L.A.’s New York Spin

Sewing machines hum around David Cardona as he reaches for one of his creations-in-progress, a gown of shiny metallic-looking fabric he has nicknamed “oil slick.”

He holds up another.

“I call it my ice cream cone dress,” says the Los Angeles designer about the garment that flares like upside-down ice cream cones in seven places around the gown’s hem. “This is one of those dresses that uses up a lot of fabric. But I think it’s cool. It’s different--and that’s what I’m trying to be, different.”

Cardona is hoping his flavorful creation--and his flair for fabric and tailoring--will catch the eye of buyers and the international fashion media as they canvas New York next week for the newest looks on--and off--the runway. His clothes will be hanging on racks in an upper Eastside showroom because Cardona simply can’t afford a runway show, which can cost from six figures to millions of dollars.

And, for the moment, he cannot afford to be away from L.A. where a high profile is necessary to get celebrities to wear his looks at upcoming award shows like the Grammys and Oscars.

Not that David Cardona hasn’t had a dab of recognition here and there. Natalie Cole, Janet Jackson, Carlos Santana, the Backstreet Boys and Cher have discovered Cardona’s flair for fitting the body beautiful with sinfully soft leathers and exquisite French and Swiss fabrics.

Cardona, who at one time designed top-secret aircraft for McDonnell Douglas Corp., has had photo spreads in InStyle and Los Angeles magazines.

It’s been a little more than two years since Cardona, 36, left his job as designer Richard Tyler’s assistant to go out on his own, but a runway show still eludes him. For now, it’s too costly and his business, still relatively new, is taking baby steps.

With savings, determination and a business partner, he opened his first Santa Monica factory in 1998, a year after he and John Bowman--founder of Chrome Hearts, a leather and jewelry firm he sold in 1995--created Bowman Cardona. The two met through a mutual friend, singer Seal, for whom Cardona had designed clothing while working with Tyler.

For weeks, Cardona, a graduate of Westchester High School, Cal State Long Beach and the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, has been working on his fall collection of 55 pieces: softly sculpted suits, glamour gowns and lots of leather. His line retails for between $500 and $5,000 at specialty shops like Les Habitues in Los Angeles, Lulu Brandt in Pasadena, A’Maree’s in Newport Beach and in several other stores, including Entre Nous in New York, Neiman Marcus in Chicago and Tootsies in Dallas and Houston.

A stickler for detail, Cardona hand-sews buttonholes with silk thread. Buttons are made of buffalo horn. Every seam is hand-finished. And nearly everything Cardona creates is lined in silk--a trick of the trade he picked up from Tyler. He worked for the L.A. designer for six years.

Like Tyler, Cardona is not one to buy into the latest trends.

Instead, he says he gets his inspiration from fabric, the weave, the texture, the way a certain fabric moves, the way it feels--that’s the turn-on.

“Feel this,” he says reaching for a bolt of oil slick. “Grab it, bunch it up. Go ahead. It never wrinkles. And look how it shines. It’s beautiful.”

Cardona is completely enthralled. And his enthusiasm--his passion--for his craft captivates everyone around him.

With vigor, he talks about how a garment should drape the body, how a collar should just roll across the neckline, how a silhouette should be spare but fluid, understated but always sophisticated, chic and comfortable, how the inside of a garment should feel as great as it looks on the outside.

For sure, Cardona has his fashion knowledge down to a creative science. It helps that his degree--with honors--from Cal State was in design engineering and that he worked for aerospace engineering giant McDonnell Douglas Corp., now part of Boeing. For more than two years he designed military and commercial aircraft, including several confidential projects, he says.

“There were aspects of the work I loved because I love technology, I love fantasy.” But the job “didn’t really ‘wow’ me.” He yearned to be a fashion designer.

So he put himself through the fashion institute in the evenings and graduated at the top of his class with a 4.0 average while holding down his day job. Eventually, he landed his first design job with Tyler.

Born in Barranquilla, Colombia, Cardona was barely 2 when he immigrated to the United States with his mother and brothers to be reunited with his father in Los Angeles.

Cardona’s father, an aircraft mechanic and pilot in Colombia, spent a year in L.A. before sending for his family in the late 1960s. He had bartered his way into America by repairing a Colombian’s airplane.

