Has the success of “Down and Out...
Has the success of “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” got Bette Midler in a daze? The Divine Miss M recently stopped in the Grau shop on Melrose Avenue where, according to manager Lysa Kramer, she purchased a rayon-gauze dress with a built-in fanny wrap. Only problem, Kramer says, is that Midler left her own jacket behind her in the shop. (It’s a black-and-white houndstooth-checked jacket with no label, we found out.) And she hasn’t been back for it since. Kramer didn’t know how to reach Midler so she’s written a note to the woman Midler was shopping with, hoping that will be enough to get the jacket home.
Rosemarie (Mrs. Robert) Stack tells Listen that she has joined the ranks of Liz and Rona. She says she is going to write a Hollywood column for a free, biweekly newspaper called Movieline. Stack, who decided to break into print after Pamela (Mrs. James) Mason recently did the same for Movieline, says her beat is Hollywood fashion and beauty. And her first assignment is to cover the Academy Awards. She says she hasn’t decided what angle she’ll give her story, but she knows what she will wear while she’s writing it. “A Krizia sweater,” she says. “Something to inspire me.”
Claude Montana fans, such as Cher, Diana Ross, Alana Stewart, Raquel Welch, Elizabeth Taylor and Farrah Fawcett, will not have to fly to his Paris boutique anymore. Beverly Hills entrepreneur Herb Fink opens this country’s first free-standing Claude Montana shop Saturday at noon--and it’s on Rodeo Drive, of course. Fink, who has a way with words, tells Listen that the shop is “post-modern with Art Deco overtones.” We believe him.
Liza Bruce,the young British swimwear designer, hit Los Angeles with her new collection of “water wear” last week. She’ll be coming here more often, she says, because Los Angeles is definitely the place to sell sensational suits. More so than New York, we asked? Her answer was yes, and here’s why: “When you touch down at the L.A. airport you realize that people here have an air of confidence, they want to show themselves off. They want to be seen, noticed and admired.” In New York, which considers itself the fashion capital of America, she says, women only want to wear “the latest, the thing that’s most fashionable at the moment. Ultimately, they don’t care whether it makes them look very good or not, as long as it’s in,” Bruce adds. That, she thinks, is because many East Coast women “don’t know themselves” and often care more about following trends than about looking their personal best.
Actress Lee Remick wore some rather conservative clothes for her Eleanor Roosevelt role in the recent TV special. But she’s certainly shed those dowdy duds since then. Hours after the show aired, Remick made a beeline for L.A. designer Irit Ehrlich’s Beverly Hills studio and left there with armloads of outfits that Eleanor would never approve of. A partial list of Remick’s purchases includes a black-and-white polka-dot, tiered-ruffle skirt with matching top, a gold-sequined sweat shirt with black jersey cuffs to wear with slinky, black jersey pants, a slouchy, silk blazer and a long, black cashmere coat. Ehrlich says she advised Remick to hold off on all purchases until after the fashion show Ehrlich is putting on for the United Jewish Fund at the Century Plaza Hotel’s new tower on Wednesday. But, Ehrlich tells Listen, “Lee couldn’t wait. She’s leaving town the day before, to make a movie in Budapest.”
The newest lure for men from a fragrance company is by Perry Ellis. It’s a black, crew-neck sweater with pleated sleeves (one size fits all), and you can’t buy it in sweater departments anywhere. It’s at Perry Ellis men’s fragrance counters, where for $20 and a purchase of scent, you get the sweater and three-quarters of an ounce of men’s cologne. (How complicated can these offers get?) And more complicated yet, we received all this information about Perry Ellis from Parfums Stern, on stationery that carried Oscar de la Renta’s name.
More lure: Christian Dior cosmetics will try to turn women on to their new eye-shadow shades by inserting free shadow samples in the pages of magazines. This spinoff of scratch-and-sniff has a trial run next month in two regional magazines (one in California, one in Texas).
Department of Diversification: Fila, the active sportswear house, is expanding its horizons. Now there’s a Fila Fitness Collection, which includes Fila fragrance; Fila face, body and hair-care products; Fila nutritional supplements, and Fila exercise products (such as jump ropes and weights). Firm spokeswoman Susan Hart says the products are available to the public by direct mail only. To find out what’s available, write to Fila Fitness, P.O Box 5208, Clifton, N.J. 07015 or call their toll-free number, (800) 526-7843, Ext. 312.
There must be millions of women yearning for a dress just like Scarlett wore to the party where she wooed Rhett Butler. And Pegee Miller, of Williamsburg, Va., says she can make their dreams come true. After “years of painstaking research,” Miller says, she has created a pattern for a facsimile of the “Gone With the Wind” dress, and it is now available to anyone who can sew. Miller had a “coming-out party” for her version of the dress Wednesday in the Williamsburg Regional Library Auditorium. We know because she invited Listen and, unfortunately, we couldn’t go. (For more information, write Pegee Designs, P.O. Box 127, Williamsburg, Va. 23l87-0127.)
