t allow much time for conversation with his admirers. “You are five, 10 seconds with each one--although some will be more bold and tell you things.”

In Seattle, he recalled, “A woman said she drove six hours to attend and she was the very first person in line. She was shaking [from excitement]. It was so touching. She said she wanted to meet me for a very long time and had read about my work with children.” In his native Dominican Republic, De la Renta helped build a large school and day-care center.

Another Seattle woman wanted to show him the first bottle of Oscar--now all but empty--that she’d saved for two decades. She had also saved part of the original package insert and handed it to De la Renta to sign in his distinctive scrawl.

“It’s always a one-day thing,” the designer said in an interview. In the course of a typical day on the road, he meets the press--a local newspaper story is as crucial as a spread in Vogue--and he always hosts a cocktail party or breakfast for department store sales staff members, whom he recognizes as key to his success.

“Most of the time we do it at the cocktail hour and the girls go home and they get dressed up,” he said. During his Los Angeles pit stop, there was a dawn interview on KABC-TV, followed by a breakfast for “the girls” from 8:30 to 10:30 at the Beverly Hills Hotel.

When he launched Oscar 20 years ago, De la Renta assumed that the perfume would do well because of his fashion history with department store brass. “I thought it would be a very easy sell, because I had a long relationship with many stores through my clothing. But I was told, ‘Oscar, if you want to be successful, you have to know the salespeople.’ ”

Since then, De la Renta seems to have reached an understanding that when it comes to perfume, he is selling himself as much as or more than the contents of his elegant flacons.

Does he relate better to the women who buy his four-figure evening gowns than to those who spend $42 for a gift set of his new fragrance?

“Not at all!” the designer objects. “Because I really like the common touch. I feel it is a greater honor to be with a woman who comes to the counter and buys your fragrance than to be with a woman who buys a $6,000 dress.

“High fashion is for a very precious few. With fragrances, you reach a whole different world, which is perhaps more real.”