FASHION : London’s Cosmic Chic: It’s Out of This World
The fashion-goes-to-heaven movement launched here last season has a New Age spin for spring.
Stars of this new cosmic chic include everything from Zen robes to crystal jewelry, ankh appliques to third-eye glasses. There are even sequined “bumbags” (English for money belt pouches) for storing your money until you get to Nirvana.
This new metaphysical mode is crystallized in Rifat Ozbek’s all-white look at 1990.
Tunics, narrow pants, short hooded robes shown over bobbing bare bottoms, hooded vests, kimonos and caftans form the body--and soul--of the collection, which is hippie-dom reincarnated for the 1990s.
Celestial touches include twinkling, sequined bras, bare midriff choli blouses like those worn under Indian saris, shorts, capris, jackets, swimsuits and backpacks.
Motorcycle jackets are emblazoned with words like Nirvana, Zen, New Age embroidered in white yarn or outlined with mirrored stones.
Just as French designer Hubert de Givenchy’s all-white collection catapulted him to fame and fortune when he first started his career, Turkish-born Ozbek’s fashion whitewash may well do the same for him. His collection seems to answer the retailers’ prayer for clothes that look wearable and salable as well as new.
The same ankh symbols appearing as embroideries on Ozbek’s clothes are seen as jewelry on the young who stroll the street markets at Camden Lock, the London district that has replaced King’s Road as a trend center. Other New Age influences there include sweat shirts decorated with signs of the zodiac, rock crystal jewelry, T-shirts with Tarot and palmistry motifs.
Several years ago, London gave the fashion world the all-black look that the Japanese later claimed as their own. This season might well trigger an all-white movement.
White is worked on its own, as well as combined with black, at Jasper Conran, where pants and shorts have one black leg, one white, and robe-like satin coats have bold black and white stripes.
Conran salutes the Greenpeace movement with stoles that look as if they’re made of grass--as in Astroturf. They are worn with simple white dresses for a new kind of sylvan chic.
White-light white stars at Zandra Rhodes, where crisp pique suits are dazzled with mirror and pearl embroideries, and the bride wears a white Lycra stretch satin gown with the holes and rips Rhodes first conceived in 1976 as her haute homage to the punk movement.
Long an exponent of Indian saris, Rhodes gives this look a modern spin by combining a puckered, matelasse choli blouse with an ingeniously cut chiffon skirt, which has a scarf-like extension draping up, over the shoulder and around the body, sari-style.
Jean Muir, who is London’s most awarded designer, added another laurel to her crown this season by being named the clothing industry’s designer of the year by the Ford Motor Co.
In a season of fashion mysticism, Muir’s mystical ways with color and cut are especially noteworthy. She uses powdery wisteria-colored, cut-work, sueded jackets to snug the body over matching matte jersey pants. And pale-pale pink sweaters to caress the bosom above matching long wool crepe skirts.
This new aura in London fashion evokes the love-and-peace attitude of the ‘60s, but none of the clothes are historical replays.
At Betty Jackson, for example, there are hipster pants and hipster skirts. But they look totally modern because of the way they’re put together. Chiffon skirts are shown with running shoes--or trainers, as the British prefer--and baseball caps.
Other signs of the ‘60s, such as low-slung belts, rounded-toe shoes and gamin hairdos appear in many collections.
Designer John Galliano sends some of his models down the runway wearing bouffant, Barbarella hairdos, others wearing nun-like black kerchiefs or black chiffon chadors usually associated with Muslim women.
Many of the shapes of spring revolve around sportswear pieces, not the fitted suits and stretch dresses of recent memory. Some here attributed the new interest in sportswear to Princess Di, photographed recently in a tweed jacket over a hooded sweat shirt and sweat pants.
Vivienne Westwood, known as the mother of the punk movement, gains new celebrity this season as the only British designer named by Women’s Wear Daily’s John Fairchild as one of the fashion greats in his book, “Chic Savages,” due for release next month by Simon and Schuster. (Others on the list include Yves St. Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, Giorgio Armani and Lacroix.)
This season, she favors the shirt. As is her wont, she brings vulgarity to almost everything she touches--as in pin-striped cotton shirts worn above bikini panties printed with male genitals. Other shirts in the same blue-and-white pin stripe have vest-like fastenings at the back. Some are hand-painted in oceanic motifs.
Westwood also favors grass in its natural straw color. She shows grass hair, grass cowboy chaps, grass skirts flung with silver fish and grass ankle bracelets. The grass sequence is probably her salute to the earth movement, but it looks more like a naughty parody of Dorothy Lamour in “Road to Zanzibar.”
