Dress fashion girl game up

Once looked down on by the fashion elite as mere glitter-crazed frock fetchers. L.A. wardrobe stylists are now being wooed by the biggest snobs in the business

Their broncos are packed with more Dolce & Gabbanas, Armanis and Guccis than Barneys. Their cell phone numbers are on the speed dials of Hollywood's big shots. International designers give them front-row seats at their shows--sometimes paying for their flights--send them free clothes and solicit their advice. No, they're not a new breed of supermodel, star or couture client--they're L.A. wardrobe stylists, fashion's new power players.

Forget Seventh Avenue. Some of the real fashion muscle these days is being exerted on Beverly and Robertson and over the phone from Cover City photo studios to showrooms in SoHo.

"We get all kinds of designers trying to reach our people," says Madeline Leonard, head booker at Cloutier, a top L.A. stylist agency. "And you can't blame them. When Elizabeth Hurley first wore that Versace `pin' gown, Versace's name reached a whole new level. I even have companies like Visa and Lycra wanting some of my stylists to be their spokespeople."

A stylist's life is not all glitter and glamour. Most days are spent schlepping clothes, filling out FedEx forms, racing from Neiman Marcus to Fred Segal and primping prima donnas in windowless studios and on-location trailers. But what Hollywood stylists have got going for them is access to the stars--during shoots for magazines, videos, commercials and even house calls, where they outfit the famous for awards shows, premieres and personal appearances. In a culture of celebrity worship, such proximity has made stylists hot commodities sought by anyone craving a piece of the action, especially designers. "Having a dress on a celebrity is like placing a $30,000 ad," admits New York designer Pamela Dennis. "If a star wears your dress to an event, your sales go up immediately."

The media, too, are feeding off this pipeline, turning stylists into major sources of information as well as personalities. Self-proclaimed stylist to the stars Phillip Bloch (author of The Elements of Style) regularly offers sound bites, and costume designer Barbara Tfank, who made her mark when she put Uma Thurman in a Prada gown for the 1995 Oscars, is quoted as an authority on Hollywood style. Some celebrities even drop their stylists' names. "L'wren Scott dressed me," announced Elle Macpherson at a recent movie premiere. "Let's face it," says one magazine editor. "Stylists are fashion's it boys and gifts of the moment."

Ten years ago, few designers would have been caught dead courting stylists, who at the time were thought of as mere wardrobe mistresses who pulled clothes off racks, ironed and occasionally hemmed. But now that stylists have moved far beyond the corset-fastening roles of their Edwardian precursors and are paid by stars to scout for trends from Paris to Antwerp, fashion heavyweights can't afford not to pay them heed.

"Designers have to romance stylists," says Gemina Aboitiz, an L.A. stylist and 15-year veteran who works with photographer Matthew Rolston. "It used to be the actresses who got the bags and the sunglasses. Now publicists and stylists get them, too. I think designers realize that they've lost a bit of the control."

So just who are these people in whom celebrities have placed so much trust? Their qualifications are vague, their backgrounds varied; they're art school graduates, former costume designers, would-be fashion editors. Some work for free or for $150 a day; others compete for the $1,500-and-up commercial day rates. As for their mysterious talent? Jessica Paster, a stylist with the Heller Agency, notes that their skill involves more than matching dresses with shoes: "Stars who use stylists are more put together from head to toe than stars who just go to Armani's PR department or wing it from their closets. They may all wear the same clothes, but it's how they wear them. They have to have a signature style--the label's not enough anymore."

When red carpets become sartorial battlegrounds and paparazzi lurk every, where, even a trip to the grocery store can be fodder for tabloids. Woe to the actress who wears the wrong skirt length--she's trashed by Joan Rivers and on Internet sites. Using a stylist, however, might prevent such humiliation, or if the outfit bombs, the dresser can take the blame.

"Yes, that was me who put Ashley Judd in that high-slit Richard Tyler dress at the Oscars," admits Aboitiz. "I got really dogged for that! I'll take responsibility--that's my job. Image is a trial-and-error business."

"When you see how stars are being pushed and pulled," says Dennis, "you understand why there are so many stylists. Stars have their mothers, lovers, publicists and friends all telling them what to wear. They need someone who can weed through it all. When you look at a girl like Mariah Carey, you know why stars need stylists. How does she expect to get a movie career?"

In Old Hollywood, costume designers fulfilled the role of making celebrities glamorous. But when the studio system died, only a handful of stars, such as Audrey Hepburn, were smart enough to forge relationships with designers like Hubert de Givenchy. For the next few decades, actresses embraced the jeans- and- T-shirt or the flowered dress-and-combat boots look, prompting fashionable New Yorkers and Europeans to turn up their noses at West Coast style. That is until the mid '80s, when Giorgio Armani transformed celebrities into walking billboards for his luxury label. All it cost him were a few--okay, maybe a lot of--free gowns and suits.

Around the same time, the Cloutier Agency (founded by former model Chantal Cloutier) opened in L.A., ushering in a new era for professional wardrobers, with an onslaught of music videos and star-driven publications creating work opportunities. Suddenly, there was a rush on stylists, and as L.A. photographers such as Herb Ritts and Matthew Rolston became stars themselves, the stylists they used got exposure, too.

"I think it all kicked in about 12 years ago," says Cloutier's Leonard. "Celebrity media exploded, and designers came after the stars. It got so big that designers had to hire Hollywood PR people and celebrities had to hire stylists. It used to be that Chanel would call Grace Kelly. Now there are four people in between. That's also when Vogue and Harper's Bazaar started putting stars on their covers--Winona Ryder, Melanie Griffith. The actresses would go back to filming and think, `I want to look as good as I looked on that shoot.'"

By the time rebel rocker Courtney Love traded in her ripped baby-doll dresses for Versace gowns, the celebrity-as-fashion-icon pattern was firmly set. And Cloutier, whose hotshot stylists such as Aboitiz, Bloch, Linda Medvene, Vivian Turner and Danny Flynn have between them dressed every, one from Harrison and Mel to Cher and Fergie, found itself competing with a bustling crop of L.A. agencies. At Celestine, star stylists include Karin Labby (Julianne Moore, Ellen DeGeneres), Deborah Waknin (Leonardo DiCaprio, Puff Daddy) and Calvin Jon Haugen (Celine Dion, Alec Baldwin). Heller boasts Jessica Paster (Minnie Driver, Kim Basinger); Bianca Blyth Beauty features Arianne Phillips (Madonna, Courtney Love). In addition, there's SmashBox, known for the cutting-edge Jennifer Levy, April Napier, Frank Chevalier and Kim Bowen, as well as Profile, Visages and a slew of independent stylists. "The competition is healthy," says Celestine owner Angelika Schubert. "It keeps us from getting lazy."

But the rivalry has also given rise to some cattiness, not to mention major egos. Like anything that deals in hype, L.A.'s new style darlings have their fair share of critics.

"There are stylists who have definitely gotten too big for their britches," says Stella Hall, Gucci's West Coast publicist. "They call up and make outrageous demands just because they're getting clothes for Jennifer Lopez or Minnie Driver."

"Some stylists are turning into divas," admits Paster. "When they start acting bigger than the stars they dress, it works against them. One stylist had the nerve to say I held on to 200 dresses during the Oscars to make him look bad."

And when stylists begin to get more press than the people they dress, it's adios time. "They shouldn't be all over the press, just as publicists shouldn't," says Simon Halls of Huvane Baum Halls, which represents Helen Hunt and Gwyneth Paltrow. "It's just tacky. And when they hire their own publicists, they've gone too far"--a reference, perhaps, to Phillip Bloch, who hired a publicist for his book.