Renee Jensen-Olivera works
Where and when
with hair, but picked up a flair
for the theatrical from her
entertaining 'rentsBy Nadine Kam
nkam@starbulletin.comTALK about being dressed up with nowhere to go. As a 5-year-old, Renee Jensen-Olivera once had the little girls in her neighborhood lined up for makeup parties. But once they were all dolled up, she didn't quite know what to do with them.
COURTESY MIKE LAMENDOLA /
PICTURE PERFECT
From Adam and Eve simplicity, "L'Historie de la Lingerie" will whisk viewers through time at Wave Waikiki Saturday night.
"I'd say, 'OK, bye!' I'd put 'em in my best dress, give 'em a doll and send 'em away. Then my mom would get all these phone calls: 'you know your daughter gave my daughter a dress!"
In a way, not much has changed.
As the owner of Santuary Salon, Jensen-Olivera's job still involves sculpting hair, painting faces and sending clients out to be the belles of someone else's ball.
Over time, though, Jensen-Olivera's learned party follow-through. This will be evident Saturday when Jensen-Olivera and her business parter/husband Rick Olivera host the "L'Histoire de la Lingerie" at Wave Waikiki to mark the salon's fourth anniversary. It promises to be a kinetic, music-filled calling card, a demo of the salon's after-midnight fashion sensibilities and capabilities.
"It's not really a fashion show in that people won't be able to buy the garments. It's just for entertainment," Jensen-Olivera said. "It's a release for us because it's kind of a drag to be doing the same thing all the time. It's like Halloween for us, and it's a way to get to a lot of people to show what we can do."
The show will start with Eve, dressed in a spot of greenery, leading into the days of chastity belts, corsets and hoop skirts while en route to the present and Victoria's Secret-inspired underpinnings.
One of the most spectacular garments will also be one of the most covered. Her recreation of a Renaissance Era farthingale hoop skirt has a circumference of 6 feet. And while the actual forms were once made with bone or steel, Jensen-Olivera said she spent a lot of time in hardware stores before settling on PVC piping, in narrow widths more frequently used in desktop water fountains.
Jensen-Olivera always had a flair for the theatrical. Her father, Dick Jensen, is an entertainment legend in Hawaii, and in the '70s was known as "Hawaii's James Brown." Her mother Judy is also a singer and performed regularly with Sonny and Cher. Although her parents divorced when she was 2, that just meant she had two showbiz families.
"For my dad, a normal day was being at home in Vegas and having Sinatra and Elvis Presley in your living room, and I'd think nothing of it. They're just a bunch of old guys, friends of my dad. But there was constant entertainment.
"I think when you come from a creative family, that kind of vibe just works its way into you. I was always doing little plays by the pool for neighbors with makeup, music, dancing and singing, so doing fashion shows came very naturally."
Sanctuary has staged two shows to date; the first drew 300 to 400 people and the last one on March 8 drew about 900 and she expects about 1,200 this time. "It's created it's own energy. Others have tried to copy, but there's so much to it. I just never thought about it because it was just second nature to me."
As exciting as it was to watch her parents perform, Jensen-Olivera said she was most inspired by her uncle Jerry O'Dell, who brought her onto sets at Universal Studios, where he was head makeup artist.
"I loved it. I love the industry and what is most important to me is that we keep our integrity," she said. "I think it's when people get bent and focus on the money that they lose their integrity and lose their skills and fail to learn any more.
"We're constantly learning and I think that naturally results in creating more and more."
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Where: Wave Waikiki, 1877 Kalakaua Ave. 'L'Histoire de la Lingerie'
When: Midnight Saturday
Admission: $5; must be 21
Call: 941-0424
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