Wearing Their Welcome
The sign above the door reads: “Strict dress code enforced.” Underneath it, a slight doorman in a dark green suit patrols his fiefdom, the sidewalk outside Deep. He carries a clipboard but doesn’t consult it as he plucks a select few from the line and lets them through the tightest door in Hollywood. At his side are two beefy men in leather jackets, who ensure that no one touches the velvet rope.
With a growing line of 40 impatient people, the muscle seems prudent. Standing at the front are three guys in black slacks and shirts who have spent the better part of their Saturday night--nearly two hours--waiting. The three, who have driven 90 or so miles from Temecula, eventually give up. Pointing to his shirt, one guy exclaims: “I’ve got flames on my sleeves--that’s the reason we’re not getting in.”
Los Angeles may be the capital of casual couture during the day, but at night it’s quite another world--a land where merciless doormen enforce a system of dress codes as loosely organized and confusing as the city itself. The suit and tie that let you breeze past a doorman in Beverly Hills may only get you a disapproving stare outside a club in Hollywood. The nightlife dress code, this sartorial fatwa, is as hard to negotiate as a left turn across Pacific Coast Highway in July.
Although some clubs advertise formal dress codes, the real rules are unspoken and nebulous. A given: Show skin, or hold one of the three universal trump cards--striking good looks, disposable cash or recognizable celebrity--and you won’t have a problem. Possessing none of these, prepare for, in quick succession, adrenaline, anxiety followed by possible disapproval, and mortification.
Rejection is always personal, and served up by a neckless guy in a cheap Italian suit.
Ivan Kane, for one, is unapologetic about inflicting a style standard on those who want to get into his clubs, Deep and the newly opened Forty Deuce. To perpetuate the nightlife fantasy--a sexy escape from the mundane 9-to-5 world--a club has to have the right mix of beauty, skin and fame.
Fashion is just one ingredient--albeit an important one--in that mix. But for those who don’t pore over the latest issue of In Style, the rules can seem arbitrary. And, in fact, they are. Kane’s dress code officially bars jeans, sandals, flip-flops, hats and T-shirts. But then comes the inevitable caveat: “If you get a girl who’s wearing a pair of Frankie B. jeans cut low, we’re going to let her in. If George Clooney shows up in a tank top, we’re all good,” Kane says. “The doorman’s job is critical. You want a discerning person.... It’s all about the eye. You have got to have a guy who knows who David Geffen is.” (As if on cue, Andy Garcia, in matching dark pants and shirt, walks by. Kane nods in recognition and approval and, later, peels off to hug Deep’s celebrity of the night.)
To the thwarted partygoer, Kane says this: He’s felt your pain. Really. He’s been stranded on the other side of the velvet rope (though he won’t say where). “I was like: ‘I want to know what the memo is.’ ”
If there’s a memo at the Standard Hotel on Sunset Boulevard, it must read: “Only black. Preferably skimpy. Definitely no pleated pants.”
On the poolside deck this June night, dozens of young, well-dressed men and women lounged above the city’s glittering grid. In a corner, a man (in slacks sans pleats) tries to get a phone number from Taniesah Evans, a 29-year-old marketing executive who, on this night, has opted for the tight and timeless: snug black jeans, a black top and a soft leather jacket.
“If you want to get through the door, you have to present a certain look,” says Evans, who has style to spare. “In New York, people are very honest about dress codes. It’s harder in L.A. because it’s more hidden, and there’s more variety and different styles. It makes it harder to judge what to wear.”
Evans shops specifically for going-out clothes and dresses according to her destination. She’s concluded that the beach cities, including Santa Monica and Venice, are more casual; day turning into night doesn’t have to mean a wardrobe change. Not so in Hollywood, where dressing like you just spent a month’s salary at Fred Segal spells the difference between dancing the night away and a night spent crying into a drink at some T.G.I. Friday’s.
“In Santa Monica, I can wear jeans, tank top, sandals. On Sunset, you need heels--stilettos. In Hollywood, I can wear a leopard print and a short skirt.” For an open-ended night, the wardrobe has to be versatile, hence Evans’ black on black.
The other universal pass: attire so audacious that it turns heads no matter where you go. That’s the look that Casey Reuter, 20, and Brooke Bader, 21, have as they breeze through the Standard’s lobby. Dressed “techie”--like techno, they patiently explain--fashion students Reuter and Bader wear tight club wear and glitter, with Bader baring her midriff and Reuter in a red mini dress set off with rainbow-striped leg warmers. The only person unmoved is the underwear model chatting on a cell phone in the glass cage above the concierge’s desk.
“People who go out in jeans drive me crazy,” says Reuter, batting her glittery lashes and drawing crazy out into a very long word. “I want to be a fashion idol, like Donatella Versace.”
Those aspirations, though, demand effort. And a deep closet.
“I will probably change eight times before going out,” says Bader.
Admittedly, the hard work of dressing right isn’t just for the sake of the doorman. There are people inside to impress too--people who can be even more critical.
