And on Your Right . . . : Hop Aboard, Folks, for a Tour of the Places That Put L.A. on the Style Map

There are tours of dead stars’ homes, semi-stars’ condos, underwater coral reefs and graveyards. There is even a tour for insomniacs.

But where is the fashion tour of Los Angeles?

The local landmarks of style don’t show up on any maps we’ve seen. So come on along--watch your step at the fold--to the places where the stars shop, to the home of the topless bathing suit, to the garages that served as launch pads for great labels, to the shops that have known a dozen incarnations.

We begin our tour downtown, on Hill Street, where the onetime crown jewels of retail empires now stand empty.

Bullock’s, at 7th and Hill, was the first to go in 1983; it downscaled and moved to Seventh Market Place at 7th and Figueroa. The next to pull out, three years later, was May Co., where comedian Jack Benny found his future wife in 1925. During a stint at the Orpheum Theatre on Broadway, he walked across the street to buy socks and met Mary Livingston, the men’s hosiery clerk. After that, he would wait for her every afternoon at the employees’ entrance. Originally Hamburger’s department store (built in 1906), this May moved to smaller quarters in Citicorp Plaza.

The most recent of the behemoths to be felled by hard times was Robinson’s, at 7th and Flower streets, which closed in January--its 109th year in business.

The downtown area’s fashion schools have fared better. The new Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising building, at 9th Street and South Grand Avenue, is the alma mater of Marlene Stewart, the designer who made Madonna’s underwear outerwear. Ellen Jantzen, designer of the extensive wardrobe for Mattel’s Barbie doll, is also a grad.

A few blocks south, at 400 Washington Blvd., is the Los Angeles Trade-Technical College. Its alums include Robin Piccone, the designer who used neoprene fabric and large zippers from wet suits to give women’s swimwear a high-tech look, and Carl Jones, the Cross Colours co-founder whose streetwear line went big time.

As we go back to Wilshire Boulevard and head west away from downtown, we pass Otis College of Art and Design in the 2400 block. Its fashion department was the training ground for costume designer Edith Head, whose work appears in the films “Sunset Boulevard,” “To Catch a Thief” and “The Sting.”

At Westmoreland Avenue and Wilshire is Bullocks Wilshire, for decades the fashion store in Los Angeles and the first to acknowledge the automobile. Built in 1929, its street facade had large display windows and an imposing entrance. In the rear, a huge muraled porte-cochere greeted shoppers arriving by car.

Mae West took full advantage of this drive-in amenity, enlisting salesclerks to bring clothing to her in the car for review. Marlene Dietrich was also known to pull up in back late on Saturday afternoons--but not to shop. Instead, she would load up her car with store employees and take them to her Malibu house for the weekend. Greta Garbo shopped the men’s department for her trousers, and Clark Gable bought matching ski suits for himself and Carole Lombard.

Publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst was the store’s big spender. Insisting on shopping in privacy after hours, he purchased entire swimwear collections and multiple equestrian outfits as gifts for his weekend guests at San Simeon.

Bullocks Wilshire, too, is closed now; the doors were locked in April.

Over to the right as we continue west on Wilshire, in Hancock Park, is the Georgian mansion of Mr. Blackwell, who delivers his vituperative lists of best- and worst-dressed celebrities each year.

Also on our right, at 5905 Wilshire, is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Besides housing a large permanent collection of ancient textiles, LACMA has recently staged shows of Ferragamo shoes and Lesage embroideries. Now on display is “Jewels of Fantasy, Costume Jewelry of the 20th Century.”

We are now in the Miracle Mile area, named by its developer, William Ross, who declared the number of bargains within the stretch from Fairfax to La Brea “a miracle.” Hucksterism aside, it was quite the prestigious spot in the ‘40s.

The May Co. at Fairfax Avenue and Wilshire, the first branch store in the United States, anchored the shopping district. When the store was built in 1939, the automobile had changed the way stores were built, with the grand entrance facing the parking. The store closed in January but remains part of a planned expansion of Park La Brea, a home-office-shopping complex.

