The Di Is Cast

Discussion of who’d be the biggest star at the 14th annual Council of Fashion Designers of America Awards Gala on Jan. 30 in New York came to a grinding, jaw-dropping halt last week when it was announced that Princess Diana would attend.

“Every year we say, ‘What’s next year’s excitement going to be?’ ” said the CFDA’s Fern Mallis. “But having Princess Diana? We’re beyond thrilled.”

Princess Diana’s affinity for fashion and her sense of style won her many fans in the industry--not to mention enemies among the monarchy’s critics--and she’s remained faithful to the community. Last October, she was guest of honor at the London spring ready-to-wear shows.

As the CFDA awards grow grander and grander and the designers’ names grow ever more stellar in the public’s mind (Karl Lagerfeld, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan), the council has resisted efforts to televise the Lincoln Center event.

“We didn’t want to compromise the integrity of the event by having more awards--since 10 or 12 aren’t enough to sustain an awards show--or by having entertainment or by doing it live,” said Mallis. “While we all think it has great television potential, we’re not like the Academy Awards.”

Certainly not. Everyone at the CFDA gala will be impeccably dressed.

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Off With Her Bun!: Kate Mulgrew wasn’t half bad as the first female captain to lead a “Star Trek” crew in the premiere this week of “Star Trek: Voyager.” She cut a trim, authoritative figure, surprisingly agile in her Federation jumpsuit. But what’s with the spinster hairdo? It makes her look like the outer space version of Aunt Bea.

After an explosion on board the ship, a hunk of Mulgrew’s heavily-sprayed hair fell none-too-coquettishly from its gravity-defying, modernity-defying bun. In the next scene, she briskly tucked it back up with a hairpin. Perhaps we’re missing something. Like, maybe she’s hiding one of those weird “Star Trek” cranial deformities under her Gibson Girl. Yeah, then we’d feel really bad.

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Cover Girl: “Carre Otis Has No Regrets,” says the blurb on the cover of February’s Mirabella magazine. No kidding. Wearing black poly-rubber gloves and a smoldering glower, Mickey Rourke’s former love slave looks suspiciously like a Helmut Newton heroine. The only thing missing is a riding crop. . . .and Herr Newton. The shots of Miss Otis, though, were taken by that wholesome horsewoman, Kelly Klein. She captured seductive images of her model wearing three designs by Gianni Versace and one bias-cut slip dress made by her husband, Calvin.

In the accompanying upbeat text, Otis makes this observation of her tempestuous, often destructive interlude with Rourke: “Whenever there is suffering, there’s growth.” And, dare we say, a good deal of rationalizing.

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Models Inc.: Katie Ford, daughter of Eileen and president of the New York-based Ford Modeling Agency, will host a dinner party at the beginning of March to celebrate the opening of the agency’s L.A. office. It’s important for Ford to have a branch here “to be able to better manage girls locally,” explained agency spokeswoman Nadine Johnson.

Two years ago, Katie Ford created a division called Celebrities at Ford and began signing non-models like Sandra Bernhard, Donovan Leitch, Ione Skye, Twiggy, Sofia Coppola and others who lent an offbeat look to ad campaigns. (Yes, she’s to blame.) The move fits snugly into Ford’s current expansion mode: In October a branch was opened in Arizona--the Miami Beach of the West, and the younger Ford has begun signing other non-models, such as hairstylists and makeup artists.

One can only speculate who might be invited to the Ford party. The location, though, isn’t so mysterious as the site is a piece of property owned by Katie and her husband Andre Balazs --the Chateau Marmont hotel.

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A Positive Spin on a Downward Spiral: The experts are calling it “price deflation.” We’re calling it about time. Last week, the Commerce Department announced that women’s apparel prices declined 4.4% in 1994. And while our credit card doesn’t even come out of our wallet for anything less than 30% off, retail analysts are obsessing about What Went Wrong. Popular theories include: Too much inventory that looks too much alike; prices slashed to rock-bottom to tempt discount-hungry shoppers; the growing casual trend in the workplace--in other words, the obvious. Why then, we want to know, is it impossible to find a well-made narrow black skirt--at ANY price? Huh?

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Divide and Conquer: Is Beverly Hills big enough for two Gianni Versace stores? The operator of the first thinks not, and is suing the designer to block the opening of another store less than two blocks away. In a lawsuit filed recently in New York federal court, Safa Collections Inc., which has run the Versace store on Rodeo Drive since 1982, says the opening of a second store poses “an imminent threat of irreparable harm to Safa,” according to a report in Women’s Wear Daily. But Versace’s attorneys are contending the new store--which was supposed to open this month--doesn’t represent a competitive threat because it will only carry stuff from the designer’s secondary lines.

* Inside Out is published Thursdays.