There Was a Time when movie studios hired dressers to select their stars' off-camera ward-robes. Image was everything, and no actor or actress would dare set foot in public looking less than dazzling. Today, the typical young male celebrity is more apt to be spotted in blue jeans and baggy sweat shirt, sporting a day-old beard. Not that we have anything against going casual; we just thought the holidays deserved something special. So we asked five of the nation's top retailers--Barneys, Marshall Field's, Macy's San Francisco, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's--to dress Hollywood's newest talent in great looks by some of the world's top designers: Donna Karan, Roger Forsythe (Perry Ellis), Giorgio Armani, Joseph Abboud and Re Kawakubo (Comme des Garçons). From the understated elegance of the country-gentleman look (complete with plaid sports coat, corduroy trousers and ascot) to the contemporary styling of the latest dress suits (our pick features antique-tie-fabric lapels), the outfits on the following five pages of fashion recapture the romance of Hollywood's truly glamourous days. We thought it only fitting that the clothes and the stars wearing them be photographed by world-renowned portrait photographer George Hurrell. Hurrell's legendary portfolio features images of screen gods and goddesses from Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart to Greta Garbo and Lauren Bacall. Here, in the same 8"x10" Hollywood-portrait tradition, he promotes David Duchovny, Tony Peck, Jeff Fahey, Michael Biehn and Mario Van Peebles to his stable of stars. Duchovny should soon be commanding a lot of attention. He was featured in The Rapture, a film about sex and religion that also starred Mimi Rogers, and is in the forthcoming Beethoven, starring Charles Grodin. Peck, the talented son of Gregory, shared the big screen with Brooke Shields in Brenda Stair and soon can be seen in the action thriller Double Cross. Fahey caught our eye as the sensitive assistant district attorney in Impulse with Theresa Russell, as the sexy steelworker in Iron Maze with Bridget Fonda and in last summer's chiller thriller, Body Parts. Biehn battled the bad guys in The Terminator, Aliens and Navy SEALs and was one of them in The Abyss; he stars in the upcoming mountain-climbing adventure film K2. Van Peebles, of New Jack City fame and Melvin's son, will again assume the roles of both director and actor in his new film, Golden Gloves, co-starring Sidney Poitier. We couldn't ask for a more promising bunch of marquee idols. And there's at least one way you can look just like them--head to your favorite department store today.
Where & How to Buy on page 235.
