A Rogue in Vogue

“I’ll show you what style is,” purred Robert Evans in his melodious growl as he ushered a visitor into the bedroom of his Regency Revival home in Beverly Hills. Evans, the first and only actor appointed head of a major movie studio, isn’t talking about the room’s velvet appointments, or the mink bedspread--a gift from Alain Delon--or even the autographed, oversized Helmut Newton prints hanging on his silky walls.

What’s truly classy to Evans is a simple, plastic-covered booklet that looks like a thin movie script. “This is something you can’t buy,” he said, flipping open the hand-written letters of appreciation from CAA agents he invited last week to his screening room to preview a documentary about his life. “I learned something from this,” he said, reflecting on the meaning of the personal and thoughtful gesture. “I appreciate this so much. That’s style.”

If ever there was something that Evans personified, it’s style, that singular, seamless expression of character and aesthetics. His hard-boiled speech, glamorous attire and cavalier ways make him seem like a vestige from another era. Yet his suave manner is celebrated today as buzz builds about “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” the bio-documentary, based on Evans’ 1994 memoir of the same title, that opens tonight in Los Angeles and New York theaters.

Now 72, Evans has lost little of his movie-star looks, and even less of his mostly-black, undyed hair, which sweeps the base of his collar much as it did in the 1970s. His dark eyes twinkle beneath blue-tinted Chanel blade sunglasses, one of dozens of fashionable prescription glasses stored on special shelves in his mirrored dressing room.

Though they stretch tighter across his middle lately, his signature shirts feature a button-down collar or covered placket, mostly in solid silk or airy cotton. Today’s is an elegant pistachio silk charmeuse with a wing-tip collar, custom-made by Anto in Beverly Hills. The slithery shirt, its straight-hem worn untucked, is anchored by a silver bolo tie that he coaxed from a London belly dancer--for $1,000. Though every article of his clothing seems to have a fantastic story attached, it exists for one reason.

“Everything I wear is done as background to make me, as foreground look good,” he said, repeating what has become a trademark expression: “Background makes foreground. That fits in film, it fits in personhood, it fits in style, it fits in life. Don’t forget it. It’s a good thing to remember. Whatever you do, let everything make you look good.”

“He’s outrageous,” said Michael Viner, a neighbor who is president of New Millennium Entertainment, which released the audio version of Evans’ book. “He’s managed to go from icon to cold as ice and back to icon again, with a lot of hard road in between.”

Married and divorced five times--wives have included Ali MacGraw and former Miss America Phyllis George--Evans also plead guilty to cocaine possession 1980 and was swept up in scandal when business associate Roy Radin was murdered in 1983, though Evans was never charged in connection with the crime. Then in 1998, he suffered three strokes in two days that paralyzed his entire right side.

“I was Quasimodo,” he said, contorting his tanned face. He spent three excruciating years learning how to walk, talk and function normally, though he walks with an unsteady gait.

Now he is basking in what he calls the best period of his life. As Evans might put it in his characteristic Q & A lingo: Best? Really? Really. This from a guy who had it all--fame, fortune, women and the chutzpah to revel in their many pleasures.

Though he was a child actor, Evans had left entertainment to work in his brother Charles’ successful clothing firm, Evan-Picone in New York. While conducting business poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1957, actress Norma Shearer plucked him from obscurity to portray her late husband, movie mogul Irving Thalberg. Nearly a decade later, the actor was handpicked by Gulf+Western owner Charlie Bluhdorn to run production at his new property, the fading Paramount Pictures. The job brought Evans scorn, praise and an insider’s view of Hollywood.

His perceptive and self-deprecating tales of studio life and his years as a producer have made riveting entertainment. Audiences at May’s Cannes Film Festival and in Los Angeles screening rooms have been soaking up the mogul’s mannerisms that filmmakers Brett Morgen and Nanette Burstein captured in their documentary. The audio book version of his memoir, featuring his distinctive, dramatic narration, has a cult following, selling a chart-busting 50,000 copies since it was released in 1994. The typical audio book sells for six months, Viner said, and becomes a bestseller at the 10,000 mark.

On tape, or in person, Evans’ 1,000-watt charisma still illuminates every conversation, even though the topic rarely wavers from his favorite subject--his incredible life. As aspiring Hollywood power brokers absorb the tape’s teachings, they’ve become fascinated with the man who dated Grace Kelly and Ava Gardner, and always looked sexy and suave, whether he was in tweed, velvet or cashmere turtlenecks.

