Eletra Casadei dies at 55; L.A. designer of flaunt-it fashion

She died Sept. 27 at her home in Pacific Palisades. The cause was brain cancer, her sister Andrea Casadei Best said.

One of the first Los Angeles designers of her generation to gain a national reputation for something other than swimwear, Casadei claimed Old Hollywood glamour as her inspiration and fantasy dresses at affordable prices as her niche.

She introduced her TD4 (To Die For) line in the late 1970s for customers ages 14 and up. Before long their mothers were wearing the clothes and she launched a second collection, Casadei, for them. By the early 1980s, a boom time for flaunt-it fashion, Casadei was in her stride.

"Padded shoulders, draping, appliques, sequins, Eletra's evening dresses were over the top and a lot of fun," Pam Roberts, the designer's former publicist, told The Times.

Throughout the 1980s, Casadei's collections were carried in some 7,000 boutiques and department stores, most of them in the U.S. Prices ranged from about $100 to about $400.

A former fashion model, she wore her own designs and added a few accents, such as plum color streaks in her hair and iridescent fuchsia nail polish.

Dresses from her collections turned up on sitcoms and soaps as diverse as "Golden Girls," about four older women rooming together, and "Dynasty," about Denver socialites with glitzy tastes.

Casadei's best advertisements were the two fashion-music videos she created in the mid-1980s, modeled after the music videos that aired on MTV. Instead of costumes, she used dresses from her latest collection.

"Eletra pioneered fashion-music videos," Janet Orsi, another former publicist, said this week. "The idea was to capitalize on the music video phenomenon and marry it to fashion. Designers got to show their clothes in a new genre. It was a change from the typical fashion show."

Casadei's videos played in stores and wholesale showrooms as well as on MTV. She played the lead in "Adventures of the Countess," a mystery made in the style of a silent movie with scary mood music.

Her other video, “Prom Night,” with a soundtrack of Steve Winwood music, shows girls at a dance that gets a lot more exciting when guys in black leather show up.