Style and the city
6
With Style
TRINA TURK
THE TRENDSETTER
Style isn’t informed by a single factor. If the clothes, the home, the commitment to community and culture define the person, then few embody and champion California style like Trina Turk.
Since 1995, she has designed her namesake collections of womenswear, inspired by the San Fernando Valley of her youth, a place of kidney-shaped swimming pools and pretty women dressed in optimistic prints.
Turk’s fourth boutique, designed by Kelly Wearstler, is set to open in November in Newport Beach. She tapped another local designer, acclaimed architect Barbara Bestor, to conceive a modernist bohemian look for her showrooms in downtown L.A. and New York. The recently completed Manhattan office will focus on a European expansion of her $40-million brand, already a favorite in 800 stores, including Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom.
Turk and her husband of 23 years, Jonathan Skow, collaborate on every aspect of their expanding empire, from the billboard and ad campaigns he personally art-directs and photographs to the custom textiles that, in a nod to vintage Vera and Pucci, bear her signature.
“The textiles are half the fun of doing this,” says Turk, who resembles a mod Kewpie doll crossed with Louise Brooks. She’s just signed a deal to design outdoor furniture fabrics for Schumacher & Co. set to debut in 2009. The line will be sold in Turk’s new home store, opening in April next to her Palm Springs flagship boutique. (She also has boutiques in L.A. and New York.)
Turk, 46, has been a four-time class mentor for Otis College of Art and Design’s fashion design department. The couple has also opened up their Silver Lake house-- a 1948 post-and-beam home in Silver Lake by Case Study architect J.R. Davidson--for an Otis fundraiser. This semester’s class project seems tailor-made for her. They’re working with what she calls “an amazing fabric . . . printed with scene-scapes of L.A. It’s just really cool.”
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Eve Epstein
The Decider
For style-savvy readers from L.A. to New York and London, morning begins with an e-mail from DailyCandy-- a shot of shopping advice they wolf down faster than a breakfast bar. The online newsletter publishes separate daily editions for 12 cities and has plans for more.
More than 1 million subscribers already know this, of course. But they probably don’t know Eve Epstein, DailyCandy’s 36-year-old editorial director. When she’s not at DailyCandy headquarters in New York, she works from the L.A. Chinatown home she shares with her documentary filmmaker husband, Keven McAlester. There, she sorts through every idea from dozens of city contributors and reads every one of the 2,200 words produced daily by the site.
Among her most crucial charges is mentoring the 20-member editorial staff, particularly on the nuances of the site’s signature voice--that of the quirky, intelligent gal pal with the inside track on everything from the coolest coffee hangout to the coveted clothing sale.
A DailyCandy citing can crash store websites and boost sales. “I love watching and calling trends on a daily basis,” Epstein says. “What’s been fun is working for this New York-based company, but observing more coming out of L.A. That’s invigorating for a culture.”
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Jason Pomeranc
The Ringmaster
Jason Pomeranc didn’t kick-start Hollywood’s revival, but he turned up the spotlight with his 2005 renovation of the Hollywood Roosevelt, which transformed a dusty landmark into a hot spot for the glitterati.
Now, the 36-year-old hotelier is focused on creating a hub that is more than just a hotel in the iconic 90210 ZIP Code. In December, he opened the sleek Thompson Beverly Hills, the newest addition to the boutique-hotel group Thompson Hotels, which he runs with his older brothers, Larry and Michael, and Stephen Brandman.
Pomeranc brought in designer Dodd Mitchell for its look: dark, sexy modernism from the rooftop pool to the first-floor sushi spot BondSt, where the staff, in uniforms designed by L.A. designer Jenni Kayne, waits on the likes of Giovanni Ribisi, Kate Hudson and rapper Eve. Each of the 107 guest rooms and communal areas is appointed with dramatic images selected by fashion photographer Steven Klein. A contemporary art fair regular, Pomeranc also commissioned Laurel Canyon artist Thomas Houseago to create an outdoor sculpture.
“Being a hotelier is like being a movie director,” says Pomeranc, whose own style riffs on the masculine, maverick approach of Steve McQueen or Peter Lawford. “You start with a tight visual, pan out and fill everything in--particularly all those elements that most people don’t even notice but that make the experience.”