Twice a year during the ‘40s, May Co. buyers would go to Paris to purchase couture clothes by Cristobal Balenciaga, Elsa Schiaparelli, Christian Dior and Coco Chanel. They would then copy the French originals and invite the city’s well-heeled to fashion shows in the fifth-floor tea room. Copies and originals came down the catwalk side by side.

Orbach’s, another local department store, was also known for its classy knockoffs. Making outright copies and inviting comparison was considered quite chic in those days, though Dallas-based designer Victor Costa is one of the few insiders who admits to carrying on the tradition.

A reverential hush please--we are now entering Beverly Hills. During the ‘40s, while the Miracle Mile was booming, the city of mostly rich and famous had a quiet little fashion renaissance of its own.

Adrian (born Gilbert Adrian Greenburgh), a costume designer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios, opened a store in 1941 at Beverly Drive and Wilshire. He dressed Dietrich, Norma Shearer, Loretta Young, Irene Dunn and Shirley Temple as well as his wife, Janet Gaynor, in his dramatic couture clothes. Tatou, a nightspot known to attract the likes of alleged madam Heidi Fleiss, now stands in the store’s place.

Saks Fifth Avenue moved to Wilshire in 1938, and eventually other big retailers--I. Magnin, Neiman Marcus and (coming in ‘94) Barneys--acquired Beverly Hills addresses.

The first of the boutiques to grab shopping dollars from the big stores was Jax, at Bedford Drive and Wilshire. Known for avant-garde clothing, its stock included Rudi Gernreich’s futuristic designs. It was the place Gernreich met his muse, Peggy Moffitt, who as a teen-ager in 1965 worked there part time. Designer Bob Mackie remembers it as the place starlets went for form-fitting audition dresses. A local retailer remembers it as the place where salesclerks wore tight white capri pants--before anyone in town knew what capri pants were. Now Jax is the site of a hair salon.

Now we’re leaving Wilshire and turning north on Rodeo Drive, the street that put Beverly Hills shopping on the world map in the ‘70s. Only 2 1/2 blocks long, the shopping district packs a lot of upscale stores into a small space. Jon Peters, the producer of “Batman,” once had his hair salon here. Bonwit Teller and a Brown Derby restaurant have also come and gone. Now it’s Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, Chanel and Bulgari.

Eddie Schmidt pioneered the district when he moved his custom tailoring business from downtown to 300 Rodeo Drive (now the home of Van Cleef & Arpels) in 1934. He sold $150 custom-made suits to such stars as Fred Astaire, Tyrone Power and Robert Taylor.

These days, it takes an eagle’s eye to spot movie stars on Rodeo; they do come--in duck-and-cover runs. But you’re more likely to see them on Sunset Boulevard, at the intersection of Sunset Plaza Drive, in some of the small cafes that line the boulevard.

This two-block strip, called Sunset Plaza, got hot in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, about the time North Beach Leather moved into the area. Owner Michael Hoban was making hand-laced, fringed leather pants for rock ‘n’ rollers and white leather suits for Elvis. And Holly Harp had a boutique, called Holly’s Harp, filled with dresses made out of Spanish shawls. She also sold fringed vests and tie-dyed velvet dresses to Janis Joplin and Grace Slick.

In the early ‘80s, the strip emptied out, then filled back up as the money began to flow. These days you might see top model Christy Turlington ducking into Ole Henriksen’s skin-care salon or Paula Abdul in the parking lot behind H. Lorenzo, which handles clothing by outrageous European designers. (The pop singer once called from her car phone to ask that employees let her in through the back door, fearing possible recognition by fans out front.)

Gallay, a boutique owned by fashion fixture Charles Gallay, the new Kenneth Cole shoe store, and an up-and-coming lingerie/swimwear/sportswear shop owned by Laura Urbinati and Luca Mancini keep the star shoppers coming back.

Sunset Plaza is not the only shopping area that has had multiple lives. Melrose Avenue, now facing the sunset of its second heyday, was quite the star scene in the late ‘40s.

Edith Head worked in the costume shop at Paramount Studios. Elizabeth Courtney had a custom design business, making clothing for Dietrich, among others. Mackie later moved in and designed TV costumes for Cher and Carol Burnett. Western Costume, one of the world’s largest costume shops (now in the San Fernando Valley) sat just outside the Paramount gates.