To honor Evans, dozens of colorful cashmere sweaters stacked store shelves last week at a Barneys New York party in Beverly Hills. With sponsorship from luxury clothing maker Malo, fans and associates toasted Evans and his fondness for cashmere, oversized glasses and his other classic signatures. His debonair style lately has been resurrected by menswear designers at Yves St. Laurent, Gucci and Christian Dior.

“His type doesn’t get to exist anymore because we live in such a P.C. world,” said Simon Doonan, the creative director at Barneys New York. “He’s a flamboyant combination of macho and creative.” In the ‘70s, Evans usually left his collars open to reveal a manly thatch of chest hair, an act unthinkable among today’s waxed and glossy males. Then and now, however, Evans has harnessed his seductive allure to retell his life story--a feat that’s helped put him in a producer’s chair at Paramount again and also rescued him from being thrown into the trash heap of impolitic relics.

Barneys captures that flair in a current window display on Wilshire Boulevard, for which the producer lent heaps of framed photos, eyeglasses, magazine covers, his Hollywood Walk of Fame plaque, and memorabilia from movies that he produced on his own or at Paramount--”Love Story,” “Chinatown,” “Rosemary’s Baby,” “Harold and Maude,” “The Godfather” and more. Prominent are large bottles of Cutty Sark and J&B;, two signature libations featured in his screening room, a place nearly as fabled as the Playboy Mansion, but more refined.

The house decor, like Evans’ wardrobe, hasn’t changed much over the decades. Whether he’s overseeing movie costumes and sets, or hanging a picture, Evans’ personal presentation and surroundings are never accidental nor incidental. They’re tools to maximize.

“Style is a strange thing. It’s a lot different than fashion,” Evans mused in his audio book. “You don’t need money for style.”

Such a swashbuckling person might be expected to be gauche, yet he avoids heavy jewelry and flashy cars but he does have a butler. Only his copper complexion seems out-of-sync. (Medications prevent him from taking real rays, so he browns in tanning booths.) Evans favors simplicity and restraint, a trait that first landed him on the International Best-Dressed Poll in 1972, and three years later, won him a lifetime spot in its Hall of Fame, alongside Fred Astaire, Cary Grant and Giorgio Armani. Pulling a copy of the list and its rules, Evans points to a pertinent sentence with pride:

“Each annual poll selects 12 women and 12 men who most vividly symbolize excellence in dressing for contemporary life without extravagance or ostentation but with distinction and influential flair.” He nods at the words “without extravagance,” because Evans is keenly aware that he’s not fashion victim.

“Any man who wears a label on the outside, I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t want to be in Ralph Lauren’s pants,” he said, bursting into a throaty laugh. “People may say I have a weird way of putting things together, but it’s my own.”

Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair and the producer of “The Kid Stays in the Picture,” described his friend Evans as “the last of a dying breed.” Most studio executives today look like--and are--accountants. “And Bob does not look like an accountant,” Carter said, “He looks like a movie-star version of a Hollywood studio chief.”

Early on, Evans discovered customizing. “In clothing, I have a very specific style,” he explained. “It’s really very simple. I have one of everything,” he said, leaving out a salient detail. He has but one silhouette, that is, one style of flat-front, uncuffed, on-seam-pocket pants. Period. One style of raglan-sleeve, besom-pocket, three-button, single-breasted jacket. Period. One sleek Bally slip-on black shoe (and a few variations). But everything is in different, soft colors and lush, tactile fabrics, all custom-made either by experienced shirt makers or a longtime seamstress, whose name he doesn’t volunteer.

“I wear this in the morning. I wear this in the afternoon. I wear this in the evening,” he said of his trademark ensemble. “I wear it to a ballgame. I wear it to a poker game. I wear it to a black-tie party. I never wear a tuxedo. I have a velvet jacket that I had made. It’s a style unto itself and it took me eight months to design one jacket.”

He once considered selling a clothing collection based on his wardrobe, including the jacket, which is as weightless as a shirt and as unstructured as a cardigan. He decided he wanted no one else to look like him. Not that they could.

Though they’re classic cuts, Evans’ animates his simple, silky shirts and sweaters with a sexy swagger all his own. Yet they’re also dead-on perfect. Doonan called Evans “sartorially self-obsessed,” the kind of man who personified the glamorous life of a movie mogul. “Our customers are from ICM, UTA, CAA [talent agencies] and they idolize this guy,” Doonan said. “As an actor, he knew that trappings were important. He knew the value of presentation.”

Evans takes it all lightly. “It’s nothing new or studied or an affectation,” he said, insisting that he’s never bored with his pared-down wardrobe. “You know why?” he asked. “Because it’s background.”