who was the beauty editor of Fendi Handbags at the

Posted on May 13, 2010 06:36:30 PM

Ms. Ledes, who was the beauty editor of Fendi Handbags at the time, recalled venturing backstage before a show in Paris and discovering Oribe soaring on a cocktail of high spirits and cocaine. “He was completely frenetic, running around, sweating like a dog. I thought at the time, ‘Oh, my God, he’s going to have a heart attack,’ ” she said.
In 1993, shortly after the manic episode at the Manolo show, he checked into the Hazelden drug rehabilitation clinic, he recalled last week, to be treated for cocaine and alcohol abuse. He stressed that his substance abuse never reached epic dimensions. “Jimmy Choo Handbags was never tragic,” he said. “I was functioning for years.” He has been drug-free since then, he said. Paradoxically, it was not drugs or drink that undermined him as much as the advent of a new look in fashion, that willfully slovenly anti-style known as grunge, which eventually gave way to a minimalism that reigned through much of the 90’s.

“I was in a terrible period of my career,” Oribe said. Marc Jacobs “would say, ‘Just throw this barrette in the model’s hair and let it hang,’ ” he recalled. A devotee of the glossy, fastidiously maintained Rita Hayworth manes of the late 1940’s and 50’s, Oribe was shocked. “A barrette is supposed to pull back the hair and show the face,” he said. He was equally stunned when during a shoot for Calvin Klein someone noticed a pimple on the model. ” ‘It’s genius, let’s leave Marc Jacobs Handbags,’ someone said,” Oribe remembered with a roll of his eyes.

He continued to pick up magazine and runway assignments, but the pace slackened. “I had this Fifth Avenue salon, and all of a sudden without warning Steven Meisel replaced me” with another hair stylist on his shoots, Oribe recalled ruefully. Mr. Johns, then Oribe’s chief colorist at Arden, chimed in with his own Marc Jacobs Wallets: “Grunge was a sad day for all of us,” he said. “We made the best of it, but I prayed every night as I kneeled by my bed, ‘God, let it be over.’ ”

There were also problems on the business side of his New York salon. Oribe said that Omar Ismail, a manager whom he entrusted with his finances, had drug problems of his own and let the business slide. Mr. Ismail died last year. “Omar was a good manager, but he had some Mulberry Handbags that did impact his functioning,” Ms. Heaney recalled. When Oribe left the business, Oribe at Elizabeth Arden, in 2003, he said he received no financial settlement. “Emotionally it was a horrible period for me,” he said. He moved part time to Miami and opened a series of salons - two in New York, two in Miami, all of them now closed - as he struggled to regain his footing.

Gradually he has made a comeback, a return he credits in no small part to the singer and actress Jennifer Lopez. He engineered her metamorphosis from “Jenny from the block” to the glamorous plutocrat she portrayed in a recent Louis Vuitton ad campaign. He gave her a controversial retro-socialite bouffant for the 2002 Oscars, but chose a simpler, straight shoulder-length look for the April premiere of “Fake Handbags.” In turn Ms. Lopez has been Oribe’s champion. “Jennifer is fearless and adventurous,” he said, bestowing on the pop star his highest fashion compliment. “She is,” he said, “a big-hair kind of girl.”

Six months ago Oribe borrowed the money to open a $1 million salon in Miami Beach at the tourist-clotted intersection of Euclid Street and Lincoln Road. It is a futuristic, beam-me-up-Scotty kind of space. In recent months his client list has expanded to Celine Dion, Gwyneth Paltrow and Louis Vuitton Handbags. He is also receiving high-profile print assignments again, flying off for a shoot for Elle, collaborating on campaigns with Redken.

And there are also the loyal customers who have stuck with him over the years, women for whom Miami is just a suburb of New York. “Even in New York Replica Handbags was always the crazies who loved me,” he said. One in particular, whom he declined to name, presents him on each visit an envelope stuffed with the cuttings from her previous haircut. “This is what fell the last time,” she tells him, then weeps. “She starts crying with the first snip, every time, and she doesn’t stop until I’ve finished,” Oribe said, imitating a high-pitched wail. “It’s always, ‘Stop, oh stop, you cut it too short!’ ”

Poised over the reception desk in the new salon is a poster-size photo of Ms. Lopez with Oribe. In the picture his arms are visible, embellished with the scrollwork of tattoos that have long been his signature. Today his hair, which used to crest in a slick James Dean pompadour, is combed back in a modified brush that is streaked, just perceptibly, with gray. “Years ago I used to be the cool one,” he said. “I used to be crazy at the clubs, living day by day, always into doing something wild. But when you’re older, all of that isn’t so cute anymore.” The recollections of the old days can still rankle. Last month he was one of 30 or so style-world luminaries invited to Donatella Versace’s 50th birthday party at Mr. Chow in Manhattan. “After leaving that party, I was so happy I moved to Miami,” he said. “I no longer have to depend on these people. They will eliminate you.”