In the ‘80s, Melrose became the colorful cruising ground for street fashion.

Today, it is the home of Fred Segal, another of Los Angeles’ world-renowned stores. It began as a place to buy blue jeans in the ‘70s, and evolved into a collection of small, trendy shops.

Melrose is still colorful but, like Rodeo Drive, it has become a tourist attraction. And many of the city’s cutting-edge stores--American Rag, Drea Kadillac, Stussy and Anna Sui--are around the corner on La Brea Avenue.

We’re still heading east and wending our way back to Hollywood, into the heart of the tourist country. Here, at Highland Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard, are two fashion museums. The lovely Art Deco structure on Highland is the Max Factor building, wherein lies the Max Factor Museum of Beauty. The cosmetics, some dating back to the early 1900s, are displayed in a “blond room,” a “brunette room” and so on. Factor’s inventions, such as the kissing machine that tested the indelibility of lipstick, are also on view.

On Hollywood is the original Frederick’s of Hollywood store, which houses the Frederick’s Lingerie Museum. What started as a temporary exhibit of historical bras has evolved into a permanent collection of Hollywood lingerie. Among the goods are Judy Garland’s nightgown from “Meet Me in St. Louis,” Lana Turner’s slip from “Merry Widow” and Ava Gardner’s pantaloons from “Showboat.”

We’ll end our tour here, but if you would like to continue on your own to other notable fashion stops, see the “Side Trips” list on E2.

A Tour of the Places That Put L.A. on the Style Map

1. Celebrity sightings happen at Sunset Plaza, where super model Christy Turlington (pictured above) gets facials at Ole Henriksen.

2. Inventive contraptions (pictured, the beauty calibrator) and vintage cosmetics are displayed in the Max Factor Museum of Beauty.

3. Frederick’s of Hollywood shoppers can peek at the slips and nighties of movie stars in an in-house museum.

4. Melrose Avenue (pictured right) became the colorful cruising ground for streetwear in the ‘80s.

5. Shopping momentum has shifted south of Melrose to La Brea Avenue, where American Rag, Anna Sui and Drea Kadillac attract the cognoscenti.

6. Rodeo Drive (pictured below)--Only 2 1/2 blocks of upscale-is-an-under-statement shops--put Beverly Hills on the world fashion map in the ‘70s.

7. Saks Fifth Avenue moved to Wilshire in 1938, and its brethren followed: I. Magnin, Neiman Marcus and (coming soon) Barneys.

8. Adrian, the MGM costume designer, sold his dramatic couture clothes to Shirley Temple and Loretta Young in what is now the happening nightclub Tatou.

9. This May Co., built in 1939, was modeled after a perfume bottle. Since most of the customers arrived by car, the grand entrance was designed to face the parking lot.

10. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, houses a large permanent collection of ancient textiles, and recently showcased Ferragamo shoes and Lesage embroidery.

11. Mr. Blackwell, the guy (pictured left) who points out the fashion foibles of the rich and famous, surveys the fashion terrain from a Georgian mansion in Hancock Park.

12. Touted as the prestigious spot to shop in the ‘40s, department stores along the Miracle Mile lured shoppers with their knockoffs of Christian Dior and Chanel originals.

13. Bullocks Wilshire attracted a new breed of customers, those with automobiles, as well as celebrities such as Mae West, Marlene Dietrich and Clark Gable

14. Hollywood costume designer Edith Head (“Sunset Boulevard,” “The Sting”) learned her trade in classes at Otis College of Art and Design (pictured above).

15. The original May Co. store, where comedian Jack Benny met his wife, Mary, over the men’s hosiery counter, closed in 1986. Robinson’s and Bullock’s have also abandoned their downtown locations in recent years.

16. Marlene Stewart, the designer who made Madonna’s underwear outerwear, is among the distinguished alums of the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (pictured left).

17. Los Angeles Trade-Technical College turned out surf ‘n’ turf designers: Robin Piccone, who does Body Glove swimsuits, and Carl Jones, who helped create Cross Colours streetwear.