BOLDFACE NAMES

By Joyce Wadler

• May 13, 2003

And None of Them Would Take Out the Trash

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG was a little late for ANNE FORD'S book party at the Four Seasons restaurant last week, and when she heard he was arriving, Ms. Ford went down to the entrance to meet him.

Ms. Ford, flanked by a gaggle of pals, was wearing a ruffled silk lilac dress by ROLAND NIVELAIS. The mayor, flanked by his security detail, was in pinstripes.

And how did they know one another, a guest asked.

''We went out together,'' Ms. Ford said.

''Sure, it was years ago,'' the mayor said. ''We had dinner.''

Upstairs the group trooped, and it was not until the party was almost over that we were able to ask Ms. Ford the all-important question about the town's most prominent bachelor:

So?

''We met at a dinner party; he has been a friend for a long time and very supportive,'' Ms. Ford said. ''We dated once or twice. It wasn't heavy dating.''

Was he charming?

''Oh, yeah, he was fun; we had a good time together. The last time we went out to Queens. He was running then and we were covering the territory.''

And here at Boldface we think we live the glamorous life!

But to the party, celebrating Ms. Ford's book, ''Laughing Allegra,'' in which Ms. Ford tells of raising a child who had severe learning disabilities.

At the party: ALLEGRA FORD, 31; GLORIA VANDERBILT and her son, the CNN anchor ANDERSON COOPER; CHARLIE ROSE; TOM BROKAW; MYRNA BLYTH; DOMINICK DUNNE and JULIAN NICCOLINI, an owner of the Four Seasons, whom we at Boldface think of as ''Naughty Niccolini.''

We were also impressed to see so many of the men in Ms. Ford's life in the same room: Former husbands GIANNI UZIELLI and CHUCK SCARBOROUGH and her old friends, the former governor of New York HUGH CAREY and MICHAEL KRAMER of The Daily News.

''Is the smoking thing impacting you at all?'' the mayor asked Mr. Niccolini.

''I keep saying we have to have lunch,'' Mr. Dunne said to Ms. Vanderbilt.

What book are you working on now, we asked Mr. Brokaw.

''I'm not going to tell you,'' Mr. Brokaw said.

We did better with ARNOLD SCAASI.

What is Mr. Scaasi doing now?

''I make couture clothes for very rich and thin ladies,'' he said.

Why only thin?

''They take care of themselves, they exercise constantly, they have their faces, stomachs and hips done. And they look great and they are very intelligent.''

It seems to us that men can get away with having a distinguishing belly.

''I have never seen a distinguishing belly in my life,'' Mr. Scaasi said.

Mr. Scaasi has a bit of one.

''I am 65 years old and that is what happens, and life goes on and you drink vodka,'' Mr. Scaasi said.

The party winds down.

''All my ex-husbands and boyfriends were there, isn't that great?'' Ms. Ford said to her publicist.

Our Last Publisher Buried Us Without a Party

Another book party we've been meaning to tell you about: The one for ''The Joy of Funerals,'' a collection of short stories by ALIX STRAUSS, held earlier this month at the Frank E. Campbell home on Madison Avenue. There were three funerals going on at the time of the event. At the entrance to the room there was a floral decoration in the shape of a horse-shoe, like one we had last seen at the funeral for JOHN GOTTI. One of the first entries in the guest book was ''Mom and Dad Strauss.'' Inside, a closed coffin was flanked by a poster for the book, and guests sipped Champagne.

Ms. Strauss, a blonde in a slim black pantsuit, told us that the book came out of experience as an only child, going to funerals.

''I never got to see family members, unless it was at a funeral, so to me, a funeral's just like a big party,'' she said. ''Of course, there's always one less family member, and it's not a catered event or anything.''

And we gather she's primarily a magazine writer who has done mass-market books for teenagers -- including one on BRITNEY SPEARS?

''Yeeees,'' Ms. Strauss said. ''We don't really talk about -- .'' Here she interrupted herself. ''You know what, though? We do the happy Britney Spears dance every time a great large check comes. So, you know, when someone says, 'Here's $15,000, can you write a book in a month and a half,' you pretty much say, 'O.K.,' you know?''

