A Day of Drooling Over Dresses
The models were so slender that I think if one had swallowed an olive, it would have made a bulge in her silhouette.
I was at the Rancho Mirage Republican Women’s fashion show at the Westin Mission Hills Resort and coveted everything I saw. The showing was of the new St. John line from Sak’s Fifth Avenue in Palm Springs.
The Rancho Mirage Federated Republican Women are a civic-minded bunch. The club gives money to the Rancho Mirage Children’s Museum, the Joslyn Senior Citizens Community Center in Palm Desert and FUND, a Cathedral City organization that gives food to the needy. The Rancho Mirage club is the largest in the Coachella Valley with 400 members, and it always ranks in the top four Republican Women’s clubs in the state.
With the money raised at the fashion show, the club will establish a scholarship for a graduating high school senior. The club also continues to give books to the library at the College of the Desert and to the Palm Desert library. And it contributed to the Desert Storm Fourth of July celebration.
The group also meets special needs. According to past president Connie Guy, the women bought a bench for the Rancho Mirage library when its furniture supply was scanty. In addition, the members give hundreds of volunteer hours to the Eisenhower Medical Center, the Heart Institute of the Desert and the Betty Ford Center. One of the members, Rosemarie Tessier, is volunteer head of the Rancho Mirage Blood Bank.
The room for the fashion show was filled with guests, many of whom were berating themselves for having gained 5 pounds over the holidays. I had the good fortune to sit at a table with California First Lady Gayle Wilson, a special friend, and Marie Gray, the designer who creates the St. John line, including the jewelry the models wore. Gray was wearing some of her jewelry--pearls the size of marbles on ropes of gold. She looked wonderful in all those baubles.
I wanted every piece shown, and so did all the ladies. The skirts were short, and the models walked the ramp with a rapid gait, accompanied by a kind of generic music that seems to prevail at fashion shows.
The dresses were clean, with no froufrou. You would never confuse anything in the line with that French designer who uses ruffles, bows, crinolines, jewels--everything but horns, bells and whistles.
The St. John clothes were straight skirted, all knits, and some were decorated with tiny paillettes in every color. A lot of dresses were wrapped around and caught at the left hip with a fanciful button. I wished I could afford any one of them.
Since Patsy left, I can’t wear anything that fastens in the back. When I was working in politics in Los Angeles and had to leave the office for a dressy event, it was my wont to drive by the old town house across from the old Ambassador Hotel, where the doorman would zip me. He was a kindly old gentleman and could get a zipper up faster than the driver of the car behind me could see what was happening.
The door prizes at the show were capped by a St. John dress of the winner’s choice. The young woman who won the dress is Karen Katz, an administrative assistant for Riverside County Supervisor Corkie Larsen. Katz had to leave early for a meeting and left her tickets for the drawing with a friend. She did not find out she was the big winner until Monday.
I asked Katz if she would choose something to wear on the job or to an elegant party. She said she would choose something for work. I’m sure she’s right, but I would be sorely tempted by the short boxy jacket and the straight skirt that looked as if they were made of moonlight and were solidly paved with paillettes.
