Divine Design Fund-Raiser Shuts Showcases to Stress Sales
Rev your shopping engines, the annual AIDS fund-raiser Divine Design will shift its focus from showcasing top interior designers to solely selling fashion and home furnishing items.
The switch is due to the phenomenal success of the discount marketplaces that have turned into holiday shopping extravaganzas. So shopping will be the centerpiece of this year’s Divine Design, Dec. 2-6 at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood.
Vendors already signed on to participate include St. John, Bottega Venetta, MAC Cosmetics, Hype and BCBG. There will also be an enlarged home furnishings area and a gallery of art donated by celebrities.
Project Angel Food, which delivers free meals daily to more than 1,100 people in L.A. living with AIDS, will be the sole beneficiary of Divine Design. Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS, which has been a beneficiary in previous years, will hold its own Oct. 21 fund-raiser, “Collection Rouge: Dining by Design,” featuring tabletops by top interior designers.
Closing Down: Financial problems forced designer Patrick Robinson to close his 2-year-old sportswear business in New York on July 30.
During the last six months, Robinson had been trying to restructure the company, creating less expensive pieces for a younger audience. But the designer could not make it work and lost his financing shortly after losing his Italian manufacturer earlier this year.
“It’s very difficult being a young designer and having your own business. It’s so expensive to make clothes that you almost have to hire yourself out to pay for it. Everyone out there who is doing well has hired themselves out to a deep-pocketed company,” he said by telephone.
Robinson’s collection for this fall will not be produced, but he is in negotiations with several luxury-goods companies in Europe that are looking for young American designers to revive their lines.
Robinson, 32, began his career on the design staff at Giorgio Armani and succeeded Richard Tyler as head designer at Anne Klein Co. in 1995. He left after just three seasons, when the top line was dropped from Anne Klein by then-owner Takiyho, a Japanese company. He started his own line in 1997.
Tuning in Style: E! Entertainment TV’s 10-month-old Style Network, largely unavailable in the L.A. market, will be offered to another 100,000 cable viewers here by December. Style will be added to cable systems in Santa Monica, Redondo Beach, Bel-Air and Beverly Hills. The company expects the network to be available to the entire L.A. cable market by 2001.
Casual Help: Grass skirts were paired with tux jacket and flip-flops with tails at the 10th annual Waterman’s Ball, the Surf Industry Manufacturers Assn.’s black-tie-meets-the-beach gala held July 30 at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Dana Point. The annual event raised $200,000 to be shared by four groups: the American Oceans Campaign, which works with Congress to pass clean-water protection legislation; the Surfrider Foundation, a San Clemente-based group dedicated to ocean preservation, research and education; the Orange County Marine Institute in Dana Point, which offers educational and environmental programs; and the Hidden Harbor Marine Environmental Project Inc., a Florida-based sea turtle rescue-recovery center.
On the Wild Side: Candies, known for its outrageous ads with Jenny McCarthy on the toilet, has done it again, uniting bad boy Dennis Rodman and his on-again wife, Carmen Electra, for a series of print ads coming out later this month.
One ad from the series shows Rodman looking up from a copy of “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” with Electra on his lap. In another shot, the couple share a mirror while Electra touches up her lipstick and Rodman his mascara.
The ads will announce two new Candies fragrances for men and women.
Notes: Dolce & Gabbana plans to open a flagship store in Beverly Hills early next year. . . . Mossimo Inc. of Irvine and Italian eyewear manufacturer Marcolin have signed a four-year agreement to produce Mossimo eyewear for men and women. . . . Laundry’s Shelli Segal has launched a signature evening wear line at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. . . . Beginning in the fall, look for a line of children’s shoes from Nine West.