We give Ms. Strauss points for the month's most innovative gift bag, which included vodka, over-the-counter sleeping pills, tissues and waterproof mascara.

The New York Times

Slips of Things That Slink

By Anne-Marie Schiro

• Nov. 12, 1996

Remember those movies where the leading lady, usually cast as a secretary, doffed her glasses, undid her chignon and poured herself into a sexy strapless dress to attract the leading man's eye? Well, something akin to that is going on today, with working women shedding the androgynous pants suits they wear by day and slipping into slender columns of metallic lace or bias-cut matte jersey for evening.

If the symbol of nighttime glamour in the 1980's was the sometimes preposterous pouf, in the 90's it's a long lean line that spells sophistication.

''For evening, the customer wants something really different and is very daring,'' said Nicole Fischelis, the fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue. ''There were some ball gowns last fall, but now it's the long column. Some of the silhouettes designers have suggested for spring -- halters, one-shoulders and asymmetric cuts -- are currently in and selling. In fact, our evening business is up 40 percent from last year.''

At Bergdorf Goodman, too, sales of evening wear are strong. ''Evening wear is what people are buying,'' said Richard Lambertson, a senior vice president. ''It's selling across the board at every price point. We're having a very good season.''

Barneys New York started selling fall evening wear at trunk shows last June, said Bonnie Pressman, its fashion director. ''Our customer finds it easier to shop early,'' she said. ''She wants to know it's there, and it's good for the store because it gives us time to special order, to do exclusive things.''

With the year-end holidays fast approaching, chances are that even more women will be searching for the perfect dress or dresses to take them through all the festivities they hope to be invited to. And the stores are bringing in fresh new styles now from holiday and resort collections.

During the rest of the year, a woman may go from day to evening in the same black suit, with perhaps the addition of sparkling jewelry and high heels. But that won't do for the coming season's black tie parties, which call for something special. And nothing looks as special as a long dress in a luxurious fabric like lace, brocade, satin or velvet. For the woman who prefers to make a simpler statement, but one that can be equally strong, there is matte jersey, which can be unforgiving on a less-than-perfect body but dynamite on the right one.

A long black dress is still the best-selling category, in just about every fabric, but chocolate brown, navy and red are giving black some competition. So is lace with a metallic finish. And the beautiful cut velvets and burnout velvets in Donna Karan's fall collection have stirred up interest in unusual treatments of velvet and offbeat colors like citrine and celadon.

For Ellin Saltzman, the fashion director of Henri Bendel, there is nothing like red for the holidays. ''Nothing is more festive,'' she said. ''Red has become as basic as black for many people. And if you're wearing black all day, red for night looks mighty good.''

Most designers have evening clothes in their collections, but smart women don't necessarily limit their shopping to the same departments where they find their everyday wardrobes. After all, there are designers who specialize in dress-up clothes, who spend their professional lives thinking about how women like to look at night. These designers know that a sheer lace or beaded net dress has to be properly lined and that a strapless dress has to be constructed to stay up without constant tugging and pulling.

Young designers sometimes find they can break into the fashion world by designing only evening clothes because they can offer fewer styles than in a day-to-night collection. This keeps down expenditures for fabrics, which means a lesser investment is needed to go into business. So it can be worth a shopper's time to try an unknown designer's dress, which she is unlikely to see on anyone else.

To make shopping easier, stores usually gather evening wear designers' offerings into one department, as Saks Fifth Avenue has done on its third floor. Bergdorf Goodman separates its evening wear by price, with its more expensive dresses on the fourth floor and its less expensive ones on the sixth floor.

While Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys New York often seek exclusivity, of style if not always of label, most evening wear designers sell their clothes to more than one store.

At Bergdorf's, a shopper can find, among others, Badgley Mischka, Carmen Marc Valvo, Melinda Eng, Heidi Weisel, Eric Gaskins, Jeanette Kastenberg, Pamela Dennis, Josie Natori and Helen Morley, and Ocimar Versolato's designs for his own label and for Lanvin.

