BACK ON THE RADAR
After a seven-year absence from the runway, designer Randolph Duke, known for his form-fitting evening gowns, red-carpet clientele and explosive temper, has chosen the opening night of L.A. fashion week to mount his catwalk comeback.
“If you’re a fashion designer and you don’t do a fashion show, people think you’re dead,” Duke said, explaining the decision he made barely two months ago. “Like a ballet dancer that’s not dancing, it’s a sad thing. You’re just not on the radar.”
Since he took his final bow during New York fashion week in September 2000, Duke’s hardly been back-of-the-milk-carton missing -- he hawks $25 million worth of his lower-priced clothing and accessory line annually on the HSN shopping channel, offers made-to-order dresses and evening gowns out of his Sunset Boulevard atelier, appears on ABC 7 as a fashion commentator for the Oscars and published a style guide called “The Look” last year.
But Duke said he’s only been up to the challenge of a runway collection since finishing his last major project -- building a new home in the Hollywood Hills. A soaring slice of slate, granite and glass that juts out of the hillside above Fairfax Avenue, it offers visitors a view from Pasadena to the Pacific Ocean. When the glass panels that form the facade slide out of sight, the house feels as if it has no walls, which makes it an appropriate setting for Duke to announce his reentry to the fashion fray, since he says he’s had to tear down a few walls of his own making.
After he made a name for himself first at Halston and later with his own label, Duke compiled a client list almost as long as the red carpet itself (Minnie Driver, Kim Basinger, Angelina Jolie, for starters). By 2000, he had established himself as the go-to guy for glamorous award-show gowns and seemed to be at the peak of his game when Hilary Swank strode to the stage in a bronze Randolph Duke number to accept her Oscar that March for “Boys Don’t Cry.”
But he was already in a spiral. That same month, his former personal assistant, Maureen Walsh, filed a sexual-harassment suit against him, which fueled his reputation as temperamental and difficult to work with and which landed him in the tabloids. The final blow was a split with his financial backers (San Antonio Spurs owners Peter and Julianna Holt) that forced him to shutter his New York-based label.
“It was sad,” he says. “My last employee was this little Tibetan man who chopped the furniture up at night and secretly put the pieces in garbage bins around SoHo because there wasn’t even anyone who would come take our pattern tables.” Saddled with a huge amount of corporate debt, Duke says, he pretty much “crawled back” to L.A. and unraveled.
He started the HSN home-shopping gig in mid-2001, an arrangement that gave him the freedom to create without having to deal with the business side.
The harassment suit was settled in 2002, and by 2003, just as he was pulling out of a two-year depressive tail spin, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. “It taught me how to watch my mind and how to think,” Duke says.
“I know it sounds like psychobabble, but I never realized how catastrophically and dramatically I thought about everything. And that spills off onto other people.” He credits self-help books and programs such as Byron Katie’s “Loving What Is” with turning him around.
He now talks openly about the tabloid-worthy temper that reportedly sent an employee scrambling over a hotel fence to avoid him. “I take responsibility for yelling at people,” he says. “I take responsibility for driving people to work harder than they could. That year for the Oscars I had a staff of six people working 20 hours a day, and it was too much for them, and they broke.”
By 2004, he’d beaten the prostate cancer (“It was radical surgery; they took the whole sucker out,” he says) and was flush enough from his HSN dealings that he started looking for a place to build his dream manse. He found it in the Hollywood Hills, not far, he points out from a deck overlooking the city, from where Kanye West lives.
The house, designed by XTEN Architecture, is an interplay of organic elements -- back windows face a tapestry of cacti, native grasses, fruit and palm trees. The indoor-outdoor floors are a white pebbled surface, and the walls are mostly glass and mirror. Wood and stone accents abound. He calls the look “glam-organic” and says it was a very big influence on the 40 pieces he’s sending down the runway the opening night of fashion week Oct. 14.
“L.A. is about wind and breeze and sun and light, and I tried to capture all of those elements. How do you convey mist and fog in the morning? That’s what I was trying to do. You’ll see lots of stone and sand tones and plant-life colors like aloe vera, agave and silver blue cacti.”
The three gowns Duke previewed exclusively for The Times were classic figure-flattering Randolph Duke: a clingy matte jersey gown in sea-foam green with the slightest dusting of silver metallic flecks and an abalone shell neck closure; a veiled sequin dress reminiscent of fluid granite with a nude side panel; and a pale peach gown that evoked a smog-filtered summer sunset, with hand-beading that cast a radiant sunbeam effect across the body.
Duke had planned a smaller show to be held at the house but said organizers of the official Mercedes-Benz fashion week approached him about showing under the tents at Smashbox Studios. “Once I decided I was going to do it, everybody wanted to help -- they offered to arrange sponsorship and provide an amazing space.” He said making his return to the fashion calendar in L.A. was important to him.
“I’ve settled here; this is my home. I’m not saying I’d never show in New York, but Los Angeles needs the support of designers with something to say.”
So does heading to the Culver City tents mean he’s back on the runway for good?
“I’m going to try,” Duke said. “I’ll need backers to make this collection and do all those business things that aren’t of interest to me.” Then, unexpectedly, Randolph Duke, mercurial designer to the stars, chokes up a little, and a tear starts to form in the corner of his eye.
“The biggest lesson I learned from all those years in New York is that you’ve got to ask for help. I never let people help me. I’ve found out that people will really help you if you put yourself out there.”
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THE L.A. ROSTER
Randolph Duke won’t be the only newsmaker at L.A. Fashion Week.
Jeremy Scott, the eccentric 1980s club kid of a designer, returns to the L.A. runway after a four-year absence (and just weeks after his Paris show Tuesday). Nicky Hilton, who may be the hardest-working heiress in fashion, will show her lower-priced Chick by Nicky Hilton juniors line, right on the high heels of the New York Fashion Week debut of her pricier Nicholai line. And Petro Zillia, designed by the pink-haired Nony Tochterman, known for her sweet takes on psychedelia, returns after a break from the runway and the opening of her Third Street boutique.
Others following up New York appearances with a trip west include Grey Ant and Heatherette. Grey Ant will restage its spring/summer show, and Heatherette will debut a collection of girly cocktail dresses.
The shows, which run Oct. 14 through 18 at Smashbox Studios, will also include the Culver City stalwarts Monarchy Collection, Christian Audigier, Samora, Tart, Oligo Tissew and Sue Wong.
J.C. Obando will trade Culver City for Century City by holding his show at the new Craft restaurant. Kevan Hall’s show is on the schedule at an undetermined venue.
BoxEight, the arts group that is staging its own series of shows downtown, hasn’t released its schedule but counts Eduardo Lucero, Louis Verdad and Cosa Nostra’s Jeffrey Sebelia among designers on the docket.
In addition, Gen Art will mark its 10th anniversary by showcasing a dozen up-and-comers Oct. 12 at the Petersen Automotive Museum.
-- Adam Tschorn
