Like many a California girl, April Playmate Lorna Hopper was born outside the Golden State. A native daughter of Fort Worth, Lorna lived in Texas until she was 13. "I loved the land," she recalls. "Texas is still so vast, so uncrowded and so . . . well, clean, in comparison with everywhere el
...se I've been in this country. But it's also very rural and totally square in outlook; and when my dad got a job in England for two years, I was glad to leave." Lorna's father, a scientific researcher, moved the Hopper clan to Manchester. "It's mostly a soot-filled, industrial city," Miss April says, "but the people there surprised me with their open, easygoing, honest attitude about life. Nothing seems to upset them very much and they don't appear to be as hung up on success as we are. Most Englishmen I met seemed at peace with themselves, and I admire that a lot."
When another job offer brought the Hoppers back to the U.S. - and to California - in 1965, Lorna didn't want to come along. "I was really despondent about picking up again," she says. "But when we got to Los Angeles, it took me less than a month to stop moaning about leaving Manchester. Los Angeles' smog and architecture turn a lot of people off, but those things don't really matter to me. Every inch of this city is alive and tingling."
Lorna, who was graduated from high school last June, thinks L.A. is the perfect place to launch her modeling career. "I know that New York is still where most of the modeling action is, but that's changing quickly," she says. "Everything's moving West, and because the shift is still new and exciting, I think L.A. is the place to be in America right now. New York has a style and structure all its own; out here, people and careers can happen almost overnight, without having to know all the powers that be."
Lorna plans to add to her modeling income by creating women's fashions. "My sister Pat helps with the designing," she admits, "but I do all of the sewing." Miss Hopper became interested in designing because clothes, she says, "next to her face and figure, are a woman's most obvious way of attracting men." Says she: "Every girl wants to have a man who knows how to make her feel like a woman." To Lorna, that means clothing should always be sensual. "In ancient times, the purpose of clothes wasn't to hide nudity but to decorate the body," she says, "and we should never allow ourselves to forget that." Readers will agree that after one glimpse of Lorna - with and without decoration - there's not a chance in the world of that happening.