Saks Fifth Avenue's stock also includes Badgley Mischka, plus Vera Wang, Timothy Westcott, Mary McFadden, Bob Mackie, Roland Nivelais and Donald Deal.

Barneys New York has Vera Wang, Timothy Westcott, Roland Nivelais, Pamela Dennis and Heidi Weisel, as well as Jackie Rogers, James Purcell and Robert Danes. It also carries evening wear by Gregory Parkinson from Los Angeles, who designs ethereal chiffons, and Carlo Ponti from Paris, who makes ultraglamorous one-of-a-kind numbers like a mint green silk slip with patent leather straps.

Henri Bendel has revived its once-famous Bendel's Fancy department, with names like Heidi Weisel, Mark Whitaker and Yeohlee.

The New York Times

SIX YOUNG FASHION DESIGNERS: CREATIVITY ON THE HOME FRONT

By Michael Gross

• Feb. 5, 1987

MIRIAM BENDAHAN, a designer of elegant evening dresses, greeted a guest in the doorway of her three-room East Village tenement walk-up. Or more precisely, in its kitchen, between her bathtub, which holds a dish rack, and a plank supporting a jagged piece of mirror - her vanity. Two shoes, painted silver to match her kitchen walls, were hanging above the door.

''It seemed like a good place for them,'' Miss Bendahan said, then added in mock disgust: ''They were originally tan. Yuck.''

Miss Bendahan's shiny silver kitchen walls reflect light. That is ''so I can see what color my hair is,'' said the designer, whose coif is in eight colors.

Her floors and bedroom walls are painted matte black, and the bedroom windows are sealed tight with black velvet curtains. ''I go to sleep when the sun comes up,'' she explained. ''I hate gate-crashing sunlight. I like to create my own light.''

Creativity under trying conditions is the stock in trade of New York's young fashion designers. Many live in a state of fashion flux, seeking to establish their styles. And their homes, like their designs, range widely in style as well as neighborhood. A sprawling Upper West Side apartment is home to Marc Jacobs, a designer of women's sportswear. Denise Carbonell, also a sportswear designer, lives in a vast TriBeCa co-op loft. And Douglas Ferguson - who makes what he calls ''prehistoric futurist'' hand-painted leather and metal-mesh clothes - lives and works in a loft on the Lower East Side, above a store that was once a Yiddish theater and now sells tombstones.

Some of these designers are more successful than others, and thus have more space or fewer cracked walls. But the apartments of all of them, with their fashion jetsam and quirky objects, reveal the same eclectic creativity that is reflected in their fashion design.

Like many in their under-35 age group, these designers do their own decorating. Most of their furnishings come from friends, the streets, flea markets or junk shops. What were once called bohemian touches abound: Miss Bendahan's mattress, for example, rests on the floor; some of her walls are marked with pencil sketches and meaurement calculations; an apple crate holds her stereo. Mr. Ferguson sleeps in a loft bed, which he built, and he shares a bathroom and kitchen with other artists who have lofts in the building.

These different environments showcase the designers' individuality and offbeat humor. Venus on a half shell - painted a fluorescent green, sprinkled with glitter and draped with beads and feathers - sits beneath a Horst photograph of Gertrude Stein in the formal dining room that Mr. Jacobs uses as a design studio. Roland Nivelais, who creates elegant, tailored women's clothes, has a collection of broken hands from statues and display mannequins. Tia Mazza, a hat designer, collects antique glass, valentines, seed envelopes and Aunt Jemima spice jars.

The living room of what Miss Bendahan describes as her ''bat cave'' is decorated with a wall tapestry (''a typical East Village scene - maiden and animals,'' she said); cookie fortunes; a black coq boa; several hats; more shoes, and a lamp that belonged to her parents. Her telephone, missing its faceplate, is covered with confetti spots of nail polish. And a chinning bar full of the gowns she designs hangs in the bedroom doorway.

Until recently, Miss Bendahan worked in her apartment, but she now has a separate design studio. Like the fashions she creates there, her decor is evolving. ''I might find another apple crate tomorrow,'' she said.

