Fashion 88 : Tooling Up for a New Model Year : New York Spring Styles Stress Interchangeable Parts
As spring fashion week draws to a close, it’s clear that this city’s garment center is delivering what’s needed: good ideas.
The fashion industry, like the auto industry a few years back, is undergoing major changes. People’s need for clothes has not diminished any more than their need for cars. But priorities and values have altered, and women no longer respond each season to the fashion designers’ equivalent of a new set of fins.
Style is more individual and the current requirement is for clothes that are workable, wearable and aesthetically worthwhile.
The emphasis in New York this week has been on interchangeable parts that can be put together dozens of ways and still come out looking “together.” How women wear them will depend on personal preference and such things as figure type, budget and age. But there are certain clear trends that emerge everywhere.
The new shape for spring is an inverted triangle. Narrow shoulders in jackets and blouses flare out in pyramid or A-line shapes. Narrow tops end in wide pants or flaring, soft skirts. The newest length, to go with the new soft fabrics and shapes, is long, often ending low on the calf or just above the ankle.
Short, slim skirts still exist everywhere, especially handsome in suits with easygoing jackets appropriate for the working world.
Thursday, Louis Dell’Olio for Anne Klein proved once again why his is one of the best-selling collections in the country. It was a collection for which the key word is easy.
Show-Spikers
For the resort crowd, the designer spiked his show with satin-striped white linen sarongs, cropped skinny white pants and white rayon knit skirts or shorts. He teamed these with easy shape rayon knit cardigans, wrap shirts and T-shirts in mango and papaya color.
For working women, his navy and white separates--including easy trousers, long but shapely jackets, calf-length white or navy pleated skirts and sweaters that can function as jackets--are practical and modern, yet classic.
Patricia Pastor for Perry Ellis also provided a good show Thursday. Her colors, too, were exceptionally pale and soft shades of blue, green, ivory or tan. This designer believes strongly in wide-leg pants, which she teams with sweaters and very loosely fitted jackets often shown with a belt.
For the short-skirt crowd, she offers slim skirts with smock-like jackets that fall totally free from the shoulders. A major success at this show were the designer’s gilded linen trench coats, in white or umber. These long, flowing coats with a shiny, silvery patina were worn with wide-leg pants of brushed silk.
Some highly talented, but not yet well established designers have hit new highs in collections this week.
Michael Kors’ very modern and streamlined styles, shown Tuesday night, stressed clean, uncluttered shapes in pale neutral shades such as wheat, hemp and straw, and soft fabrics such as silk jersey, georgette and rayon knit.
His jackets, beautifully shaped to fall a few inches away from the body, can be worn like accessories, with almost any pants or skirts in the collection.
And the distinction between pants and skirts is increasingly blurred. The wide pants look like skirts and vice versa in many designers’ lines. Many are cropped at mid-calf or lower. The short skirts are often interchangeable with shorts.
Free-Falling Linen Jackets
Ronaldus Shamask, who showed Wednesday night, majored in pyramid-shape blouses and free-falling linen jackets, so inventively seamed as to give the illusion of body shape even though they go nowhere near the body. None of the models looked pregnant in the loose-fitting styles, a major achievement. Below the various length jackets were featherweight, gauzy or silky pajama pants that reached to the ankle. The designer’s colors of green, brown, gold or black linen for suit jackets and slim skirts drew applause from the packed audience.
Angel Estrada is a new talent who designs evening wear that the world’s next Ava Gardner or Elizabeth Taylor might wear. He works way downtown in Manhattan, but has been embraced by the uptown crowd. Bergdorf Goodman’s Dawn Mello was in the crowd Tuesday night because Estrada’s dresses are sold at her store.
Swags of Chiffon
For spring, his tight silk shapes are adorned with pleated bosoms and swags of chiffon. They are eccentrically grand, especially when shown as they were on models with teased wigs and siren makeup. But this young man shapes and sews his designs with what some retailers call “couture quality.” And in an era of bland sameness, Estrada shines.