Brandon Martinez, nursing a drink nearby, says he’s pretty disgusted by what he sees in the bars and clubs on the Strip. “Low, low, low pants,” the hairdresser says, with a sneer. “Tiny shirts.” In short: “Low-rider pants, highlighted hair.” Fashion is fickle, he says, and the Sunset Strip is a tourist trap. Bad combination.
“It attracts a lot of people from Orange County. You wonder what some of them were thinking. I mean, the sequined tops? Please, shoot me.”
He goes back to the bar.
Doormen--and they are almost all men--are toughest on their own sex. Again, it’s that nightlife fantasy equation: Clubs need women inside because men--straight men, at least--go where the women are. Upset that balance, let too many men inside, and the fantasy becomes a Darwinian nightmare.
There is, frankly, also a certain simplicity to women’s clubgoing attire: Look sexy. Low necklines, high heels and bare shoulders seem universally acceptable. The visual clues for men are more subtle.
At Deep, 34-year-old Harrison Kordestani wears fashionably slim dark pants and a black shirt open at the neck to reveal generous tufts of hair. But the winning touch is his shoes, purchased on a recent business trip to Italy. His nails are recently manicured, buffed and polished and shiny. He estimates the tally on this evening’s outfit at about $500.
“There’s a dress code in Los Angeles,” says Kordestani, while women in skimpy underwear writhe in a plexiglass box above the dance floor. “You can’t wear your suit from work. It needs to be very sharp or smart. Form-fitting.”
Falene Nurse, a British expat, says that those fine distinctions of fashion often escape the men. Creating a look is all about the details--blending the clothes, the haircut, even the right posture. The same T-shirt and dyed denim jacket can say shy and sexy, or poor and sloppy. “On Melrose and in the clubs, you see the young Hollywood boys, a lot of people trying to look like British mods,” Nurse says. “But, it’s not about the feather cut; they don’t understand the ‘shoegazer.’ They look good, but they don’t get it.”
(Her two friends, Marlayna Cherisse, 23, and Shalome Zavaro, 30, say that they don’t get the “shoegazer” thing either. Though another friend does. “It’s the Charlatans. The Stone Roses. Early, early, early Smashing Pumpkins,” she explains, with the pop culture acumen of a Nick Hornby character.)
Inside the club, 31-year-old Ed Gillespie leans back against the bar for a view of the dance floor. “The L.A. vibe: Everyone’s fashionable here,” he says, surveying the crowd. In Hollywood, he is simultaneously careful and casual.
“Some nights are leather, but, really, I do the A to Z of fashion. From the Prada shoes to the thrift store.”
Tonight that is, in fact, his outfit: a patterned shirt found at a thrift store, Theory pants, Prada shoes and Dior sunglasses in the dreads. Rarely, he says, does he have problems at the door.
Don’t think of the doorman as a bouncer. Think of him as an artist.
He’s picking out people to create an “overall look” for the club, says veteran doorman Steven Atkins, a 6-foot-7 former bodybuilder from Australia. He worked one of the toughest doors in town, SkyBar at the Mondrian Hotel, for six years and is now raising money to start his own club. (He once wrote a rap song, “Just a Doorman,” detailing the travails of his job.)
For guys, he offers this advice: “A nice tucked-in shirt. Not necessarily a tie, but comb your hair. Flip-flops, no. Sneakers, no.” The best accessory, however, is a woman. Groups of guys are much less likely to get in, he says, whereas women “can get away with almost everything.” And while he says that today’s doormen are all about maintaining decorum, they are also uncompromising when it comes to upholding that “overall look.”
“If I see a guy who’s 300 to 400 pounds, they may be perfectly nice,” he says, “but ... I don’t want to get in trouble.”
That’s the harsh truth of the matter. The hotter the spot, the more picky (read: blatantly ageist, look-ist and body-ist) the doorman can, and will, be.
“There are clubs, they’ll make you feel like it’s the ... gates of heaven. That you’re lucky to get in,” concurs DJ Paul V. But “the Studio 54 thing, that’s so two decades ago.”
At Paul V’s Dragstrip 66, a popular monthly event at Rudolpho’s in Silver Lake, there’s no dress code, just “a dress inspiration.” A flier for a typical Saturday, for instance, advises dressing “tutti-frutti or coochie-coochie.”
About 700 people eventually will get in; it’s just a matter of how quickly. There are three lines for the door: a slow lane, a semi-express lane and the fast lane. Sabrah, wearing a sombrero with yellow tassels, an orange shirt with ruffled sleeves and a full-length black skirt, steers guests to their destiny. “Spell your last name,” Sabrah asks a guy in jeans and T-shirt, checking her guest list. Slow lane. A Carmen Miranda look-alike with a medium-sized fruit basket as headgear? No question. Fast lane.
Tina Telemundo (a.k.a. Christian Satrustegui) exchanges air kisses with Sabrah while zipping down the fast lane. His minuscule gold chain-link outfit is perfectly tailored to the club. But his parting words you could take anywhere: “You always have to look like you have a better place to go.”
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Louise Roug is a Times staff writer. She co-writes the City of Angles column in Southern California Living.
