by Bart Boehlert
by Bart Boehlert
"We told Sally Field to go fuck herself, and you can't do that on Wall Street!" exclaims fashion designer James Purcell with a dramatic flourish. Purcell is describing how one of the Academy Award-winning actress's minions called his office to borrow ten new dresses to be fitted and altered so Ms. Field could pick one to wear to the Oscars -- for free.Uh, the answer is, NO. Nothing this exciting ever happened in New York City's financial district where Purcell and his partner, Barry Steinhart, worked and met.
Purcell was at the Chicago Stock Exchange and Steinhart was an attorney at a white shoe law firm. They moved in together about a week after they met seven years ago, says Purcell. He talked incessantly about wanting to become a fashion designer and, finally, Steinhart said he would support Purcell for a few years in a designer business if he would just shut up and do it. Steinhart ended up leaving his law firm to run the business side of the company, and now Purcell's glamorous designs are sold in Henri Bendel, Saks Fifth Avenue, Barneys New York and Neiman Marcus.
When a reporter arrives in his studio, Purcell is fussing with a sample muslin strapless ball gown on a mannequin as a production assistant and two seamstresses look on. "It's getting to look more like the sketch, isn't it?" he asks them hopefully. "We have to do something with this tulle popping out," he says, as he lifts the back of the long skirt to reveal nets of crinoline underneath. "The tulle needs to be higher and fuller," he comments, and they all murmer and adjust the shape. Someone puts a black belt with a big fabric bow on the dress, and suddenly the process is reminicsent of that scene in Walt Disney's Cinderella when the birds and mice whip up that perfect ball gown in the attic.
In fact, movies have had a big influence on Purcell's designs, especially old movies from 1947-1963, like Sabrina, A Place in the Sun, Funny Face, and Sunset Boulevard. The fashions of the period influenced him as well -- the Dior New Look, Balenciaga, Oleg Cassini dressing Jackie Kennedy. "What inspired me most," he says, "was probably my mother and my eight sisters."
"I like the 50's and I like simplicity," says the designer. "It's not relaxed chic here. It's just always chic. I never bead a dress. I like to see a simple beautiful dress with a good piece of jewelry. It's an upper middle class Midwestern thing," says Purcell, who was raised in Munster, Indiana, outside Chicago.
