THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 17, 1995 TAG: 9507150051
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 166 lines
LINDA WILDER DYER is the picture of poise.
From her striped palazzo pants to the fish pin at her bosom, from her peaches-and-cream complexion - still model-clear at age 40 - to the way she sits elegantly in the corner of her cream damask camel-back sofa.
It seems that nothing ruffles this woman. Not even when Boo-Kitty, a coal-black cat, launches an inelegant leap onto the dining room table and commences munching on the floral arrangement.
Dyer simply snatches the feline off and neatly segues into the next topic, saying: ``He just loves bear grass. This was an arrangement we had in the church when Courtney and I renewed our vows last year.''
Smooth. Every woman should feel so self-confident.
It's a skill Dyer has packaged.
Since 1989, when she became Virginia Beach's own mistress of manners, Dyer has taught etiquette, beauty and self-confidence to thousands of young girls enrolled in department store classes she calls ``Pretty Me'' and ``Finishing Touches for Teens.''
Spreading in just six years like a well-mannered wild fire up and down East Coast, her classes are now in 60 Belk and Leggett stores in eight states, and Dyer manages a staff of 60 employees and independent contractors.
The successful former model and actress - and president and founder of Pretty Me, Incorporated - runs the mushrooming business from a peach and blue room above the garage in her Lago Mar home in Virginia Beach.
Her third book on grooming and etiquette, this time for boys, is due out in 10 weeks. The first two, ``Pretty Me - A Handbook for Being Your Best,'' and ``Finishing Touches for Teens,'' are aimed at girls 6-11 and 12-17.
Her corner on the teen self-improvement market has been phenomenally successful. And although by now she knows well the frustration of juggling family and business responsibilities, Dyer shows no sign of stopping.
``I want to go nationwide. No question,'' she says, leaning forward intently and tucking a stray blonde hair behind her rhinestone earring. So she'll buy more color-coded file folders to help her stay organized. She'll answer more phone calls in an ever-cheery voice. She'll juggle more schedules as daughters Ashley, 10, and Elizabeth-Claire, 4, grow up and join more activities of their own.
That's if there's room in this town. Mom is a hard act to follow.
``She goes 28 hours a day,'' says Pat Hoke, a friend for 15 years. ``I've never run into anyone who has a professional life and is a mother who has that many activities going.''
Dyer credits her husband, Courtney, assistant manager of the Pavilion Convention Center, with making it all possible.
Besides running her own business, Dyer volunteers with Easter Seals, acting as host of the organization's annual local telethon for 13 years and serving as its regional director for three years. She judges and emcees pageants, is a magazine etiquette columnist, works with the Girl Scouts of America, is past president of the PTA of her daughters' elementary school, and is a member of the Amputee Support Association Board and the Virginia Beach Ballet Board.
``And somebody just talked me into teaching Sunday school at our church to fill in, and I'll do it,'' she says, chuckling at herself before adding, ``And I'll love it.''
As if her calendar weren't full enough, she says that lately she's fielded several calls asking if she'd consider breathing life into her modeling career again.
She laughs. Obviously pleased that her face and figure can still make the cut, she flashes a sparkling smile and confesses that she not only considered it but that ``I've just made an appointment to have new head shots done.''
``I can see myself with a roll of Saran Wrap, telling somebody how good it is,'' she says. ``I don't think I'm glamorous or offensive to the average mother. I think I clean up pretty good and, as Courtney says, when I need big hair, I can get it.''
This one-woman manners industry - even the license plate on Dyer's white Volvo station wagon reads ``ETIQTES'' - had an unlikely start.
Linda Dyer grew up in Norfolk as an only child, loved and doted on and indulged at the table. Because of too many homemade cookies and cakes, she remembers her childhood as ``rough.''
``I looked like the Campbell's soup kid in first grade. I had a short pixie haircut and a round face,'' she says. ``We walked to school, so I was teased all the way there and all the way home.'' At camp, she'd powder her sweaty thighs so the rubbing wouldn't chafe them. And she was mortified when other girls discovered the labels in her outfits, a 1960s clothing line called Chubbette.
