‘Study for Math Test, Turn In Essay and Run Ad Agency’

These aren’t your father’s advertising executives.

After designing a winning ad for a new roll-on shaving cream in photography class last fall, Sam Culp, 18, Lillie Werner, 17, Liz Minas, 17, and Alexis Lieberman, 17, of Hancock Park’s Marlborough School founded their own advertising agency, FOVEA 4.

“The name is from our bio textbook,” said Culp, who will attend Yale University this fall. “The fovea is the place in the human eye where light is brought into the greatest focus.”

Thomas Briana, president of L.A.-based Solid Shave, thought challenging high schoolers to create the campaign would be a way to tap into the teen market.

One of their ads features a photo of a loaf of bread with the tag line: “It’s the best thing since . . . “

“We wanted to comment on the use of cliches in advertising, and apply new connotations to a preexisting phrase, just as Solid Shave is a new concept in shaving,” Werner said. (To see the ads, go to https://www.solidshave.com.)

“One of the hardest things was deciding which loaf of bread would photograph best,” Minas said. Putting pantyhose on the lens to make the picture soft was also tricky. “At one point, the hose caught on fire!”

The winning image, which will run in newspapers and magazines when the product is launched later this year, shows two packages of Solid Shave surrounded by zeros and ones and the slogan, “Upgrade your shaving language.”

The campaign won the regional Scholastic Arts Gold Award. This spring the girls developed an independent study program with their teacher Judith Tanzman to continue their work. They have been hired to create ads for El Portal Center, a North Hollywood arts complex, L.A. club Fais Do-Do and the Loop, a hotline for teens.

“It was difficult having such full days,” Culp said. “We’d have an art history test, a bio lab report due, and an ad agency to run.” Still, each of them made straight A’s. (Can you stand it?)

To date, FOVEA 4 has earned a little more than $1,000, but the girls say they are more interested in building their portfolio than earning money.

“Our parents were very supportive,” Werner said. “We told them we were starting a business, and they said, ‘Are you asking us to invest?’ ” (The girls declined the help.)

“But,” Werner added, “we did get our fathers who were lawyers to look over the contracts.”

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The sunglasses salespeople at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills have reported that several customers who’ve purchased oversized Versace and Chanel shades have been ticketed recently by the California Highway Patrol.

For what, crimes against fashion?

As it turns out, the vehicle code governs the width of sunglasses that can be worn safely while driving.

Section 23120 states, “No person shall operate a motor vehicle while wearing glasses having a temple width of one-half inch or more if any part of such temple extends below the horizontal center of the lens so as to interfere with lateral vision.”

“Basically, we don’t want you driving with the kind of glasses Ray Charles wears,” said CHP spokesman Steve Kohler. The law has been on the books since 1959, he said, and fines vary from court to court.

A whopping five citations for the violation were issued statewide in 1999. Ten were issued each year in 1998 and in 1997. “We’ve had a real crackdown,” Kohler joked. “It’s a dragnet situation.”