Mistresses of Style

It is possibly the reddest article of clothing on the planet. Peggy Moffitt’s vinyl raincoat, ankle length, lined in brown sheared mink, moving along the bright white way of Sunset Plaza like a maraschino cherry bobbing in a flute of champagne. She’s in it, of course, holding a matching purse and discussing the coat’s various merits, only one of which is protection from a still chill, though no longer rainy, morning.

“It really is just the thing when I’m traveling,” she says. “When we were in Europe, being met at train stations by various people, I could always say, ‘Well, you can’t miss me--I’m the one in the red raincoat.’ ”

That makes it possibly the most redundant red raincoat on the planet as well, because only the legally blind could miss Peggy Moffitt, even if they had never met her, even in a crowded train station. First, there’s the hair--a black cap of hair, all lines and angles, slicing up from the neck, over the ear, down again at the temple, then up and straight across the brow in what is perhaps a bob, but only technically. Then there are the eyes--huge eyes, the lids painted black, then gray, then black again all the way to the socket’s ridge and just beyond, the upper lashes curled and glued, the lower lashes hand-painted in a meticulous cross-hatching of black and gray. No smears, no smudges. Peggy Moffitt’s eyes are perfect, in the extreme.

The model of choice for fringe designer Rudi Gernreich in the 1960s, Moffitt became famous in the extreme--literally. Extreme colors, extreme patterns, extreme hemlines. Gernreich defined the Pop/Mod clothes of a generation, and Moffitt, with her hair and her eyes and her sylph-slender form, brought them to life. Together, they nearly toppled the fashion industry in 1964 when Gernreich unveiled the topless bathing suit. The quickly iconic photo of a brazenly demure Moffitt, taken by her husband, William Claxton, crystallized both careers. And though Gernreich died in 1985, Moffitt, nearing 60, still embodies Gernreich’s style--again, literally. Her closet is full of what mini dresses, jumpsuits, jackets and pants still fit her. The rest--10 wardrobe crates’ worth--are in storage.

“Oh, occasionally, I’ll buy someone else,” she says, “but I never really like them. The most I can usually muster is, ‘Well, it’s not too terrible.’ And that’s not just good enough. I like to be enthusiastic about things.”

In a navy blue tunic, cuffed, collared and belted in red over tight red pants--all revealed after the coat is disposed of--she is a vision of enthusiasm. It’s the kind of outfit that would cause most of us, even if we had her figure, to hesitate, to reconsider, perhaps, before throwing it on and facing the public. In Sunset Plaza. Before noon. And yet there is no denying that she looks fabulous. Sitting and smoking and sipping red wine, with that hair and those eyes, and so obviously comfortable in her skin. Stylish.

“Oh, I think style is completely different than fashion,” she says. “Fashion is fickle. Fashion, no matter if you’re talking about clothes or smoking or automobiles, is what most people do. Style is about making a commitment. Making a commitment that means something to you.”

Moffitt’s commitment to Gernreich is approaching its fourth decade, and perhaps an entrepreneurial enterprise. Her dream, she says, is to start a business that would reproduce the designer’s clothes. “But I don’t even know who to begin talking to about such things,” she says. And it’s an obvious extension of her self-appointed role as living Gernreich fashion plate, which some people find a bit, well, bizarre.

“I’m always amazed when complete strangers feel they can make a critical statement,” she says. “But I’ve been spit at and laughed at and pointed at. Of course, fame is the solution. Once you get famous, people know you and they stop spitting.”

Far from spitting, the public’s attitude toward Moffitt lately has begun bordering on worshipful. As designers re-create the decades she helped define, Moffitt has found herself back in the footlights. Gucci’s Tom Ford put her in the first row at the showing of his spring line in Milan, and she hadn’t even planned on attending any of the collections. She and Claxton were there to open a show of Claxton’s photography and to finalize some deals on the re-release of Moffitt’s “The Rudi Gernreich Book.”

“It was wonderful being in Milan,” she says. “They treated me like I was Marilyn Monroe back from the dead.”

She acknowledges her status as fashion icon with an abrupt laugh. “It’s great being an icon,” she says, “but the pay is lousy.”

She delivers one-liners well, for she has one of those voices, those great telephone voices, low and furred at the edges by many cigarettes and festive evenings, and she knows how to use it, arching over the build-up, dropping down to cradle the punch line. It’s a mobile, versatile tool of a woman who sits quite still, whose hands, smooth and rosy, lie quietly, leaving the business of talking to the voice.

The trick to having personal style, she says, is that you have to place the emphasis on something.

“Me, I have hugely exaggerated eyes and no mouth,” she says, and it’s true. Her mouth is camouflaged by La Femme Frosty Beige lipstick that she reapplies, along with a few pats of face powder, at the end of the meal. “If I had hugely exaggerated eyes and a hugely exaggerated mouth,” she says, her vocal

swoop ascending, “I’d be any old bag hanging out on Sunset.”

Style is also about what you don’t do.

“Maybe I’m confusing being a lady with having style,” she says. “But neither should belittle anyone. It should be about making people comfortable--comfortable enough so they can be who they are as well.

“Only strong-minded people can have style, because

invariably you’re going to offend someone or provoke them. The few times I’ve spoken to students, I’ve told them, ‘If everyone is spitting at you because you’ve got a banana stuck in your ear,’ you have to think, well, how important is this banana? Am I doing this just for attention, or am I doing this because it’s me?’ And if the answer is, because this is who I am, well, then everyone’s going to have to spit, aren’t they?”

noticed,” she says. “I don’t think I’m a very aggressive person. I don’t dress to stand out.” So, naturally, she does. Far more effectively than many who strive to.

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Stylist: Calvin Jon Haugen / Celestine, L.A.; hair and makeup: Elena Arroy.