It's a fitting role

Dorothy Gaspar does not make gloves for meek women. Her long, sinuous leather creations -- imagine Louboutin stilettos for your hands -- are better suited for martini-swilling minxes who smirk through apologies. Same goes for the chic two-tone driving gloves that come in flashy sports-car colors and snap efficiently at the wrist. Even folded over in repose, like sleeping swans, Gaspar's gloves are ready for their close-up.

And no doubt, you've seen a couple of her designs on the big screen: the chic cocoa-colored gloves Angelina Jolie wore as she wrung her hands in "The Changeling," or the red suede scallop-edged gloves fancied by Renee Zellweger in "Leatherheads." Gaspar also designed gloves for "Titanic," "Batman Returns" and "Charlie's Angels."

Typically, she sits down with a film's costume designer early on to go over sketches and determine which glove design will complete a character's style.

"These are the ones I made for Eva Mendes for 'The Spirit.' They are very dramatic and have a 1940s look," says Gaspar, in her soft, lilting Hungarian accent as she gives a tour of the downstairs workshop in her Mount Washington home. She points at a pair of elbow-length black leather gloves with tapered fingers and topstitching that are as sleek as a panther.

Unlike her gloves, Gaspar, 44, is subdued -- much as you might expect from someone who can spend up to two days hand-cutting and pique-stitching one pair from swaths of Italian kid leather. Bolts of satin and lame, spools of candy-hued thread and hand-shaped irons (for pressing stitched gloves) clutter her modest work space. There are no flashy ergonomic chairs or modern desks. Her industrial Juki sewing machine looks sturdy but weary. "Those die cutters are over 100 years old," she says proudly of a cubby crammed with cookie cutter-like tools. "They have always been in my family."

Her grandfather founded Gaspar Gloves in Budapest in 1890. Her father carried on the tradition. With nine older siblings who spurned the family business, Gaspar had little say in her destiny. "I was the 10th child, and they made me learn it," she says with a good-natured shrug. In 1985, she followed her beau -- now husband -- to L.A. and soon found work sewing at Gloves by Hammer of Hollywood on Melrose Avenue. A few years later, Hammer when closed, she struck out on her own and started working with movie studios.