Dell’Olio Gives Klein a Modern Look for Fall

Louis Dell’Olio is draped across a peach sofa like a sandbag. The sleeves of his wrinkled linen shirt are rolled up, and an afternoon breeze wafts through the open doors of his pool-side Hotel Bel-Air suite. A tray of sliced melons beckons like a pastel rainbow from across the room, but he doesn’t bother to get up and eat.

Dell’Olio, head designer for Anne Klein & Co., one of the country’s biggest and most successful sportswear firms, says he has been thinking numbers lately. Not sales figures, but the big Four-O.

The Brooklyn-born designer, who turns 40 on July 23, is apparently pondering his goals and what it takes to stay on top in the grind of the fashion world.

Monday was a perfect example, he explains. He flew in that morning from New York, and spent the remainder of the day on the peach couch giving interviews.

“This season it’s unchic for a fashion reporter to ask about length,” he remarked wearily. “It’s been beaten to death.”

After a quick change into a double-breasted navy suit, he served as guest of honor that evening at a show of his fall line at a Costume Council benefit at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The next day was spent on the selling floor of Saks Fifth Avenue, and then he caught a plane to San Francisco for more of the same.

“I was in Scotland for dinner three days ago,” Dell’Olio said. “My schedule is rough now.” Not including the trip to Scotland to visit a fabric mill, he makes six scheduled trips to Europe a year to buy fabrics and to work on knits and shoes. He makes five national promotional trips a year, such as the one here.

“Even that’s too much. Bill Blass travels a lot, but his is a different business. With clothes that expensive, a lot of it is special order. I don’t think Calvin (Klein) travels any more at all. But I travel, Donna travels,” he said of Donna Karan, his associate at Anne Klein until three years ago when she left to inaugurate her own label.

“Ralph (Lauren) has it organized real well. He’s got the best life. He’s always at one of his homes. I’d love to know his secret. Donna and I look at each other and wonder what we’re doing wrong. You give a little bit of yourself away,” he said of his trips.

“And that’s where I am at 40, gaining back more of me.”

For the last four years, his girlfriend has been Jacqueline Dubelle, the company’s house model and a runway model who appears in all of the Anne Klein shows. He met the statuesque, blue-eyed blonde at one of his own fashion shows.

“We work together on everything--jewelry, hats. She has great taste.”

Since Dell’Olio took over the reigns as head designer, he says he hasn’t had much time for pause or personal life. “I wouldn’t say I’ve reached my potential. You reach your potential when you’re dead.”

But he wants to “pull back,” to delegate responsibilities to the six designers working under him, plus those in a separate design studio for licensees.

“You can work and work and make more and more money and enjoy it less and less. There are so many people dying now, especially in my business, it’s just not worth it. You only live once; I’m not so sure about twice.”

Dell’Olio oversees the Anne Klein collection, the Anne Klein II bridge division, as well as 17 American licensee products ranging from costume jewelry to furs. The combined annual sales volume is more than $130 million. For next season, a new dress collection, Anne Klein Dresses, has been added to the list.

Fashion questions eat at him. “Now that the pouf and all that is dead, reporters want to know what’s next on the horizon, the new sensation. I don’t know, I really don’t. And I’m not after that. I design modern clothes. My clothes are of good style, they’re not about fashion.”

He says he doesn’t like the game designers play, making headlines for headlines’ sake: Who can make the shortest skirts? Who can drop them the farthest when they’re out? “Who cares? It’s not interesting,” he said with a shrug.

For all the talk of bringing hemlines back down again, Dell’Olio maintains that few designers have done so, himself included. Every skirt but one in his fall line is shown just above the knee. “My short skirts sold very well last year,” he said.

His answer to long lengths are full-cropped pants that only look like skirts. He’s also big on loosely pleated trousers.

Price is another issue that concerns him. Looking through the most recent Vogue, Dell’Olio said he was “shocked” at the prices of European sportswear.

“There wasn’t anything for less than $1,000. That’s the new number. Blouses are $1,000. Pants are $1,000. Jackets are $1,500. It’s amazing.”

At Anne Klein, Dell’Olio struggles to keep the price of jackets about $700, which is about 20% to 30% higher than last year. Because “99%” of his fabrics are from Europe, the price increase is attributed mostly to the rise in duty, the devaluation of the dollar and the spiraling cost of fabric itself.

However, Dell’Olio believes women who usually shop the European designers may start to reassess the American market this year. Some New York socialites already have stated publicly that it’s time to buy American.

“If Ivana Trump can say prices are ridiculous, the president of some corporation in L.A. will feel free to say the same thing.

“I just think there’s going to be a point where it’s going to be ridiculous to buy clothes.”