Princess Diana Adds Glamour to London’s Spring Fashion Shows
The British garment industry trotted out its high priestess on Friday night, when Princess Diana dined with visiting fashion retailers in a picturesque, ancient guild hall overlooking the Thames.
The candle-lit party was a five-course, four-wine, flower-decked affair hosted by Giles Shaw, minister of state for industry, to inaugurate London’s week of spring fashion showings. It was this country’s boldest public relations move yet in the ongoing effort to woo American dollars into British fashion industry coffers.
The princess, in a purple low-cut, crushed velvet gown by London’s Bruce Oldfield, wore silvery powder on her bare shoulders and on her newly cropped hair. She showed a true talent for making lively conversation with such working-class types as Bergdorf Goodman chairman Ira Neimark and former Henri Bendel president Geraldine Stutz, both of whom were seated with her on the dais.
The event won rave reviews for elegance, as did the princess. But England’s better-known designers, many of whom were at the dinner, are having no such luck. Many who’ve shown so far have received lukewarm receptions from American buyers, who say they’ll defer placing orders here until after Paris showings, which start later in the week.
Designers here offered all the softened, swingy looks that were evident in Milan, including short and long petticoated full skirts, narrowed shoulders, cropped jackets and bare midriffs. But many of the English versions have a rather leaden quality that suffers in comparison to Milan’s meticulously sleek and modern look.
Retailers from Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy’s and Bergdorf Goodman, who flew here from Milan Friday morning, wore dispirited looks as they left Betty Jackson’s show Friday afternoon, where walking shorts, culotte skirts and circle skirts were shown with blazers and short, polished-cotton boleros. Missy Lomonaco, president and fashion director of Bonwit Teller, said there were some “nice individual pieces” in the show which merited attention.
Wendy Dagworthy offered long jackets with long pleated skirts, scalloped-edge shorts and flowered-print skirts with striped shirts which become bare midriff items when the front ends are tied up in a knot. Designer Caroline Charles did what she does best: simple, princess-line dresses in solids or flower prints--the sort of clothes one might wear to meet the Queen Mother rather than the Dutchess of Wales.
One of the most eagerly awaited shows was that of Alistair T. Blair, whose claim to fame is that he designed the dress Sarah Ferguson wore to announce her engagement to Prince Andrew. Blair’s nicely cut, back-flaired coats and jackets were shown with matching, ankle-length straight pants and long full skirts, and his halter-top dresses had neat little bolero jackets with full skirts. But Blair’s clothes were basically uninventive and the show so long that even Princess Margaret’s son and daughter, who were in the audience, looked droopy at the end. Applause was embarrassingly limited, which probably caused a few tremors for Danish oil tycoon and real estate magnate Peter Bertelsen, who has backed Blair since last season.
Bertelsen, fast becoming London’s most famous fashion entrepreneur, owns prime London real estate on which he has opened shops for such Continental design stars as Valentino, Armani, Ungaro and Krizia. He has also apparently gone into the business of stabilizing somewhat shaky businesses of quirky English designers.
Look of Success
This season, in addition to Blair, he also is backing the iconoclastic, young John Galliano and will open a series of shops licensed to sell clothes by designers Katherine Hamnett. Hamnett’s spring collection looks a success, featuring navy, white and khaki crisp cottons and soft crinkled silk. Her long, full, navy shorts, and pale, breezy silk suits in slightly oversized shapes are shown along with a group of black, tight-torso dresses that stop just above the knee in halter or strapless styles.
The Body Map show on Friday night was another disappointment, featuring men in shiny bronze stretch bicycle suits with bows attached everywhere, and women in dull black cotton dresses. One creative look for the counter-culture crowd was a baggy black cotton dress with white eyelet inserts which looked like small inflated tires around the hips.
There are some master craftsmen and audaciously inventive designers here in London, many of whom have not yet shown their wares. Among those who have, Jean Muir proved that the British fashion empire may yet remain afloat.
Muir’s narrow, soft silhouette includes navy gabardine suits with fitted jackets and droopy lapels, slim little silk and jersey dinner dresses with fitted bodices and low flares at the hemline and an excellent selection of sweaters in shades of gray, purple and citron, worn with simple, slim skirts and see-through plastic belts.
Jasper Conran, who was granted the coveted British Designer of the Year award at the Friday night banquet, offered a lively show the following afternoon. Conran, 26, has a zippy, young outlook and a definite point of view. His swaggering sand-color bathrobe-sashed dusters over simple matching knit tubes and his starchy, short, divided skirts with halter tops and small jackets all looked perky, upbeat and very much in the Los Angeles mood.
Roland Klein offered some very graceful, ladylike suits and dresses with long fluid skirts and figure-flattering jackets. He is a relatively unsung talent who has been picked up by Bullocks Wilshire where his spring collection will be offered.
But most of London’s great talent is not part of the huge British Fashion Council presentation held at the Olympia hall.
Hailed as New Talent
Rifat Ozbek, 33, is seeing buyers in a spot even London cabbies cannot find, called Haunch of Venison Yard. Ozbek is being hailed as one of Europe’s three major new talents, along with Romeo Gigli in Milan and Patrick Kelly in Paris. His spring things are in an Arabian Nights mood, featuring brilliantly colored moire bolero’s over shirts and ankle-cropped harem pants.
Bruce Oldfield, who lists Princess Diana, Joan Collins and the Dutchess of Kent among current clients, works out of a converted town house in Argon Mews.
The daytime collection he will show today has what he calls a “very classical, tailored, 1930s look,” with nipped waistlines and slightly sloping shoulders. “We’re getting rid of ‘Dynasty’ shoulders,” he explained, holding up a simple linen knit cardigan, a matching low-back undersweater and a straight skirt. Daytime colors are gray, tan, pale blue and rust. His dazzling evening wear has crinolined and boned skirts with massive tiers of ruffles cascading from glittery, long-torso taffeta bodices.
Perhaps the most inventive knitwear in all of England right now is by the firm of Joseph Tricot, which shows in the musty old Basil Street Hotel.
Joseph Ettedgui, French Moroccan owner-designer, was a retailer for 14 years before he became a designer five years ago. He has had tremendous success with a look based on stunningly young and simple shapes, wonderful knit textures and a pleasingly monotone color scheme.
For spring, his cotton and linen knit tank tops, long sweaters, leggings and gathered long or short skirts are in shades of pink, tobacco, cream, coffee or black. His “bag skirts” all hang in small gathers from two-inch-wide waistbands, giving both short and long versions a graceful, mobile look. Tops, either long, simple, colorless styles with big sleeves or close-to-the-body tank styles are shown under cardigan sweaters. His clothes are purchased in Los Angeles by Maxfield, Bullocks Wilshire and Bullock’s.
Perhaps the best fashion show of all is on London’s sunny streets, where punk is out and preppy is in. Even King’s Road regulars are all cleaned up in collegiate haircuts, fresh denim jeans, long sweaters and spiffy shoes. London has gone fashion mad, cab driver Henry Forsbery explained, and people here want to look as casually elegant as anywhere else. Forsbery himself now drives around town in what he describes as a “costly jogging suit.”
