NEW YORK — "I love it," shrieks Ricki Lake, preening before a full-length mirror in a simple, tailored black pantsuit. "So, what do you think? Does my butt look big?"
"You look great," soothes designer Todd Oldham, who is getting Lake ready for the "Daytime Emmy Awards." He nips in the waistline an inch and piles the talk-show host's hair up in a sexy tumble of curls festooned with colorful rhinestone barrettes.
"What we don't want is to do some heap of beads like all the soap opera ladies wear," he coaches. "Because the suit is so elegant, you can go for it with the hair. I want them to look at you."
An understated black suit is hardly what we've come to associate with Oldham, whose witty, sexy, tongue-in-chic designs ("va-va-va-voom outfits that stop a room," observes boutique owner Madeleine Gallay) have made him one of Seventh Avenue's hippest and hottest designers.
Among the bevy of stars who prefer his jolts of color to a boring sea of taupe and beige are Susan Sarandon, Rosie O'Donnell, Queen Latifah and Janet Jackson. Never mind that Oldham's clients tend to land on Mr. Blackwell's "Worst Dressed List." "Oh, please," the 32-year-old designer says, grinning. "No one takes that seriously."
Sarandon even made the tabloids scream when she made a public appearance several years ago in an Oldham creation--a loud, clingy cleavage-baring gown. The words Would You Be Caught Dead in This Outfit? accompanied her picture. Undaunted, the actress ordered a batch of Oldhams for the press tour touting her new film, "The Client," and brought chum Julia Roberts to the designer's recent fall show.
"Todd is more a 20th-Century artist than a designer," Gallay declares.
One of her customers purchased Oldham's $3,600 hand-beaded skirt with the Mona Lisa embroidered on one side and a Picasso portrait on the other, wore it once and converted it into throw pillows.
Although the razzmatazz gowns costing anywhere from $600 to $10,000 generate the most buzz, Oldham also designs understated, scrupulously fitted pieces. Ask him to name favorite items in his fall collection and he mentions the Ultrasuede and pin-striped pieces. "It was fun working with conservative stuff," he says.
"In the past, most of what he did were well-made novelty pieces, but now he's doing more basics--basics with his own special twist," says Joan Kaner, senior vice president and fashion director for Neiman Marcus. "It's helping him establish a good, solid base of customers who are building wardrobes, not just buying items."
Even so, some people find his brand of clothing too wacky.
"Real-life wearability can sometimes be a problem with Todd," says a New York retail consultant who requested anonymity. "I mean, where does he expect you to wear some of these clothes? And if you're not 6 feet, with a body like Elle MacPherson, forget it."
Oldham agrees: "Our clothes aren't for everybody. Most people don't have the occasion to wear such extreme things. But people who have surreal lives, which most celebrities do to some extent, can wear my stuff."
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A few days after Lake's fitting, Oldham is nestled on a marigold silk sofa, a patchwork pillow on his lap, in the corner of the SoHo loft that serves as his showroom. The walls are papered with a decoupage of pink-tinted newspaper. Red and orange ombre velvet curtains divide a large space scattered with racks of wildly colored clothes and rows of fanciful shoes and boots.
If the showroom looks nothing like the sleek, mirrored ateliers that line Seventh Avenue, neither does Oldham look like a typical fashion world darling.
Instead of the \o7 de rigueur \f7 white T, he sports a faded plaid cowboy shirt bought from his favorite purveyor, Goodwill Industries. A few of his bare toes, peeking out from sandals, are decorated with tattoo rings. Another piece of tattoo jewelry encircles his ankle. A thatch of sandy hair and boyish face with a crooked grin call to mind the teen-agers from "American Graffiti."
Speaking in a soft, unhurried cadence that hints at his Texas roots, Oldham talks of "not losing focus," particularly of the fact that today's clothes become tomorrow's dust rags. From most any other designer, such self-effacement would smack of pretentiousness. But not from Oldham, whom even industry cynics describe as sincere and sweet.
"Nobody \o7 needs \f7 me to make anything," he says. "I'm very serious about my commitment to what I do, but I don't lose focus about its importance. I make cheerful clothes that hopefully will allow someone to express herself or just have fun, but that's really it.
"We have customers who come back to us over and over because they like our sensibility and relate to it," he adds. "But if you buy something because there's security in the label, I'm sure a thousand bucks in therapy would probably do you better than a new black suit."
Ask Oldham to describe his clothes and he quickly says, "luxurious," "goofy" and "comfortable." Ask him to describe himself and he looks perplexed.