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Liz Goldwyn
The Initiator
Every era has its style mavens--women who champion designers and artists by writing a book, curating an exhibition or being photographed for the party pages of magazines.
Liz Goldwyn, 31, is a force to reckon with on all these fronts. The willowy redhead and her eccentric wardrobe reside in an Art Deco high-rise in Koreatown along with her husband, Frank Longo, an art director. Sure, she comes from a Hollywood dynasty (she’s the daughter of Samuel Goldwyn Jr. and screenwriter Peggy Elliott), but she’ll forgo the Ivy any day for the Fairfax district’s Silent Movie Theatre, where she takes her high-profile pals from New York or Paris. She also hangs out with YSL creative director Stefano Pilati and Balenciaga’s Nicolas Ghesquiere. They’re accustomed to her e-mails about fledgling L.A. designers whose studios she’s just visited.
Goldwyn also designs jewelry; her Copper Collection uses nuggets from old mines, the method of payment for 19th century mining camp prostitutes, who are a possible topic for her next book and documentary. Her first book and film (for HBO) was “Pretty Things,” about the history of burlesque. “The most interesting part of anything I do,” she says, “is the research.”
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Nicole Chavez
THE INTERPRETER
Behind every red-carpet look is a stylist, and Nicole Chavez, with a client roster that includes Rachel Bilson, Katherine Heigl and Kristen Bell, is one of Hollywood’s hardest-working rising stars.
Chavez, though, feels more comfortable out of the spotlight. Although it’s de rigueur for stylists to do books and reality shows or even design luxury lines, she generally shies away from interviews, and when she does give them, she’s not the type to push the new season’s kazillion-dollar “it” bag.
“The way I grew up was definitely not with tons of money, and I would have to figure out how to look the way I wanted on a budget,” she says, recalling how she would plaster her bedroom in her family’s La Canada Flintridge home with fashion magazine tear sheets.
After studying photography at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Chavez, 31, worked as an assistant to an interior designer, which led to a slew of film projects. Her first TV show was “The O.C.,” where she met Bilson in 2003 and started moonlighting as her stylist.
With few contacts among major fashion brands, she turned to then-emerging designers such as Thakoon, Philip Lim and Jenni Kayne, who were willing to take a chance on the new girl in town.
“My goal as a stylist is to be true to who the women are--curves and all,” says Chavez, who’s fond of dressing Catherine Zeta-Jones and Scarlett Johansson.
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Rami Kashou
The Standout
On March 5, this season’s “Project Runway” will reveal its winner. Whether Rami Kashou, the finalist with a penchant for meticulous draping, will be the last designer standing or a runner-up hardly matters. A larger audience knows him now from the Bravo show than from his many red-carpet forays with Jessica Alba, Penelope Cruz, Lucy Liu and Lindsay Lohan.
That has been his grand plan. Among the 2-million-plus viewers tuning in each week, Kashou hopes to find a backer with the business chops and deep pocketbook needed to establish his underdeveloped business. He would like to focus on the intricacies of his $500 day dresses and goddess gowns, priced three times that or more, and leave the bookkeeping, bagging and shipping to others. “It would be easier if I did T-shirts and jeans,” the 31-year-old says. “But I’m not willing to change a detail to make the work easier. It’s what makes the clothes special.”
A West Bank native, Kashou left Ramallah at 18 for L.A., eager to find his way as a fashion designer and come out in a supportive community.
“I grew up in a politically tangled and complicated environment where there weren’t many outlets for me to express myself. Being in L.A. provides a freedom, but I don’t think it defines how I design. I like to think of myself as a global designer who lives and works here.”
A constant muse is his elegant mother, who died when Kashou was 5. “From her, I learned a woman can be beautiful, admired, sexy--without being too overexposed.” Today, he finds that “flawless glamour” in his friend Dita Von Teese. The neo-burlesque star and fashion plate has been turning up on European and American red carpets in Kashou’s most stunning gowns.
Not everyone understands his decision to do “Project Runway,” but, Kashou says, “I did the show knowing it would expose my work and lead to more opportunities.” Conversations, in fact, have begun with a potential investor and a hair-care company keen on sponsoring a New York runway show next season.
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To see more of our trendsetters, go to latimes.com/magazinefashion.
