British Stylists Put On Quite a Show : Little-Known Designers Stage Mesmerizing Presentation
Some of the untrained models were fresh from the city streets. The boys wore shoulder-length hair. The girls wore buzz cuts or tangled Dynel wigs or coffee shop-waitress hair nets. One male model, who dressed in a tank-top swimsuit, watched with interest while his partner, a female, started to undress him on stage. Some of the models smoked as they wandered. Some careened and stared wild-eyed, as if they were psychopaths, at the audience. Some with blank faces moved in baby-walk, like Stepford wives.
It was a British fashion show. The clothes were by young, little-known designers with exotic names--there was Kumar and De Sade. The only established designer among them was Vivienne Westwood. But these styles were remakes of Westwood originals as much as 10 years old. The London shop Site now reproduces them and lent them to the show.
Not more than 20 people made up the audience of this second presentation of the British collections, held recently at the California Mart. The first presentation got started so late that most of the crowd had walked out by then. But for all the impromptu, unprofessional, helter-skelter amateurism of it, the show itself was mesmerizing.
Something about the odd assortment of models and the enthusiastically unconventional clothes, even the absence of audience and the inaudible commentary by the young British journalist Paul Tierney gave it the feeling of an underground event, or a remake of ‘50s bohemia. Lithographs of Boy George, not Jean-Paul Sartre, leaned against the walls. The rock artist Richard Duardo placed them there.
Some of the clothes looked like send-ups of the worst of vintage fashion. Overly embroidered folkloric outfits with full skirts and short tight jackets were among them.
Some featured vintage travel-print fabrics shaped into off-the-shoulder, “senorita” tops to wear with skating skirts in tiny polka-dot prints.
There were short-short sets of bright satin trimmed with ball fringe or flocking. And there were minidresses with Empire waistlines and enormously full skirts. For all their youthful, joking attitudes, the designs were often elegant and sophisticated.
The menswear was more flamboyant. Kilts over skintight tartan plaid pants and kilts over outfits made entirely of national flags were the height of flashiness. But even conservative pin-stripe suits and tuxedos featured trousers with hemlines hiked above the ankles, or cropped jackets over T-shirts that bared the midriff. Instead of traditional neckties, some designers showed bow ties made of chiffon scarfs in soda-fountain shades of pink and blue. Some men’s outfits were finished with turquoise leather gloves.
Most of the designers accompanied their clothing to Los Angeles and held up at low-rent hotels for the duration. They all hoped to find local buyers for their collections before returning to London.
Tierney said the show was a test run. Next year the California Mart is planning a British fashion event of much grander proportions. For this early launching, Laura Whitcomb and her Los Angeles-based Young Arts Council takes sponsorship credit. What proceeds there may be will go to AIDS research and a scholarship fund for design students.