Douglas Ferguson's living and working areas flow together in his large, high-ceiling loft. A painting table, storage chests and a sewing machine delineate his work space. His cutting table does double duty as a dining table, and two type trolleys hold magazines. Closets beneath the loft bed are curtained with striped towels ''for that cabana effect,'' he said.

His furniture - a Breuer chair, a chaise, a lectern, a chair made from a brazier - comes from the street. But he customizes his finds by painting them or draping them with leather.

Mr. Ferguson called the ever-changing clutter that surrounds him ''information'' that inspires him. An easel holds a picture of an Etruscan warrior statue and a photograph of Twiggy cut from an old Vogue. ''Very similar looks,'' Mr. Ferguson said cryptically. Suspended from the ceiling are dolls, industrial light fixtures, a gauze-draped bird cage and a pulley system on which fabrics are stored. Ladders draped with yet more fabrics and leathers lean everywhere.

''If you've ever seen pattern-on-pattern, this is it,'' he said.

Despite its small size, Roland Nivelais's two-room apartment in the East Village has the formality of an Art Deco film set. There are a pair of Gilbert Rohde chairs, a Bakelite telephone and a vase that he considered very grand until he saw another one in a theater lobby and realized it was an ashtray. His furnishings were chosen to complement two large portraits of himself that dominate the living room.

Originally, Mr. Nivelais also designed in his apartment, but when an identical space became available next door, he rented it. It now contains his kitchen and work space; he transformed the kitchen in his original apartment into a closet.

His bed occupies the former dining area. The rest is as spare as his clothing designs. ''I prefer to sacrifice practicality,'' he said. No appliances are visible in the apartment where he lives. ''I find them distracting,'' he said. "And they are often ugly.''

Mr. Nivelais said he hopes that visitors will realize that ''formality can be comfortable.''

''That happens when they wear my clothes, too,'' he said.

''Formality is too stiff for me,'' said Ms. Mazza, whose tiny studio co-op in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan is as romantic as her hat designs. Previous experience on sailboats taught her how to order a small space. ''Anything that has to do with hats is to the right,'' she said, pointing at a wall of shelves over her design table. The other side of the room is for living, but hats, hatboxes and baskets of bows complement the country feeling of her French provincial tables and chairs. Ms. Mazza's antique steel sleigh bed, covered with pillows, doubles as a sofa.

''Things don't have to be perfect,'' she said. ''If you're comfortable, you can work.''

Mr. Jacobs shares what he calls an ''unplanned, unstudied'' but nonetheless gracious old five-room apartment on the Upper West Side.

''I love it,'' he said, pointing to the chipping plaster walls. ''It's a home. You don't have to worry about putting your feet on the couch. I don't think of clothes as precious either.''

Mr. Jacobs has improved on some of the upholstered furniture his roommate, a film producer, inherited. He covered it with dropcloths. The coffee table is a glass slab atop four patinated garden seats shaped like water buffaloes and rhinoceroses. One of the rhinos wears a strand of pearls. ''I like the way they look,'' Mr. Jacobs said.

Kitsch also fills the loft of Denise Carbonell. Her sprawling loft has two bedrooms and a spalike bathroom, divided from the main space by steps and sliding frosted-glass walls. The living area includes a kitchen, guest bathroom and office. A raised, black and white, mosaic-tiled platform holds a wrought-iron bar and chairs.

Twinkling white Christmas lights are strung among the sprinkler pipes crisscrossing the tin ceiling. Random lines of press-down letters cover counters, telephones and a coffee table shaped like a kidney bean. A stick-on faucet emerges from a copper-painted television set.

She could have been speaking for many young designers when she said, ''I like things that weren't meant to be together - I guess that's a big part of the 80's.''

The New York Times

TEN TO WATCH

By Michael Gross

• Aug. 23, 1987

The fresh styles of the latest group of up-and-coming fashion talents draw on a wealth of differences: Their designers are male and female; black and white; American and European. Some came through fashion schools. Others had retail backgrounds. But all share a single-minded devotion to creating fashion. Here are 10 of the most promising.

