Paris Saves the Best of Spring for Last : Fashion: Ungaro plays sweetly off confectionary colors while Valentino returns to ‘70s shapes. YSL’s harem outfits are strictly for Scheherazade nights.
Emanuel Ungaro’s Spring ’91 collection was among the last and the best shown here this season. He takes a good idea and stays with it, rather than try a little of this and a little of that.
And while the clothes are lively and lighthearted, they don’t skimp on the sex-bomb stuff for which Ungaro is known.
His basic plan is to play energetic plaids off romantic floral prints, in confectionary colors that could have come from a cake decorator’s kitchen.
Daytime suits are a collision of jackets, vests and short narrow skirts in pink, yellow, aqua and violet patterns. Here and there he showed a black patent leather mini, which looks unexpected and new.
The best dinner dresses are femme fatale mummy-wrappers with fluttering hems. Iridescent silk blousons worn long over short, tight skirts are another evening look that brought Ungaro a standing ovation from retailers.
Valentino’s body-contoured dresses, with small armholes and set-in waistlines, scalloped hems and scooped or squared necklines, are early ’70 shapes he’s bringing back for spring--and the timing seems right.
These are dresses made for women who keep their jewels in the vault, meet their friends for lunch on a yacht, and never have to set foot in the supermarket.
If that doesn’t describe every Valentino customer exactly, most of them are likely to appreciate the option of dressing as if it did.
For the real world, he shows body-conscious dresses worn with matching coats in pastel plaids, for day. And a white damask trench coat over a white-beaded sheath is a rich informal look for night.
Yves Saint Laurent’s harem pants and beaded bra tops--or beads without the bra tops in some cases--seem to go with pop psychologists’ predictions that in the ‘90s, people will stay at home. These are clothes for Scheherazade nights.
Those who choose to venture out wearing YSL might like his cuffed short shorts and matching tailored jacket, or the khaki and orange stripe man-tailored shirt he tucks into cuffed khaki shorts for spring.
Red or white cotton caps with elongated brims update YSL standbys, such as sash-waisted cotton dresses and man-tailored pant suits.
Last season Saint Laurent did not make his own show; he was hospitalized for nervous exhaustion. This week he stepped confidently down the runway to take his bows. He worked his way back kissing every model, but halfway he seemed to become disoriented as if he wasn’t sure whether to go backward or forward. His business partner, Pierre Berge, stepped onto the runway and took Saint Laurent’s arm and guided him offstage.
About a year ago, Italy’s Romeo Gigli set the trend for non-Parisian designers to show their work in this fashion capital.
Now Gigli’s nonconformist ways set him apart once again.
Instead of presenting his spring collection in one of the three tents set up outside the Louvre, as most designers do, he exhibited in his own gallery-like shop nearby.
The clothes are conceived as works of art. There are bustiers hand-embroidered with pearls and velvet flowers, narrow pants made of raffia, a translucent coat of woven copper thread, hand-embroidered tool jackets. Colors are deep forest hues, as if all the dyes came directly from the earth.
The shapes of garments are familiar to Gigli’s customers: narrow elongated jackets and ankle-length pants, dresses and blouses that wrap the bosom in sheer fabric, shawl-collared coats that recall biblical patriarchs. Now his attention is turned almost exclusively to his textiles--they aren’t just fabrics that he uses. Watching his work evolve, slowly from season to season, is like tracking developments in a fine artist’s career.
Some seasons one particular fashion item stand out. Not this time. Most designers agree that skirts should be narrow and quite short, heels should be mid-height or flat, jackets should conform to the body, and warm pastel colors should all but replace black. But there isn’t one obvious new item to watch for.
The leggings and unitards that were part of every collection for fall are still included for spring. The warm-weather versions are shorter, ending anywhere from mid-thigh to mid-calf. Often they are made in pastel printed patterns, rather than black.
Last season they were shown with nothing over them except a hip-grazing jacket. Now they are topped by a mini skirt, or a little shift, for a look that is not so boldly close to naked.
Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld shows hot pink leggings under an aqua color suit with a very short skirt. Yohji Yamamoto puts a green, open-weave sheath over a knee-length black unitard.
In Lagerfeld’s signature collection, he shows a slit-side mini over matching leggings, both in black, and adds a pastel color jacket.
Dresses are getting more interesting. Christian Lacroix and Emanuel Ungaro both updated the blouson with an airy silhouette that is young and fresh.
Issey Miyake’s tiny pleat dress with three-dimensional, wire framed sleeves, is a showpiece.
A number of designers are making slip dresses, or very simple sleeveless shifts, for spring. But few of these styles have much to recommend them. Junior department knockoffs can look just as good.
Shorts and short suits are another strong option--very short shorts with cuffs at Saint Laurent and Ungaro; very stretchy and tight shorts, sometimes worn under a petticoat, from Jean-Paul Gaultier.
Claude Montana’s collection stands apart as modern, sculptural and completely feminine. Elongated linen jackets over short narrow shorts, skirts that dip below the knee in back, a trench-coat dress with sweeping skirt in midnight satin for evening, and formal dresses in deep flesh tones with built-in, burnished gold jewelry, are perfect pieces of work.
