Fashion Elite Honors Sexy Over Practical

The elite world of haute couture snubbed newcomer Claude Montana today, awarding its prize for best spring and summer collection to Spanish designer Paco Rabanne.

Many had predicted that Montana, whose ready-to-wear line is widely admired, would win the “Golden Thimble” award for his first haute couture line, launched under the Lanvin fashion house’s aegis Tuesday night.

But a panel of international journalists picked the gray-haired Rabanne instead, praising a gimmicky show that featured slinky black leather dresses with laced-up decolletes and shiny lame sheaths held together with golden chains.

Collecting the prize for the first time, Rabanne predicted that fashion in the 1990s would become more sexy.

“There’s going to be a return to feminine eroticism, but the stress will be on women’s natural bodies and not on artificiality,” he said after the ceremony in Paris’ baroque Town Hall.

The prize-giving rounded off five days of previews where journalists and buyers had a chance to see what the world’s richest women will be wearing this year and guess what effect it will have on street styles.

Although prizes are often taken with a pinch of salt in this intrigue-ridden environment, the fact that Montana was not even cited among the runners-up for the “Golden Thimble” betrayed a widespread feeling that he simply “didn’t belong.”

His modern and mannish vision has sparked much heated discussion of what “real” haute couture is.