Jan and Carlos are two young first-name-only American designers based in Milan. Their debut collection of coordinated knits and knit accessories for fall earned them immediate international attention. Jan, 31, and Carlos, 33, met in 1976 while studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, traveled to France and went to work for Jean-Charles Castelbajac, the Parisian designer. They moved on to Italy, where together they found work as freelance designers. In 1981, they went to Japan, where they designed a collection financed by a Japanese backer. Once back in Milan, they brought out their own label.

Jan describes their style as ''linear, clean, accessible and young.'' Their best fall offerings are bell-shaped skirts, ribbed and ruched sweaters that resemble mummy wrappings, cardigans in peach and pale blue, and double-layered dresses of thin wool.

A sticker on the door of Isaia's showroom proclaims his fashion philosophy as ''sleek, modern, sensual.'' The 31-year-old native of Cincinnati designs clothes that are all those things. In his fall collection, Isaia is stretching his metier by moving beyond his signature spandex miniskirts and tank dresses and into expensive stretch cashmere and wool crepe cut for modern times.

Isaia's background in retailing helps keep him focused on the fashion customer's needs. ''I'm into sensual, female looks,'' he explained, shaking his headful of braided dreadlocks. ''I don't know where it started, but it did, and I can't stop.''

Isaia's ever-present sense of humor influences his designs. ''Customers come here and when they leave they complain,'' he said. ''Back to the real world.''

Retail experience also informs Christine Thomson's sportswear designs. As a buyer at Macy's, she found herself designing sweaters that would carry the store's label. Soon she had jobs designing sweaters for juniors, then moved on to blouses and to her own company. After two years in business, Thomson, 38, held her first fashion show last year. This year, her styles have been best sellers at such stores as Bloomingdale's.

Thomson designs for what she calls the typical Bloomingdale's customer. ''They're young-in-mind and collectors of clothing,'' she said. ''And they have enough brains to put themselves together and make their own statement.''

Thomson's fall statements include man-tailored pin-stripe suits for women, sexy swing tops, wool jackets with knit sleeves and flaring-circle trench coats. All are, in the designer's words, ''comfortable, understandable and a little bit fun.''

Ricky Vider, 33, studied international relations and sociology, not fashion, at the Hebrew University in her native Israel. Then she worked in the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles and sold stationery at Henri Bendel. But she had ''always been obsessed with clothes,'' she said. ''I was always dressing everyone around me. One day I said, 'Wait a minute. Maybe I should try this.' It was a very naive kind of start.'' She began her business with a $3,000 loan from a friend.

Now in her fifth year as a designer, she offers small collections of deceptively simple clothes in luscious fabrics. Her fall line in black and white is as sexy and soulful as the 1960's ''girl-group'' hits she played while showing them.

Vider's clothes stretch the dress imagination. Man-styled suits are worn with suspender pants. A black motorcycle jacket is matched with leggings, a pleated silk skirt and a ribbon-trimmed tulle crinoline. Her stretch wool dresses and skirts are short, skintight and softened with pleats. She accessorizes them with simple mock turtlenecks, leggings, rolled stockings or thigh-highs and Army/Navy oxfords. These contradictory combinations are both sweet and tough, very much like the woman Vider says she designs for.

John Galliano uses intricate drapes and circle cuts that are completely contemporary, yet his clothes exude an air of romance from another era.

A graduate of London's prestigious St. Martin's School of Art, Galliano, 25, spent seven years studying fashion, textiles and illustration. He planned to immigrate to New York and seek work as an illustrator until Browns, the respected London fashion shop, ordered clothes he'd designed as his senior-year project. After several collections that were as original as they were hard to wear, he picked up a powerful backer, Peder Bertelsen, a Danish oilman turned fashion magnate, and developed a more commercial but no less individual style.

''Naivete is my approach to design,'' Galliano said. For fall, he dresses his waiflike women in styles accentuated with pouches, panels, pleats, knitted gussets and ruching. New shapes are his forte. One of his best is a dress with a V-neck and a jagged hem that looks like a cracked egg.

Galliano says he does not design with a particular woman in mind.

