Bag and Baggage

World Cup Runneth Over

Talk about net results.

For all you fashionable soccer moms--and fans of the game, forget the jersey tops and long socks. It’s time to score with a limited-edition handbag created by Michael Kors for Celine especially for the World Cup.

How the bag came about is just as intriguing as how the U.S. soccer team has emerged in the quarterfinals and will play this morning for a place in the semifinals.

Paris-based Celine’s president, Jean-Marc Loubier, a soccer fan, came up with the idea and spoke to designer Kors about creating it--separate from the ready-to-wear collection, according to Celine spokesperson Tenley Black. “Michael’s excited about the reaction,” Black says from Celine’s New York offices. “He was asked about soccer a few weeks ago and he said that ‘although the World Cup doesn’t have a high profile in the States, the rest of the world is coconuts about soccer.’ ”

Now Kors and his creative team are hoping the world will go coconuts over his tribute-to-soccer creation, the Tie-Game Bag, with 4,000 crafted and numbered, to be sold worldwide.

The bag is part of a World Cup-inspired line that includes hooded, zippered tops, shorts, sneakers and other accessories. “Once they’re sold out, they’re gone,” Black says of the collection launched May 31, the day the World Cup kicked off.

On Wednesday, Italian pop singer Anastacia, requested several of the items, including the bag, for an appearance at World Cup closing ceremonies, according to Black.

The bag is available for $570 at Celine stores in Beverly Hills and at South Coast Plaza.

--Michael Quintanilla

Dressed Up for a Call

A negligee for your Nokia or a mackintosh for your Motorola, perhaps? The newest fashion statement could be clothes for the cell phone, thanks to L.A. designer Jun Li and her brocade phone covers shaped like the traditional Chinese cheongsam dress.

The idea was, as so many are, a fluke. Li, who designs full-size cheongsams for M. Cole and other stores, began using leftover fabric to make doll clothes for her 5-year-old daughter. One day it hit her to try the dainty dresses on a cell phone. The result was so cute that she attached a strap to the top of the mini-cheongsam and began wearing it slung over her shoulder like a purse.

“Someone stopped me in the parking lot on the way to drop one off for a friend and asked if she could buy it,” said Li, who lives in Hacienda Heights.

Now Li is selling the covers through a showroom at the CaliforniaMart. Yvonne Greene, an L.A.-based fashion scout for New York’s Henri Bendel, says: “They are so fun and adorable. Bendel sold 40 of them in one week.”

The phone covers, $18 for small; $25 for large, are sold in L.A. at Seaver, Leslie Howard and Jacqueline Jarrot stores.

--Booth Moore

The Stingray Look

“Friends” costume designer Debra McGuire, has her finger on the pulse of yet another emerging trend. She’s set to launch a line of handbags this fall called ARTe, made entirely from stingray skins.

Bottega Veneta and Alexander McQueen are also dabbling in accessories using the tough-as-nails stingray skins, which retain the shiny patina of creatures of the deep and have a pearl-shaped mark where the dorsal fin used to be. (Not sure how the stingray feels about that.)

“There’s a spiritual quality to the material, and it’s indestructible,” McGuire said at her Pacific Palisades atelier last week. “It was used as armor in Japan, and they found it in pharaohs’ tombs.”

McGuire, 50, who also designs clothing by special order, is looking forward to doing more with her own business after “Friends” ends next season.

But hopefully not before she gets a little free publicity on the TV series. She says, “If there’s a place for one of the purses, I may try to sneak it in.”

ARTe purses and wallets, $600 to $1,400, are available at Elyse Walker in Pacific Palisades and A’Maree’s in Newport Beach.

-- Booth Moore