SMOOTH VELVET : The Forever Material Is Still in This Year

It seems velvet always makes the cut. And for this holiday season, it’s been cut into every conceivable item of apparel, from fanny packs to fancy gowns, from whimsical cocktail caps to witchy bedroom slippers.

Designer Donna Karan, for instance, might have turned to the L. L. Bean catalogue for one of her inspirations--a silk-rayon velvet anorak with gold-lame lined hood--perfect for the woman who prefers her evening wear on the comfortable side, and in a cut that has a surplus of staying power.

For if the centuries-long history of velvet wearing is any indication, women want their velvet to be forever.

“It presents timeless elegance; it’s a very opulent feel,” says Ellie Hotmann, a spokeswoman for Bullock’s at South Coast Plaza. “Velvet has always been good; it never really goes out of style. It’s something that you can keep in your closet for years if you take care of it.”

Marty Barrett, Orange County fashion coordinator for Nordstrom, which has the $1,540 anorak on display in its South Coast Plaza store, says a casual style, such as the parka, can be turned into an appealing piece of evening wear because velvet “is universal . . . it’s such a classically beautiful fabric.”

In fact, most of what’s in the stores and what women are buying today are designs taken from the romantic and sexy looks of decades or even centuries past, the kinds of clothes that made movie stars such eye-catchers and made royalty try to hoard the fabric for themselves.

“Velvet,” says designer Jessica McClintock, long a very successful interpreter of past-day looks for present-day women, “has always been part of my classic concept.” It “has been in every holiday line I have designed since 1970.”

And for this holiday season, velvet is McClintock’s holiday line. The wall and floor racks at her South Coast Plaza boutique show off dress after elaborate dress, and women are flocking in after them.

If some designers make their point with simplicity, others are doing it with embroidery needles, embellishing their velvet pieces--the great majority of them black--with designs of gold flowers, leaves and beading, or with gold laces or braids.

Billur Wallerich, fashion director for Saks Fifth Avenue at South Coast Plaza, says, “Black velvet is the fabric for holiday ‘89--black velvet with gold trim.”

Says Diana Lindsay of Neiman Marcus: “The little black dress is real important again this year,” and most of them “are in streamline shapes that foil for ornate detailing, embroidery or beading.”

One such creation at I. Magnin had caught the eye of shopper Ruth Salaets of Anaheim--a black velvet cardigan jacket whose shape and fancy metallic embroidery of flowers, leaves and branches could have come straight from the Paris atelier of designer Elsa Schiaparelli in the 1930s.

Salaets liked the fact that the jacket’s cut was plain, she said, because “the embroidery really decorates it, makes it look elegant.”

And Salaets is indeed one woman who buys her velvet to keep.

The new jacket will join a well-loved black velvet evening coat she said she has had in her wardrobe for about 15 years. When she wears it, she said with modest pride, “people stop me and ask where I got it.”

Sue Savage, 34, of Laguna Beach likes to mix her vintage velvet pieces with modern basics. Savage had been trying on a simple straight velvet skirt by Anne Klein at Nordstrom, and now the skirt, pins marking where it was to be taken in, was being entrusted to the store’s alterations department.

Savage, who said she used to be in the fashion business, is now the owner of Galerie 224 in Laguna Beach. She said she planned to wear the skirt with a simple little ‘60s-era bolero that had been her mother’s.

“I’ll be wearing velvet to Christmas parties and art openings all season,” she said.

The velvet pieces with the greatest staying power are, it appears, separates--”a velvet skirt or velvet pants are timeless pieces that can be worn year in and year out, being updated with a different top,” Wallerich says.

At least one fashion aficionado does just that. Wanda Egly of Newport Beach, an attractive 40ish brunette, says she keeps her velvet pieces a long time, switching them around to keep the look updated. “I’ll wear satin tops with velvet skirts or vice versa,” Egly said.

On this particular shopping trip, though, she was in the Salon at Saks with her husband looking for things to wear to the several winter formals on her social calendar.

A vendeuse appeared with a Victor Costa black velvet skirt and embroidered jacket that another woman had put on hold. The jacket, with its dazzling embroidery of silver and gold and its stand-up collar and angled peplums, had the feel of an early 15th-Century doublet.

“Velvet is so feminine, so soft and romantic--especially with pearls or sparkles,” Egly said before she disappeared into the dressing room to try it on. When she reappeared to take a whirl before her husband and before the three-way mirror, she drew admiring gazes from nearly everyone in the room.

Just what is it about this fabric that inspires all this devotion? Where did it come from? What does it mean?

The word velvet, according to dictionaries, is derived from the Latin term for “shaggy hair”--most appropriate, since some costume historians link its initial popularity in the Middle Ages in Europe to its resemblance to fur.

According to “Fashion: The Mirror of History,” by Michael and Ariane Batterberry, velvet’s origins are something that, apparently, no one has been able to pin down.

The Batterberrys, in a section describing the magnificence of Renaissance textiles, say in an aside: “The origins of velvet are uncertain, but it is known that the cut silk pile of velvet was meant to imitate the sensuous texture of clipped fur.”

According to Jane Farrell-Beck, professor of textiles and clothing at Iowa State University, furs had been very popular for some time.

“The legend,” said Farrell-Beck, emphasizing that this account is purely speculation on the part of scholars, “is that when the Ottoman Turks blocked European trade with Russia--with the Black Sea area, by their control of the eastern Mediterranean particularly in the 15th and 16th centuries, when the Turks’ sea power was at its peak--they hindered trade to eastern Europe. The cutoff of fur supplies put an additional restriction on their furs coming in to western Europe, and that helped to popularize velvet.”

Its popularity however, apparently began to get out of hand--at least in the eyes of those who would keep its luxurious look for themselves, and its wearing, like that of other rich fabrics such as silks and brocades, was regulated by the codes of the sumptuary laws.

In the 16th Century, Henry III of France, for example, subjected the populace to edicts listing just who could wear velvet and in which colors: noblewomen could wear it in tawny or black; other colors could be worn only by the princesses and the queen’s ladies in waiting.

“Sumptuary laws were made to be broken,” Farrell-Beck said with a chuckle--something anyone who’s ever been to high school well knows. Fortunately, you, an American adult of the 20th Century, can buy and wear just about any velvet you want--even after Easter.

Styles by Gianna Majzler; hair by Chad Fults, Salon Oloumi, Huntington Beach; makeup by Nancy Viele (assisted by Kim Brackman); velvet clothing and model courtesy I. Magnin and Bullocks Wilshire.