L.A. Designers Out for a Slice of the Action in the Big Apple

Fashion week kicks off here today, but the city seems much more interested in the goings-on of Britney and Jacko than the runways.

Michael Jackson, the one-gloved wonder, is performing at Madison Square Garden tonight with a host of celebrity guests, who may or may not include Britney Spears, who may or may not show up for “Sex and the City” costume designer Patricia Field’s fashion show, one of the must-see events of the week.

Got that?

Richard Tyler, Badgley Mischka and Sean “P. Diddy” Combs are sitting this season out. But nearly 100 other designers, including, oddly enough, those of maternity wear and lingerie, are slated to parade their men’s and women’s ready-to-wear spring 2002 collections. Even as some question the direction of fashion week, the biannual event now organized by the sports marketing Goliath IMG, L.A. designers are hopeful they’ll garner a piece of the garment action.

But they won’t be showing under the tents in Bryant Park, where most designers prefer to show. They’re riding on the fender of Mercedes-Benz, the major corporate sponsor of fashion week, though the SoCal designers will be backed by another automobile giant, Audi.

Just don’t mention the “A” word to Fern Mallis, executive director of 7th on Sixth, which produces the tent shows for IMG. She’s pleased that L.A. designers Jared Gold, Alicia Lawhon, Magda Berliner, Michelle Mason and Grey Ant by Grant Krajecki are participating with their collections shown at various venues in Manhattan. But, “just for the record,” she notes that the weeklong shows are known as “Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.”

Other L.A.-based designers Cornell Collins, Andrew Dibben and Rick Owens, husband of Les Deux Cafe’s proprietress Michele Lamy, also are showing here away from the tents--and separate of the Audi-backed presentations coordinated by Sara Stein and Margaret Schell of SPR Inc. in L.A.

“We’ve created a promotion of Los Angeles fashion--that’s our ultimate goal for being in New York, to bring attention to L.A.,” Stein says.

L.A.’s own fashion week is slated for early November, at the end of the fashion show cycle and eight weeks after the New York shows. In between, designers in London, Milan and Paris show their collections. By the time the L.A. shows come around, Stein says “all the dollars are spent” by buyers for stores “and that can be a problem for L.A. designers.”

Adds Schell, “This is a great opportunity for L.A. talent to be in New York, a chance to really say, ‘You people need to come to L.A.”’

Or not, because you’ve already seen the clothes.

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Wednesday evening presented itself with one of the typical fashion week dilemmas: how to hit two parties at the same time, one in SoHo, the other on the Lower East Side. The SoHo bash was at the new, uber-minimalist MaxMara store--the latest tenant to move onto West Broadway. “I’m very excited,” says Luigi Maramotti, son of MaxMara founder Achille Maramotti, who now runs the Italian clothing company famous for its superbly tailored coats. “This was the last space on the block and it used to be a parking lot!”

The party was light on celebs (most probably skipped cocktails with the muckety-mucks, choosing to go straight to an intimate private dinner at the Puck Building.) But film director Martin Scorsese did face the flashbulbs with his wife, Helen, at the benefit for the Film Foundation. He helped found the preservationist organization in 1990, along with seven other filmmakers.

“My interest stems from years of trying to view films in their best form and their original form, and I mean that as a film viewer not as a filmmaker,” Scorsese says. “I’m really trying to raise the awareness of the studios in Los Angeles that taking care of their films is a benefit to them financially and a benefit to the world culturally,” says the director who is racing to finish “Gangs of New York” starring Leonardo DiCaprio in time for a Christmas release.

Across town, another Italian, Emanuel Ungaro reacquainted himself with the hip, young fashionable set by playing host at his extravagant party at the New York Armory that was swathed in the designer’s signature hot pink.

“I love being with the young people,” Ungaro says. Next stop L.A.? “We’re thinking about it. I love movie stars.”

For sure, there were plenty of stars, er, models, among the 600 revelers at his bash celebrating the opening of his new Madison Avenue boutique.

Thousands of flickering votive candles placed on the floor and behind scrim curtains served as the backdrop for the lavish party featuring Turkish dancers, a DJ from the Bronx and three women--not men--in a tub. The trio attracted gawkers, among them models Iman, Stella Tennant, Sophie Dahl, Alek Wek and Devon Aoki, many dressed in Ungaro, plus Frederic Fekkai, Patricia Field, Kevyn Aucoin and sisters Paris and Nicky Hilton, who will be part of E! Entertainment Television’s fashion coverage squad this week.

Sample banter could go like this.

Paris: “You can’t wear Gucci tonight, I’m wearing Gucci.”

Nicky: “No fair, you wore Gucci last night.”