“My dad did such a great job that the man said to him, ‘I really appreciate what you have done for me. There has to be something that I can do for you.’ And my dad said, ‘Well, I’ve always wanted to move to America. Can you help me?’ And the man said, ‘Of course.’ ”

Father Instilled

a Work Ethic

To this day, Cardona credits his family’s arrival in L.A. to his dad’s work ethic of “always being the fastest, the smartest, the best.”

Cardona hopes to instill the same values in his kids: 2-year-old Alessandro, who lives with Cardano’s ex-wife, and 4-year-old Talia, who lives with the designer’s ex-girlfriend.

He says he visits Alessandro all the time. Wednesdays are reserved for Talia, who enjoys hanging out in her dad’s office and showroom, playing with fabric scraps and drawing.

“I have to show you some of Talia’s stuff. She’s good,” her proud father says.

Talent must run in the family.

“David is the artist in the family,” says Hilda, Cardona’s mom, who resides in Playa del Rey with husband Julio. The couple have three other sons: Julio Jr. 37, George, 34, and Ricardo, 26.

“I think he likes fashion because he likes things that are beautiful. He’s like a painter. He has the spirit of an artist,” his mother says.

As a child, Cardona remembers always drawing.

“I always had a pencil in my hand,” he says. In grade school his art covered the front of silk screened T-shirts he wore to dances.

One day his teacher pulled him aside, and he thought he was in trouble. Instead, the teacher was so impressed with Cardona’s talent she suggested he enroll in a special school to develop his skill.

For a few years, while he was in elementary school, he attended design schools with high school kids.

“I’d be doing oil paintings while all the time I wanted to play with kids my own age,” he says.

But even as a child, Cardona had fashion foremost in his mind.

“I loved painting, but I remember how I used to watch my parents’ female friends when they’d come over to the house. I’d be thinking, ‘Lady, you shouldn’t be wearing that with that!’ ”

In high school, Cardona “was always thinking about how fabrics felt and how they draped on the body. I was always into fashion,” he says.

His parents knew it, too. Throughout college Cardona often spoke about a fashion career, but his father, an aircraft mechanic, wouldn’t have it.

“He’d tell me, ‘Son, it’s not a practical thing to do, you don’t want to be a designer, you want to be an engineer, you love aircraft, you love technology.’ ”

While at McDonnell Douglas, Cardona realized he had a major decision to make about the direction of his life.

He enrolled in night classes at the fashion institute, then broke the news to his father.

“I love my father dearly, but it was a difficult thing to talk to him about because it was the first time in my life I had to face my father about something he was not approving.”

Eventually, his father “came to terms with my decision. Now he follows my work very closely,” Cardona says.

Conservative, but

With a Flair

So do others, from celebrities constantly searching for original designs to shop owners who carry his collections.

“David knows how to fit the body,” says singer Natalie Cole, who met him when he worked for Tyler. She recently hired Cardona to design her tour wardrobe.

“I’m a tall girl with a butt, so I need something attractive that is not too tight but cute and sensual,” Cole says. “I need pieces that move, bend and stretch with me. He knows where to find these wonderful fabrics. A dress doesn’t have to really be beaded or sequined. That’s the beauty of a Cardona piece.

“David has always had his own flair, but he’s also conservative, and that’s the thing I like about him. It was just a matter of time before he would branch out on his own.”

Michel Perey, owner of Les Habitues, which carries Cardona’s creations as well as designer collections from John Galliano to Ann Demeulemeester, agrees.

“We’re doing really well with David. His clothes are beautifully made and impeccable. He’s got the eye,” says Perey, whose 20-year-old shop carries $2,500 to $3,000 Cardona suits.

There’s an added attraction to buying a Cardona, Perey says.

“These days most women are looking for a name that is going to be up there one day,” he says. “And it’s going to happen for David.”

Shop owner Dawn Klohs, who owns A’Maree’s in Newport Beach with her sister Denise Kinne, also believes Cardona “is an up and comer.”

“I think it’s the structure in the clothes the customers like, even the way David sets the shoulders,” says Klohs, who carries designers such as Marni and Yohji Yamamoto in her 27-year-old boutique. “David’s lines are clean and feminine, and his attention to detail is like having your own personal tailor in the shop.”

Talk like that pleases--and embarrasses--Cardona.

“I was brought up that way--of always doing your best work,” he says. “I could never do anything less.”

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Michael Quintanilla can be reached at michael.quintanilla@latimes.com.