PETA, Jenna Jameson get into pleather
L.A. FASHION WEEK
The adult-film star unveils the odd-couple ad campaign.
What sort of fashion statement could possibly keep more than 60 photographers, videographers, reporters, rubber-necking passersby and one chap with a 12-foot boom mike perching on ottomans, chairs and stepladders in the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week tents for nearly an hour Monday evening?
Would you believe pleather?
A single black pleather bikini, to be more accurate, a shiny little trifle no bigger than a tea towel, complete with contrasting white underwire piping and a black garter belt that formed the underpinning of a PETA ad campaign called "Pleather Yourself." And Jenna Jameson, star of the campaign, not to mention countless adult films, was scheduled to hit the lobby of the tents at Smashbox Studios to take it off.
Not the bikini. (Though anyone who caught "Jackass" human punch line Steve-O leaping through the air au naturel last season to celebrate his PETA ad might be forgiven for thinking she might doff her duds for the cause.) We're talking about the red fabric obscuring a blowup of the Gavin Bond photograph of Jameson wearing the bikini, a Bettie Page wig, lipstick and nothing else, leaning against a wooden bar stool.
Even before Jameson arrived, the usually good-natured rivalry between photographers jockeying for position had become so heated that PETA's media people felt compelled to promise that Jameson would not be spirited away until everyone got their shot.
When she did finally arrive, in a form-fitting black and gray bandage dress, one quick motion was all it took to expose the photo of her in full pinup mode and set off an explosion of flashbulbs.
"Jenna, to the left! To the left! Over here!"
"Jenna, look this way!"
The now-retired star of such videos as "Camera Sutra" and "Hell on Heels" mugged and posed, alternately biting her finger, putting her hands on her hips or pantomiming a Vanna White routine with her own poster. But, like most things involving porn stars, the whole thing was over in less than 15 minutes, after which Jameson blew kisses to the crowd, shouted out, "Bye, I love you!" and ducked out of the lobby.
Afterward, I ducked backstage for a little one-on-one with Jameson, who, in addition to professing her love for animals and sharing that her favorite piece of pleather is in the form of a riding crop, reiterated what she'd told me during a chance encounter at the tents a year before -- that she had intended to launch her own clothing line at New York Fashion Week this fall.
When reminded that she'd said exactly the same thing a year before, her head bobbed. "It took longer than I expected."
She elaborated. "It's going to be a full line but with an emphasis on cocktail dresses," she said. "We haven't even announced the name of it publicly yet."
When this reporter begged to be first, she looked him in the eye and let him have it.
"Femme Domme," she said, with just a soupçon of lip-biting reticence. "It's going to be called Femme Domme."
adam.tschorn@latimes.com
