#lee designer

1991, November 2nd  - HELLO! Magazine

Spotlight on the children of the stars

RINGO STARR’S DAUGHTER LEE

Sixties Fashion – not The Beatles – is what this young tycoon is into

Just look at Ringo Starr’s little girl now!

The ex-Beatle’s daughter, Lee Starkey, now 21 (“People look at me and still think I’m 13”), has become Hollywood’s latest fashion tycoon, selling dazzling sequined hot pants, microscopic mini skirts and psychedelic kaftans like hot-cakes from her very own boutique, slap in the middle of Los Angeles' trendiest district, Melrose Avenue.

“Daddy didn’t help at all with money,” says Lee, giving a delighted spin as she proudly models a selection of her favourite gear, all designed by herself and her partner, Christian Paris, 30.

“Daddy has given me plenty of moral support though – he brought all his friends to our grand opening. Sometimes he just walks in unexpectedly and drags people in off the street to see our clothes!

“He’s thrilled that at last I’ve found something I love to do.”

Lee Starkey was five when her mother Maureen and famous father Ringo divorced in 1975. And although her parents have since remarried (her mother to Hard Rock Cafe founder Isaac Tigrett, and Ringo to actress Barbara Bach) the extended family are all fast friends.

And when their little girl opened her very own boutique in Hollywood, both parents turned up along with brothers Zak, 25, and Jason, 23, to cheer her on.

“I’m by no means an expert on the Beatles,” admits Lee with a pretty smile. “If I want to know something about the Beatles, I simply ask my dad. But what I am drawn to is the fashions of the Sixties. That’s where I get my inspiration. I’ve tried to bring the vibrancy and colour and freedom of those fashions into the Nineties.”

And Lee’s splashily painted shop, dubbed Planet Alice, is doing a roaring trade, proving her ideas have hit the jackpot.

Lee tried acting, make-up school and even the drums before she finally hooked up with partner Christian Paris of whom she says: “We’re very fond of each other, but it’s just platonic.”

Christian already owned a Planet Alice store in London’s Portobello Road, a business he operated along with the London disco Alice in Wonderland.

He still owns his disco, but under Lee’s urging he’s now relocated his clothing boutique to Hollywood.

“We’ve only been open a month, but already I can see Lee’s idea was sound – sales are blistering,” says Christian happily, as he rings up a $1,000 sale to a group of visiting Miami Latinos who were dressed in clothes bought at Planet Alice only the previous day.

“Lee has so much energy, such wonderful ideas. And when she starts modelling like today – the cash register fairly clangs!”

REPORT: RODERICK BARRAND

1991, July - People magazine (US)

Ringo Starr’s 20-year-old daughter, Lee Starkey, celebrates the styles of her pop’s generation in her new Hollywood shop.

A STARR’S NEW PLANET

Ringo’s daughter, Lee Starkey, slips back into the ‘60s at her transplanted L.A. store, Planet Alice

Lee Starkey was born in 1970 – the year The Beatles split up. She didn’t see the swooning fans on The Ed Sullivan show and never questioned whether Paul was dead. As far as she was concerned, her father, Ringo Starr, was just another guy in a rock group. “It wasn’t like a really big thing,” she says. “I went to school with lots of people whose parents were in bands. I knew one of the Hollies’ daughters.”

Even now, when other rock legend’s children – Chynna Phillips, Carnie and Wendy Wilson and Gunnar and Matthew Nelson – are building megacareers with their parents’ names, Starkey, 20, doesn’t call attention to her roots. “I generally don’t tell anyone who my father is,” says Lee, who was raised in London by her mother, Maureen, after her parents’ 1975 divorce. “I didn’t know that much about the Beatles, so I kept my mouth shut.”

Lee communes with Ringo at the boutique's opening bash. "When there's something going on, we're all there," she says of her family.

Starkey is more comfortable talking about her own burgeoning career as co-owner of Planet Alice, a psychedelic boutique she opened last month with partner Christian Paris on L.A.’s trendy Melrose Avenue. Though it is stocked with what she describes as “’90s interpretations of ‘60s styles,” Starkey says, “I didn’t consciously do this because it’s what the Beatles wore in their heyday, but it must have had something to do with it.”

For his part, Ringo is glad that Lee, who didn’t ask him for financial help, “finally found something to put herself into,” he says. “She tried acting school and decided she didn’t like that. She got her diploma from makeup school and wasn’t really enthusiastic about that.” She even tried the drums. “But I wasn’t too good at it,” Starkey admits. Older brothers Zak, 25, and Jason, 23, became the drummers in the family, while Lee persuaded her pal Paris to relocate his Planet Alice shop from London’s Portobello Road to Hollywood. Waiting for her on these shores was her mother, who moved to L.A. last year after marrying Isaac Tigrett, cofounder of the Hard Rock Cafe empire. (The couple have a 4-year-old daughter, Augusta) Lee and Paris, who say their partnership is platonic, are living chez Tigrett until they find places of their own.

"I've never read a book about The Beatles," says Starkey (sketching at home). "If there's anything I want to know, I can just ask my dad".

“We’ve always been very family oriented,” says Lee, who spent childhood summers with her father at his estate at Ascot, where she occasionally encountered the other Beatles. Her parents remain on friendly terms, and Ringo and wife Barbara Bach, as well as Maureen and Tigrett, were on hand for the Planet Alice opening.

For now, Lee is concentrating on running the shop. She has even arm-twisted Mom into helping out one day a week. Dad hasn’t made that commitment, but his presence will surely be felt every time the cash register goes ring-o. 

"I feel I'm very lucky at age 20 to find what I want to do in life," says Lee, at Planet Alice,where everything old is new again.