FASHION / SENSE OF STYLE
Men have it easy. When an invitation reads “black tie,” they just grab a tux, remember where they parked their studs and bow tie, and go.
At least the confusion is minimized for an occasion that unambiguously commands fancy dress. The recent Race for MS gala in conjunction with the opening of the Tommy Hilfiger store called for “cocktail attire,” a designation that obviously stumped many guests. Women appeared in everything from suits to evening gowns, and people in the eclectic crowd looked like they’d showed up to be cast in different movies.
The fact that designer Isaac Mizrahi, Revlon’s Ronald Perelman and Saks Fifth Avenue chairman Phillip Miller were among the co-chairs of last week’s Fire and Ice Ball goes a ways toward explaining why so many of the women there looked fabulous. Revlon’s bevy of spokesmodels--Cindy Crawford, Halle Berry, Kim Delaney and Salma Hayek--were dazzlingly camera ready. And a number of Mizrahi’s local devotees showed up wearing his designs. As is the custom, the designer lent gowns to special friends and women likely to be in the spotlight.
But any woman who can’t count on a celebrated designer Fed-Exing a dress to her doorstep for a party has decisions to make--ones that go to the heart of how she sees herself.
Evening clothes, dramatic by nature, allow the wearer to choose from a gallery of feminine archetypes. Do you want to appear as a fairy princess or a showgirl, a femme fatale or a prim post-deb?
“Sometimes women want to look completely different at night,” Mizrahi said. “I try to encourage the idea of individuality. Women should wear whatever they want. It’s my job to invent fabulous, beautiful things for women to want, and sometimes that will be a ball gown.”
Women’s propensity to transform themselves into alien others after dark nevertheless carries an element of risk. “It starts with the high school prom,” Tom Voltin, manager of Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills said. “You go to pick up your girlfriend, and she’s turned into someone else--with the hair all done up and the strange dress. The problem is, you like her the way you’re used to seeing her.”
At Fire and Ice, several high-profile women didn’t go all the way in remaking themselves into night-blooming beauties. Cindy Crawford, Paramount’s Sherry Lansing, co-host Rita Wilson, and co-chairs Jane Semel and Lilly Tartikoff wore their shoulder-length hair naturally, as casually as they would with a business suit or jeans. The combination of a big deal dress with everyday hair bespoke a confidence that made these women appear more real, and ultimately, more attractive.
The problem of what to wear for an important occasion is a more complicated decision in Los Angeles than in many other cities, because any party worth its silver-plated salt shakers includes a celebrity contingent. Although getting dressed is not a competitive sport, a civilian knows she’ll have to traverse the red carpet behind starlets who have spent up to five hours glamming up, often with the help of a stylist, makeup artist and hairdresser. (There’s that humbling moment when a couple moves past the paparazzi and hears them mutter, “Oh, they’re nobody.”)
“It’s really tricky,” said Jennifer Todd, a pretty, young Hollywood producer. “When you’re a woman working in the entertainment industry, or a wife attending social events, sometimes you feel like a shlub next to an actress who’s spent all afternoon getting ready. You feel really plain Jane if you don’t dress up, but sometimes you feel like you’re trying to be something you’re not if you do. For the Golden Globes, I wore a slipdress that was kind of bare, and I wore my hair up. That was a mistake, because with my hair up I felt vulnerable--too exposed. I think what you want to achieve is a look that says, ‘I’m dressed up, but I’m not done up.’ It’s hard to figure out what’s in between the boring black suit and the Versace dress.”
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Making Faces: Makeup artist Kevyn Aucoin can give advice, of the taupe shadow under the brow bone, rose blush on the apple of the cheek variety, as good as any of his peers. But Aucoin has the unique ability to delve into the philosophical subtext of cosmetics. He talks about makeup and what it does for women in a profoundly humanistic way. (Since a major work of nonfiction has just declared that John F. Kennedy’s popularity can be attributed to his beauty, then the subject of the presentation of self can be profound, we’d argue.)
Aucoin’s new book, “Making Faces,” (Little, Brown) is packed with tips and makeup schemes to emulate. But the chapter that has drawn the most attention is one in which he accomplishes some magical metamorphoses. In his hands, Lisa Marie Presley becomes a dead ringer for Marilyn Monroe, Demi Moore appears as flapper Clara Bow and Courtney Love is reinvented as Jean Harlow.
“America is the most diverse culture in the world, and there’s this desire to homogenize all of us,” Aucoin said. “I’m totally into exploring the uniqueness and specialness of everyone. Don’t do anything that doesn’t feel right, but don’t be afraid to explore different parts of yourself. You can’t live in fear of what others might think. The point of showing the women in the book in ways that we don’t usually see them was to show that everyone has a number of different sides to them.
“If a woman can be turned into a sophisticate or a siren, it’s because she has that character within her. It isn’t about using makeup to mask and pretend to be someone else. I wanted to show that women have this incredible variety of options as far as expressing who they are.”
Aucoin, who donated his time to make up the models in the Mizrahi fashion show at the Fire and Ice Ball, has written movingly of his struggles growing up gay and different in Lafayette, La., in the ‘60s. By the age of 11, he knew he wanted to be a makeup artist. What he couldn’t know then, was that he would become one with soul.
