Coming Back Into Fashion

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As president of the California Fashion Association, Ilse Metchek doesn’t go many places without dressing to the nines. So it was something of a shock recently when she went with her daughter on safari in the African wilds, worlds away from Rodeo Drive.

“There were no designer jeans, no Gucci bags and no jewelry,” Metchek said. “You don’t realize until you get out of everyday life that what we think of as necessary to our lives is totally irrelevant when you get out of this milieu.”

She spent a little time investigating South African fashion, but the two-week trip was mostly for pleasure, she said. It was an eye-opening experience, driving by prides of lions, flying in four-seater planes and eating water buffalo.

But while she cherishes the experience, Metchek admitted that it didn’t take long to acclimate back into the L.A. scene.

“I immediately put on my makeup and jewelry and high heels,” she said. “Immediately.”

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Talk about a career change.

Fredric Roberts traded boardrooms for remote villages in India and Myanmar more than a decade ago, and he has never looked back.

The Brentwood businessman, who founded L.A. investment banking firm F.M. Roberts & Co. and who served as chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers when it owned and operated Nasdaq, began taking pictures of people living in developing countries after retiring from the corporate world in 2000.

“I’m much happier sitting in a tribal village in a mountain in (Myanmar) or with remote tribes in India,” said Roberts, who spends about a month living with his subjects so they become comfortable with him and his camera.

Roberts, 69, now has more than 30 exhibits under his belt and three books, the most recent of which, “Humanitas III: The People of Burma,” is set to go on sale this month.

His interest in photography grew after several magazine editors saw pictures he took during a vacation to Thailand, China and Tibet, and encouraged him to make a career from behind the lens.

Roberts has plenty of once-in-a-lifetime stories, thanks to his second profession.

“I’ve had near-death experiences,” he said. “I shot pictures of the Dalai Lama at Varanasi in India. And when the speech was over, all these Tibetans and Tibetan monks came like a torrent pouring out of a tent where he was speaking and I thought I was going to be trampled to death.”

Staff reporters Richard Clough and Alexa Hyland contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].

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