Local fashion designers place L.A. styles at front of the rack.

Local fashion designers place L.A. styles at front of the rack Once the U.S. fashion industry's beachbum cousins, L.A.'s designers are cutting a wider swatch wiith apparel for a more sophisticated, professional market. While they're still turning out surfer jams and such, they're also designing clothes for career dressing.

It's raising L.A.'s profile in the fashion community, and some of the city's youngest, most entrepreneurial design firms are leading the way.

"The creativity is definitely here," says Glenn Williams, designer and co-owner with sister Jill Williams of G.W. Designs Inc. His firm, which is not quite two years old, makes a "sophisticated career line for the serious contemporary woman" in the 25 to 40 age bracket." adds Williams, 30.

"It's going to be appreciated and recognized, which it hasn't been in the past."

Eric Bovy, co-owner and designer of Eric Bovy Inc., agrees. "Every time I go to New York, people are surprised when they know I am Los Angeles-based because they always want to refer to California fashion as very casual or as very beach-type fashion. But people are getting rid of that image of L.A. fashion as being worn under the palm trees and at the beach. I definitely think that Los Angeles is becoming more of a center in the arts, and fashion is to me an artistic expression."

Bovy's firm, which the 28-year-old French-born designer formed a year and a half ago with two partners, makes clothes that "are very European-looking. They have a certain chic but without being that trendy. My overall approach to clothes is to come up with a product that is both contemporary and long-lasting at the same time. You can wear them a year later and you will not feel out of tren. I would call it's new classicism.'" He designs for the young contemporary women's market 18 to 35.

Williams worked as a freelance designer for other companies while establishing his own firm. He calls his designs "clean, sophisticated and feminine. They're lightly tailored. We pay close attention to the silhouette and the proportions of each garment. There are three fittings before (a garment). goes to the sales rooom to be shown. It's more like the couture approach to ready-to-wear." The Boston native, who attended New York's Fashion Institute of Technology (know appropriately as FIT), just started a men's collection for the Fall '87 season which will be in the stores in July.

Bovy, too will introduce a men's wear line next year.

If it seems odd that Bovy would forsake Paris, considered the world's fashion capital, for L.A., the fact is, he became a fashion designer "purely by accident. When I left Paris I had absolutely no intention of becoming a designer," he says. "I graduated in France from a totally different field." A math and physics major, he made a lot of trips here as part of a student exchange programs, but never to the West Coast. However, he says, "L.A. and California always had a magical sound to my eyes, and to a lot of European kids as well."

He and girlfriend were in a Beverly Hills department store one day, and there was a prom dress she was admiring. Bovy got some fabric, borrowed a sewing machiine and with no experience in pattern-making was able to surprise her with a duplicate of the dress. "The only help that I had was my mathematical background," he recalls. Friends encouraged him to go into fashion desing full time, so he made up a line of 10 pieces "and that was enough to get me financial backing." His first venture three years ago was a disaster, though, because "it wasn't a serious company. It was more or less working with no business experience." His two partners in the reformed company take care of business and he takes care of the creative end.

Another young L.A. designer - so young he's still attending classes at the Fashion Institute - is Henry Duarte of Sqwear. Duarte, 23, targets the 18-to-30 years olds with a "moderately high income." He started out as a men's wear designer bacause "basically I design for myself. I used to have trouble finding clothes that I liked, especially with stuff that was hip. A lot of it was too commercial-looking." But women are wearing his designs too and he is adding a women's line.

Says Duarte of fashion design, "Everybody copies everybody in some sense; there's only so much you do to a pair of pants." But he adds, "In our clothing we're breaking a lot of rules. We're putting things where they shouldn't be, putting elastic where they don't belong."

Duarte, who's from Torrance, gets a lot of his inspiration from L.A. street fashion. "I look at the people in nightclubs. I feel there are a lot of really hip people in L.A. I don't look toward New York for design. When I was in New York recently I did the whole club scene and I wasn't really impressed with it."

Santa Monica-based Ron Sprick is another local fashion designer who is breaking new ground with his line of loungewear, sleepwear and underwear for men which can worn out in public.

Most men's boxer shorts have one-piece backsides, giving rise to the "droopy drawer" look that immediatelly identifies the garment as underwear. But Sprick's boxers, sold under the Under Construction label, have two-piece backs that fit the body better and look more like outer shorts.

Don't think you've got the cheek for it? Be assured, says marketing director David Jacobs, that "You can answer the door in your boxer underwear and not feel immodest."

Key to the line's concept is the type of fabrics used - quality cottons, linens and silks. "Our nightshirt has a fabric of a quality that you feel comfortable walking in public," Jacobs says.

Under Construction's main market is young contemporary between 28 and 45 years old, but actually, Jacobs says, the line is finding favor with older men as well. Moreover, it's developing a strong crossover audience - designed for men, but ladies like it too.

The garments were inspired by 1920s men's fashion when men wore matching dress shirts and fitted boxer underwear. The line now includes pajama tops, long and short nightshirts, drawstring waist trousers and a three-button drawstring shaving short, classic shawl collar and contemporary notched collar bathrobes which double as dusters, a gusseted kimono and, of course, the fitted boxer.

"We have decided that in the much maligned classification of pajamas there was a need to spruce up," says Jacobs. "We have decided to take the idea of pajamas out of sets and let them be separates. We've taken them out of the closet and let people wear them as lougewear.

John Leitch, men's wear designer for Los Angeles-based Access, says the flat look is out and textures are in as far as fabrics are concerned.

"We're doing rather textures fabrics with a lot of "slobs" - lumps and bumps like handwoven stuff.:" Says he: "We're doing a lot of patterns, plaids and stripes - very sublte and understated, nothing loud. It's to look rather disheveled, I hope, and rather beat-up. Not untidy, but not sliiick or hard or sharp-looking."

Joyce Nadig, women's wear designer at Access, says the company is making a concious effort to design with the consumer in mind. "We're trying very hard to gear the collection to the actual season so she can wear (the garments) right away. That's a switch from what's usually done in the beautiful clothes come into the store but it's too hot to wear them. In spring you get clothes that are too cold to wear."

Then, too, she adds, "A lot of people create a complete fashion image where they do really extreme looks in fashion, so when (the consumer) puts that fashion on. it doesn't express the person - it expresses the designer. The most important thing we do is try to consider our customer - who she is and what she really wants to wear, instead of it being an ego trip for us and dictating to her, 'This is what you're going to wear.'"

Indeed. says Glenn Williams, "People are looking for quality now and paying less attention to magazines. What's important is what looks good on them and how they feel about the clothes," He adds, "Fashion is a moment. It's ever-changing. Don't take it too seriously."

PHOTO : Williams: 'The creativity is definitely here'