These awful memories are driving her business in a new direction today.
``I've absolutely got to have a program for overweight teens. This is where it's all leading,'' she says. ``I cannot think of anything that can alter a child's self-esteem more.''
Dyer slimmed down on her own the summer before seventh grade. The results paid off before she was even out of high school. She began modeling for local department stores as a teenager, entered a couple of pageants, was Miss Norfolk in the Miss Virginia-USA pageant and was named Miss Junior Achievement in high school. First prize was a full scholarship to a self-improvement and modeling course at Charm Associates.
That began a nearly 20-year liaison with the agency during which Dyer worked as a model, taught modeling classes, worked fashion shows and department store promotions, and began acting in television advertisements and military training films.
College was never considered. ``I was already established in the market,'' she recalls.
Her destiny proved to be the classroom. Teaching modeling to children was her favorite job. It was while she taught ``White Gloves and Party Manners'' through the Miller and Rhoads department stores that Dyer decided she could write a better course of instruction. When the chain collapsed, Dyer signed an agreement with Leggett and quickly marketed her first book.
When she taught her first classes, ``it went great guns,'' she says.
In both her books for girls, Dyer stresses a healthy diet, sensible makeup and good manners. Following her lead, youngsters and teens unscramble the mystery of what table tools to use in a restaurant, how to properly thank a friend's mother for being host of a sleepover and how to make order out of clothes closet chaos.
For those who say her classes are fluff, she has a ready answer: ``We're kidding ourselves if we think being nice to each other and having manners and knowing how to act is not important.''
Pretty is on the inside, Dyer told a new class gathered at Leggett in Lynnhaven Mall recently. Choose friends on how they act, not how they look. Learn good manners and social graces to ease the way into the adult and business world. And use the common sense taught in her class.
Moms like being backed up in the manners and makeup department. Sandra Percy enrolled both her daughters, Rachel, 13, and Toni, 14, in the class, using ``shotgun and all,'' she said. ``It helps when it comes from somebody else, because we're older and we don't understand.''
So seductive is Dyer's lure - the promise of more self-confidence - that she hooks even reluctant students.
``I really don't like it,'' whispered Liza Figari, 13, as she rode the escalator to a lesson on perking up tired outfits with accessories. An hour later, after lessons on sitting, standing and walking, the teen executed one of the sharpest model pivots on the classroom's practice runway and strode back to her seat wearing a pleased grin.
Running a business from home has always meant staying flexible. Dyer wrote her first manuscript with her 2-year-old tapping on a play typewriter at her feet. She still stores her books, ready for shipment, in her two-car garage. And she has a secretary, whom she describes as ``very part-time,'' who works directly over the makeshift warehouse.
And while Dyer makes it all look uncomplicated, she has plans, plans and more plans. Her first seminar for boys on grooming and etiquette is just around the corner. She is talking to producers about making a series of videos on skin care and makeup to go with her classes. She's planning the first one-day workshop for adult women on beauty and fashion. She's adding a ``handful'' more Leggett stores to her etiquette classes this summer.
If this monopoly on manners continues to grow, things have to change.
``I do want to expand this business without killing myself. To go national, we'll have to incorporate other people into what we're doing,'' she says.
Now that her daughters have started complaining about their mom's many out-of-town trips for book signings and class graduations, she neatly gets around that problem by taking them along.
``We make a family holiday out of it,'' she says, a satisfied smile on her face.
Another tricky problem, solved in the nicest way. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Linda Wilder Dyer shows Rachel Percy, 13, how to dress with
accessories during her ``Finishing Touches'' class at Lynnhaven
Mall.
Color staff photos by CHRISTOPHER REDDICK
Linda Wilder Dyer shows a "Pretty Me" class of girls 6 to 11 years
old how to learn to walk with good posture by balancing a book on
her head.
Wilder Dyer answers questions on etiquette and charm from
enthusiastic members of her "Pretty Me" class at Lynnhaven Mall.
KEYWORDS: ETIQUETTE by CNB