If you are planning to attend, there is still plenty of time to pull together your fashion ensemble and picnic basket, and line up transportation in your classic automobile.

However, if you think you need some pointers, today there will be a unique opportunity for Gatsby-wannabes to become thoroughly versed on all the do's and don'ts, at a "How-to-Gatsby Workshop, Fashion Show & Sale," 2 to 6 p.m. at the elegant 1929 Bellevue Club, 525 Bellevue Ave., overlooking Lake Merritt.

In addition to an informal fashion show of "gorgeous Gatsby attire," there will be vendors selling clothing for men, women and children, hair and makeup demonstrations, advice on sewing and shopping for your ensemble, and vintage picnic baskets and accessories for sale.

Suggested admission for today's program is $15 for Art Deco Society members, $20 for non-members and guests, and includes a copy of the indispensable "How-to-Gatsby" workbook, say organizers. Tickets are available at the door.

The landmark Bellevue Club, formerly known as the Oakland Women's Athletic Club, makes a particularly appropriate venue to host a workshop dedicated to the "era between the wars." According to the history files, the club was formed in the mid-1920s by a group of socially connected women who selected locally prominent architect Charles Roeth to design a French-inspired chateau-style building inspired by Marie Antoinette's Petit Trianon at Versailles. Maurice Couchot, a well-known structural engineer of the day, (French born as it so happens) assisted with the plans, say the files. He successfully incorporated a deep water swimming pool inside the building, which occupied a rather swampy site.

The property had once belonged to the Edson Adams family. (According to local historian Beth Bagwell, Adams was one of Oakland's town founders). Edson's descendants began selling off parcels from their extensive lakeside holdings soon after the turn of the last century. Soon several newly fashionable multifamily buildings or apartment houses — as they would come to be known — would arise in the newly named "Adam's Point" district. Sections of the district are now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, in recognition of its "late'20s sense of time and place of luxury living in its urban setting," say the files.

Through the years, members of the club have carefully maintained the original French-inspired interiors. In 1991 the club's name was changed and membership opened to males as well as females.

Although the stately white Colonial Revival-style Dunsmuir House was built in the late 1890s for coal magnate Alexander Dunsmuir, it too has strong associations with the Roaring

20s Gatsby era. For several decades the estate was the summer home to the Isaiah W. Hellman family, one of California banking circle's most prominent families. In the Hellmans' day, the estate was called "Oakvale Park," and visitors arrived by railcar, alighting at the San Leandro station, because no direct road out from Oakland yet existed.

For more information on today's workshop call (415) 982-DECO.

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