Does She or Doesn’t She? Her Hairdresser, and the World, Now Know
Ever wonder whether those models on hair color boxes are for real? Of course they are, and on Clairol Box No. 110, Natural Light Auburn, you’ll find Kathy Luellwitz, a Redondo Beach sales representative. Boxes with her photo are beginning to filter into local stores.
Luellwitz, as the box says, is 53, the mother of three young women and represents a large beauty-supply manufacturer for all of California. She responded to the Clairol Nice ‘n’ Easy Be on the Box Contest late last year. She and two other women, a brunet and blond, were chosen from thousands of applicants.
Luellwitz thinks she got the judges’ attention with her entry photo, which showed her at the 1998 West Hollywood Halloween party with Richard, her husband of 33 years. She was dressed as a kitten, complete with face makeup. Her husband was dressed as a clown with a red wig. She wrote, “I use Nice ‘n’ Easy. . . . He does not.”
Luellwitz and the two other winners were treated to a trip to New York for photo sessions. She had her hair colored (of course with Clairol) by a professional, but Luellwitz admitted the treatment wasn’t that much of a difference. “My hair is so long that I have trouble doing it myself. I commandeer my husband and my daughters to help out,” said the mother of Stacey, 30, Amanda, 27, and Jillian, 26.
Luellwitz was a natural blond who turned reddish brown as she got older. She has been coloring her hair since she was 13. “I remember walking into the corner drugstore a long time ago, and I had baby-sitting money in my hand, deciding between a bottle of nail polish and a box of hair color.”
The hair color won out, and it was a shade darker than her natural blond, to make her look more conservative.
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A ‘Precious’ Collection: Every once in a while, you get to see a wardrobe collection that not only defines its owner, but a bygone era. Decades, a vintage clothing boutique on Melrose, has the nearly 100-piece collection of a certain Mrs. Jack Mann Williams, better known “Precious,” a socialite from Memphis, Tenn., who during the ‘60s and ‘70s collected the likes of Norman Norell, Halston, Bill Blass, Geoffrey Beene and Pauline Trigere.
The era, said Decades owner Cameron Silver, was one “when you wore a dress and you wore it once, then you bought another.” And designers had relationships with their clients.
Williams, who is still alive, befriended Norell and Halston, Silver said. Norell, a leading designer of that era, even sent her samples.
Jack Mann Williams, an interior designer, curates his wife’s collection. The couple has a daughter, Angel, although Silver said he knows little else about the couple except that “she still is really stylish.”
Most of the clothes are size 6 or 8, and Silver is putting out 25 pieces at a time.
Barbara Thomas can be reached atbarbara.thomas@latimes.com.
