FASHION : Wild West Rides Into New York
The lights went out halfway through Isaac Mizrahi’s spring fashion show. The SoHo loft went dark, the models stopped dead on the runway, the music ground down to a surreal slur and then quit.
But that hardly fazed the fashion veterans in the room. Like a well-trained army, photographers set up their auxiliary lamps, camera operators beamed their strobes and models backstage dressed by the glow of Bic lighters.
After a minute, Mizrahi appeared on the catwalk, his curly hair gone wild. Puffing a cigarette and pacing with one hand on his hip, he looked like a stand-up comic from the Borscht Belt.
That did it. The audience exploded in cheers and an unspoken bargain was struck: They’d wait; he’d get the show going--eventually.
The lights never did come back on. But not even that could cut the power of Mizrahi’s megawatt performance last week. It was a show about the Wild West as no one has seen it.
Setting the cowboy theme on its ear were tooled leather bustiers over long, ruffled skirts; black lace sweaters embroidered with horse heads; a single Georgia O’Keeffe-sized flower silk-screened on an ivory evening column and a range of Western-themed brooches and belts from Mizrahi’s accessories line, new this season.
Western wear wasn’t the only idea. Sleeveless tweed suits with tiny rhinestone buttons and knee-covering narrow skirts were reminiscent of Kim Novak in Alfred Hitchcock movies. And cashmere short shorts with matching cardigans were Mizrahi’s latest plan for at-home wear.
But the heart of the collection was set in the West.
“I was looking for a new symbol for American design, one that would glorify the American tradition and take it into the ‘90s,” he said.
When Mizrahi goes scouting, he tends to get results. Some of his earlier designs are now in the costume collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art here. And about a year ago, Chanel, the venerable French fashion house, became his business partner.
Years after they worked as partners on the Anne Klein collection, Louis Dell’Olio and Donna Karan continue to rub off on each other’s sense of style.
For her well-established signature collection, Karan showed white shirts and skinny black stretch pants for spring; Dell’Olio did too. He topped his with elegant white jackets; she peeled off that layer.
From there, Dell’Olio shifted gears to pastel suits with short skirts and fitted jackets in an ultra-feminine collection. For weekends, he showed leather vests and jeans in matching sherbet shades.
Like almost everyone else in the business, Dell’Olio showed lingerie-lace evening wear for spring. But his versions were far more wearable than most. He mixed lace bustiers with weightier evening suits, and his short strapless slip dresses--in black over powder pink--were more substantial than the flimsy variations.
The fact that many collections included the same few ideas didn’t seem to trouble store buyers. “This is a difficult moment in fashion,” Kalman Ruttenstein of Bloomingdale’s conceded at one point during the week. “The established designers have a business to protect.”
The designers’ plan of action is to play it safe while they ride out the recession.
Donna Karan played it very safe, working every dominant trend into her spring line: lingerie looks, transparent fabrics, pants suits, long as well as short skirts. Karan did them her way, cut to body-contoured shapes with plunges, slits and dips in classic navy or gray as well as black and white.
Among the newest looks were short coat dresses in pale gray tweed with halter necklines and white pique collars as well as waist-nipping jackets over short circle skirts. She added baroque pearl buttons to the jackets of pant suits as a decidedly feminine detail, while her ankle-length skirts and slouchy jackets were topped by hats with funky silk flowers.
It was classic Karan, if not inventive or daring. Retailers said that was good enough for them.
“People are thinking about a lot of things besides their wardrobe right now,” said I. Magnin CEO Rose Marie Bravo. “They want subtlety, not clothes that jump out at them. Karan’s collection has that quality.”
Earlier that day at a small off-Broadway theater, designer Geoffrey Beene set the stage with a large video screen and one streamlined picture frame.
On it he showed a collection inspired by a recent trip to Indonesia that was an artful mix of classical music, abstract videos of fabric swatches and body parts, and models dressed in clothes that echoed but did not imitate sarongs, happi jackets, obi sashes and saris.
He used more than traditional Asian dress for his show. Beene made his own fabric prints from shark’s skin for a daytime suit with short narrow skirt and elongated jacket. His evening dresses mixed point esprit lace with beaded exotic flowers. For day, a sleek navy blue suit had a bold white zipper that sliced diagonally from hem to shoulder.
There were no half-steps or tentative measures. The look was bold, direct and sure.
“My show was meant to inspire and express individuality,” Beene said. “It’s a cure for Gap-osis.”
Indeed, the dominance of no-name fashion from the Gap, Eddie Bauer, Timberline and others is the status dress of the moment. It is now possible to shop these stores in Manhattan’s high-rent districts. It has designers worried.
But so many top-level designers are offering identical options right now that they are in danger of recreating the no-name phenomenon at their own lofty price level.
Among the bold, 26-year-old Byron Lars is the latest to dare. His small collection of baseball-themed spring styles tickled the audience. A satin baseball jacket extended to become a zip-front mint satin dress. A warm-up sweat shirt inched long enough to be a thigh-grazing mini. He stretched black denim jeans jackets in the same way, shaping skirts, shorts, jackets and even a wedding dress.
Nicole Miller played ball in her spring line, too, for one of the most spirited collections of the week. An ivory shorts suit had baseball-chevron stitching over the hips. Her sassy evening dresses were beaded with Grand Prix racing themes and hot rods in flames. And her take on the tuxedo was a short romper with a dinner jacket the same length.
Both Lars and Miller are considered moderate-price designers, with $200 to $700 the going rates for their labels.
In his show, Bob Mackie continued to stand slightly left of center. His antidote to no-name fashion was a show inspired by “20th-Century legends.”
His humor-laced homage to individuality ranged from “I Love Lucy”-inspired outfits--with crinoline skirts and Betty Boop dresses made from billions of ruffles--to Grace Kelly gowns with pastel beading and Billie Holiday slip-style dresses worn with white gardenias in the model’s hair. As always, it was part-fashion, part-Las Vegas floor show.
You want style with a smile? This is it.
