Subtle Accessories Add Spice to Fall’s Low-Key, Classic Styles
This fall, the most tempting items on a woman’s shopping list could turn out to be the accessories-- not the clothes.
With designers showing garments analogous to nouvelle cuisine entrees (elegant, understated and spare), accessories have a way of looking like rich desserts.
Yet these trimmings know their place. They may be the icing for fall’s low-key fashions (classic sweater sets, unadorned suit jackets and strikingly simple dresses), but they’re well-bred rather than brassy, subtle rather than showy.
The field is crowded with everything from reptile handbags, belts and shoes to mock tortoise shell or satin hair ornaments.
“There are a lot of flat-knit clothes out there. They need texture to lend excitement,” explains Sylvia Percelay, ready-to-wear fashion coordinator for Bullock’s. “Very shiny crocodile will do just that. Or else, something similar to Donna Karan’s jewelry--very clean, very modern. It’s a flawless type of accessory that’s going to be important.”
A belt is considered de rigueur equipment by many industry experts, such as Daria Retian, vice president of fashion communications at Neiman-Marcus. “Shape has become important. With the longer, fuller skirts, you want to determine the waistline. It’s all a matter of proportion and balance.”
Large silk, cashmere or wool shawls are another essential, and “they’re worn creatively,” Retian explains. “There isn’t just one way. It’s all a matter of individual flair.”
If Donna Karan were to choose just two items from her accessory lineup, she says they would be a reptile belt that works on a dress or a coat and a full-blown Merino wool scarf, which she thinks of as a “knit serape.”
“It adds glamour and covers a multitude of sins,” Karan says of her 72x30-inch shawl. “When you hang it from your shoulder and let it trail behind, it hides your rear and adds drama to the shoulder line.”
The designer’s fall accessories are on the expensive side (reptile belts cost up to $720, her all-purpose reptile “work bag,” around $2,410). But she says a woman needs only a limited number of the “right” elements.
“It takes the right boots, the right belt, the right handbag. I believe in season-less, essential pieces--not the latest detail. Something like that work bag can make it thorough everything, including dinner, unless a woman is wearing formal attire,” Karan says.
Her all-purpose flat suede “slide,” the designer explains, is “halfway between a boot and shoe. It looks best worn with opaque stockings, because that way it carries the weight of the longer skirts. I don’t like the interruption of a woman’s leg, unless she’s wearing a short skirt.”
In a season rich with quality accessories, the tendency is for less rather than more, says Rosemarie Troy, fashion merchandise director for Bullocks Wilshire.
“Peel off rather than add on,” she advises. “Accessories are meant to accompany, not overwhelm the understated clothes.”
They can also update a woman’s wardrobe, Troy says.
“A flat shoe with opaque hosiery gives a new look to an outfit. So will a black satin hair bow or a wide crocodile belt.”
As a result of the emphasis on the reptile-skin look, there are governmental precautions to ensure the animals are obtained legally. According to Dan Noether, senior inspector for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, stores are allowed to sell goods made from legally harvested and manufactured alligator skins, legally imported South American caiman (a crocodile look-alike) or certain species of New Guinea salt water crocodiles. “We would much rather people bought imitation crocodile,” Noether adds.
Patty Fox, fashion director for Saks Fifth Avenue, says: “Given the classic, clean spare lines of fall’s clothes, all the attention is focused on a very special accessory. If it’s jewelry, maybe it would be a wonderful pin and a pair of earrings, but the look wouldn’t be all cluttered up with a bracelet too. The idea is to wear specific minimal items that make a statement.”
Statement choices include turban-style head wraps. “They’re not an afterthought the way a hat often is,” Fox explains. “They work with the wardrobe and they could go out to dinner or they could go to work. I see them as an extension of putting a ribbon around your hair.”
Tracey Allen, accessories fashion coordinator for the Broadway, recalls: “There was a season when some people were saying ‘no jewelry.’ Today, it’s not a no-accessory look, it’s more the idea of certain special things, such as a wonderful pair of earrings. It’s simple, wonderful basics.”
Suzanne Urban, executive director of public relations for Chanel Inc., agrees, noting that the load of Chanel necklaces has lightened from around four to one--or none.
“A woman needs to trust her fashion sense and complement her clothes,” Urban advises. “That doesn’t mean piling on six necklaces. That means making a statement--even if it’s just with a rich-looking pair of button earrings.”
