Artist to Make His Mark on Resort-Wear Show

Fashion and graffiti will take center stage next Friday at downtown L.A.’s CaliforniaMart, with the holiday/resort season trade show featuring Alex Polli, also known as Man One, demonstrating his edgy art.

The Loyola Marymount fine arts graduate has been involved with the graffiti art movement since 1987, making his trademark work of bold, colorful spray-paint murals throughout Los Angeles. His work has been included in exhibitions at several museums, including L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art, and he’s designed works for MTV, Adidas, Sony and Coca-Cola.

The artist will help the Mart unveil its holiday/resort collection, which will include about 10,000 apparel and accessory lines, according to Mart spokeswoman Karen Mamont. Polli will make his graffiti-style art from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in the Mart’s lobby, painting three 5-foot-by-6-foot murals incorporating fashion themes. Collaborating with him will be CaliforniaMart-based designers Cheryl Vance, Kimberly Magarro and Michael Magarro, whose label is Two Girls and a Guy.

The public is invited to watch Polli work at the Mart, 110 E. 9th St., in the fashion district downtown, but only the trade and press will be admitted elsewhere in the building and to related events. For more information, call (213) 630-3737.

Frederick’s of Hollywood has announced the 20th anniversary of the thong this week and, in turn, sparked a debate about the definitive origin of this bare-almost-all article of clothing. What right does the retailer really have to claim thong fame?

Some believe that the thong actually started on the beaches of Rio, in Brazil, but failed to catch on in the U.S. until the early 1970s. Others assert that it began with the creation of the thong bikini, which was imagined by legendary Los Angeles fashion designer Rudy Gernreich in the 1960s. Even Frederick’s spokeswoman Ava Scanlan admits that the prehistoric loincloth could technically be labeled a thong.

But she defended the celebration by clarifying that it is the 20th anniversary of the introduction by Frederick’s of the thong to the mass U.S. market. “Never before had it been available beyond the tiny boutique.” Originally called the “scanty panty” when it debuted in 1981, Frederick’s was the first to call it the thong.

Over the years, the thong has accumulated many a pseudonym (some too risque to print here). Call it what you will, it has grown into “a staple that makes everyone’s life more fun,” said Scanlan. Who would have thought that this derivation of the panty could roll up such a string of controversy?

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Times staff writers Michael Quintanilla, Adrienne Primicias and Gloria Diaz contributed to this story.