''It's quite dangerous to design for an ideal woman,'' Galliano said. ''I don't think she exists. Everyone is beautiful in their own way. I make clothes that make you feel beautiful.''

Dressy clothes are the forte of Roland Nivelais, 29, a designer born in Britanny who is based in New York.

''My customer,'' he said, ''is naturally very elegant. She can carry the clothes.'' After studying art in Paris, Nivelais came to New York in 1980, when he was 22. ''I like the American mentality about clothing,'' he said. ''The French always have the same style. Here, you can be much more daring.''

For Nivelais this fall, daring translates into drop-dead sophistication. He offers dresses in mink-trimmed black or rust matte jersey; shiny, mercury-colored ''Breakfast at Tiffany's'' suits; shirred bustier dresses in slinky snake-print velvet, and short evening dresses, palazzo pants and boleros in glittery metallic mesh. ''Day is impeccable,'' he said of his style. ''Evening is much more glamorous. It's not casual, yet it's comfortable.''

A new sense of elegance also inspires Kevin Emard, 30, but his clothes have verve as well. As a teenager, Emard copied fashion illustrations from department-store advertisements. While in his second year studying fashion at the Parsons School of Design, he sneaked into a contest for third-year students and won an internship with the American sportswear designer Kasper. After Parsons, his family helped by giving him money for a sewing machine. Nick Ashford, the singer, bought some of his first designs - men's shirts - and hired Emard to create most of his personal and stage wardrobe. Other commissions followed. ''I was making everything,'' he recalled. ''Even underwear.'' Two years ago, he showed his work to a buyer at Bergdorf Goodman. Suddenly, he was no longer copying its ads. He was in them.

His customer, he said, ''wants a sensual look.'' And Emard provides it for fall with sculptured and molded dresses, suits and coats.

Sybilla is one of the best advertisements for the new, liberalized political and cultural climate in Spain.

Born in the United States and transplanted early to Spain by her parents - one a painter and a designer - Sybilla began her fashion education at 17 at Yves Saint Laurent's couture atelier in Paris. In 1983, she returned to Madrid, where she had grown up, and took a leading role in Spain's creative renaissance. ''In France, fashion is snobbish, cold and professional,'' she said. ''In Spain, you could still play.''

Just 24, Sybilla is already established as an innovator, thanks to such playful designs as coats and dresses with self-molding hems and coats that lace up with attached scarves.

As her reputation grows, Sybilla knows that her life will change. ''But I'm hoping,'' she said, ''it doesn't change too much.''

Angel Estrada, 29, is on the brink of being very big, thanks to his sensationally sexy cocktail and evening dresses in silk velvet, crepe, satin and draped chiffon. Born in Barcelona, the designer has lived in New York City since he was three years old, but his gem-colored styles still exude Latin passion.

Estrada started designing for his sister, Virginia, a sculptor who was then also designing jewelry. ''She was my only client,'' he said. ''I wanted to be a designer, but I didn't know how. It was a dream.''

Three years ago, encouraged by his sister and his business partner, he put his first collection together. Bergdorf Goodman bought it; he sewed every dress himself. Though Estrada is seeking new big-money backing, his fall collection remains a creation of loving hands at home.

Gutsy is the best word to describe both Diane Pernet and her fashions. Though Pernet, 38, is known as a denizen of downtown New York, her styles travel well anywhere. Many young fashion followers consider Pernet's fall line as good as the best, but a little more hip: red or black crinkle-fabric suits and slip dresses in georgette.

Born on Philadelphia's Main Line, Pernet studied film and became a photographer. ''I didn't think about fashion,'' she said. ''To my generation it was superfluous.'' Pernet had a knack for fashion nonetheless. She found that film making required, as she put it, ''too many compromises.'' But, she said, ''I was always helping people put themselves together.'' So when a friend suggested she do something ''obvious'' as a next career, she enrolled simultaneously in night classes at the Parsons School of Design and the Fashion Institute of Technology.

''I'm designing for myself,'' she said. ''It's a personal statement. My clothes are strong, but still sensual. They're sexy, but not vulgar. I believe in strength and beauty. Every piece is a jewel to me.''

The New York Times