Ebony On the Runway

Jada Collins, the current onstage commentator, has a flat-ironed curtain of thick hair and Miss America glamour gowns, and she speaks in mellifluous rhymes, with a slippery, sexy way of enunciating her words -- a cross between Henry Higgins and Eartha Kitt.

Collins's role is one made famous by Audrey Smaltz, who purred descriptively from 1970 to 1977. Smaltz now owns the Ground Crew, which provides designers with backstage staff and expertise for fashion shows.

Back in the '70s, Smaltz held the audience's attention with her wardrobe of Halston and Bill Blass finery, her improvisational style, her coyly naughty patois and down-home plain talk:

"This is what to wear on Sunday, when you don't get home till Monday!"

"If you can't get to Milan, if you can't get to Paris, go to Sears!"

Smaltz toured with Fashion Fair -- on its Greyhound bus -- during its glory years. Everyone wanted to come to the show and everyone wanted to be in it. She recalls a trip to Las Vegas in which "Sammy Davis Jr. gave me hell because his valet wanted to be in the show. . . . And I let him do it."

Smaltz laughs at the memory. Davis complained, she said, because without his aide-de-camp, the star was left to fend for himself. But it was all posturing. "The next day, Sammy gave me tickets to come see his show. He sent 12 dozen yellow roses and 12 dozen red roses."

The "top dogs" from Ebony used to come to the show in New York and Washington, Smaltz says. Folks treated the models like celebrities and asked them for their autographs. And the whole cast would always meet everyone who was anyone -- and black -- wherever they went.

The show has never been concerned with fashion trends. Minimalism would never have a place on the Ebony runway. "Fit to Be Fabulous" is divided into a half-dozen or so scenes, one of which celebrates "plaid." It doesn't matter that plaid is no more popular this year than it has been in the last five.

"I don't get that 'Oh, we're doing boho,' or whatever the fashion divas are saying this season," says milliner Kokin, who goes by only one name.

"I'm part of Ebony because of the nature of what I do. Black women and head coverings go back thousands of years. It's a beautiful tradition. I'm not in business because of them but I do a lot of business with them."

Eunice Johnson used to travel to Europe to select the clothes for the show. She now leaves the traveling to staff, declines interviews -- leaving that to her daughter -- and does not discuss her age.