Daily News Photo by Lee Hershfield - Lana Marks presents her first Palm Beach show since she started her accessories line almost 20 years ago.

Dancers debut Lana Marks' spring handbag collection at Club Colette

By ROBERT JANJIGIAN
Daily News Fashion Editor
Saturday, January 12, 2008

When it comes to staging a runway show of designer apparel, it's a snap.

Hire some gamines to strut down the catwalk in a designer's latest duds, rent ballroom chairs and a show space, build a backdrop and invite an audience made up of clients, buyers or press to catch the collection.

With accessories collections, however, that formula doesn't necessarily work so smoothly.

Though runway models in Paris, Milan and New York, even Palm Beach, often carry designer handbags and wear shoes and jewelry designed specifically for a house, especially when a designer's responsibilities include the creation of a range of money-making accessories, the designer whose focus is solely on the non-apparel realm is hard-pressed to stage an effective catwalk show. Thus, they turn to tableaux vivant presentations or forgo models altogether and merely display their pieces in a showroom.

Island designer Lana Marks made a creative decision in putting on her first Palm Beach show since she started her accessories line almost 20 years ago. She presented her collection of handbags to local clients at a Club Colette luncheon Wednesday.

Carrying Marks' collection of 15 to 20 bags debuting this spring down the wood floor set up down the club's main dining room were professional dancers engaged for the occasion.

Tutu-clad ballet dancers to racily dressed Mambo kings and queens to sultry tangoing twosomes and gyrating disco couples added an energetic and entertaining element to the proceedings, with each dance segment showcasing at least one particular new style, shape, size or color of luxurious exotic-skin clutches, pocketbooks or totes.

The entire collection of Marks bags for spring, sans dancers, can be inspected in less kinetic circumstances at her boutique, 238 Worth Ave.