Family time? It’s his fashion
Tonight, Richard Tyler unveils his fall 2004 ready-to-wear collection at L.A.’s Fashion Week and introduces his new line, Eve (“for the downtown debutante,” he says). Tyler, 56, who has dressed rock idols, movie stars and has just been tapped to design uniforms for Delta Airlines, lives in South Pasadena, where his weekends start early.
Arty Friday
When my son, Edward, who is 10, gets out of school in the early afternoon we will quite often go to the Norton Simon Museum. Edward’s a great one for drawing and loves the Degas. They have beautiful Henry Moores in a sculpture garden, which is just the right setting.
For dinner, we stay local. There’s a place in South Pasadena called Wild Thyme, and they have incredible seafood. My wife, Lisa, gets the sole, Edward has a veggie burger and I’ve become addicted to the Italian chopped salad.
Then we’ll have a walk and maybe pick up a video on the way home. We’re watching Sherlock Holmes at the moment, the 1930s ones with Basil Rathbone and also the ones that were on English television. Then Edward and I will watch cartoons he’s taped, sophisticated ones like “Invader Zim” and shows on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. He can stay up until 3 in the morning if he wants to on Friday. Bad parents, what can I tell you?
An early start
On Saturday we wake up at 7. Quite often, I’ll go to work, but I like to be back by noon. Then I’ll go for a walk up Orange Grove then back down Grand looking at all the architecture, the mid-century, Victorian, Italianate and French houses, all of them so well-kept with beautiful gardens, which reminds me of my home in Melbourne, Australia. Then I’ll go into my garden. I’m a mad gardener, always planting, which drives my wife crazy.
I do my garden shopping at Kim’s Plants on La Brea. So if I ever disappear for an hour, Lisa knows right where I’ve gone. There’ll be a buzz at the door and Lisa will open it and see all these trees in containers and she’ll turn to me and say, “Where are you going to put these?”
For dinner we’ll go to the Raymond. It’s a little 1900s house covered in wisteria on Fair Oaks. Then we might walk through Old Town Pasadena or go to the movies at the Paseo or one of the art cinemas on Colorado.
Trek to the desert
On Sunday, I get up at 5 and drive to Palm Springs. I’m restoring a 1930s Spanish house there, one that Cary Grant used to live in. We’ve already been robbed a few times, so I like to check up on things. If the weather’s good we’ll all go down together and go to the antique stores on Palm Canyon.
We like to eat at this fabulous old French restaurant on Tahquitz Canyon. The people there are even older than me and they’ve been going there since the Frank Sinatra days and get all dressed up to sit in the courtyard and have chocolate or Grand Marnier souffle.
When we get back, we walk around South Pasadena looking at the stores on Mission. Lisa has two sisters who live in the neighborhood, and they’ll come over with their kids and jump in the pool, while I barbecue. Then I go for a walk and think about fashion shows and what clothes the models are going to wear. Before I know it, I’ll have walked three or four miles.
