Living With Less : Fashion: A practical attitude will direct trends in ’92. Low-priced basics become status symbols, and luxury items must serve more than one purpose.
Imagine a time when wholesale is a status symbol and one extreme, “shop till you drop,” is replaced with another--”drop shopping.”
“It’s the end of the world,” suggests New York-based retail analyst Kurt Barnard.
No, it’s the beginning of 1992.
This new spirit cannot be pegged only to the recession, or to the fact that aging baby boomers now have houses and families to support and less cash for grown-up toys. There’s another, more fundamental source: shame.
“People are embarrassed by the amount they spent and bought in the late ‘80s,” says Susan Hayward, senior vice president of Yankelovich Monitor, a New York-based marketing research company. (It was her group that came up with the phrase “drop shopping,” for a trend report published this fall.)
You can already see it in the way shoppers swap toll-free numbers for their favorite mail-order catalogues (of the J. Crew/Tweeds variety) and compare notes on the hottest in-and-out jeans and T-shirt stores. The moderate price tags and the pepped-up generic styling will make their offerings more than just popular in the new year--it will make them status symbols. Already, people boast about wearing the labels, and lately, some have started sneering at those who don’t.
“It’s stupid to spend $80 on a DKNY T-shirt when you can get one at the Gap for $32,” says Denise Cohen-Scher, fashion director for the California Mart.
The same thrifty attitude seems to drive almost every trend coming our way next year: pastel denims, Western wear, “secondary” designer labels, discount mall shopping. Exceptions to the rule must at least promise a dual purpose: luxury along with practicality.
Teen-agers are pushing the anti-status trend to a new limit. One of their latest looks is built on blue-collar wardrobe staples. Denim coveralls, black construction boots and other elements of classic worker wear are likely to find a place in plenty of teens’ closets next year.
The equivalent for their fathers will be a look only forest rangers and game wardens could get away with in the past. Businessmen with tastes just shy of the cutting edge may find themselves mixing down-filled parkas, anoraks or field jackets--”rough wear” as Ralph Lauren dubbed them--with sport coats and dress slacks for work.
Designers, from Claude Montana in Paris to Nino Cerruti in Milan, have been showing the look for a couple of years. But as it filters down to the real world, authentic versions will surpass designer labels in sales. Outerwear by Timberland, Patagonia and Eddie Bauer, companies known as expedition outfitters, are already setting the style in the urban canyons of the East.
Looking rough and ready won’t necessarily come cheap; one waterproof leather field jacket by Timberland sells for more than $1,000. But the new year’s dominant fashion message will be conveyed by the jacket’s dual purpose: Hike the Sierras or the five floors to your office.
The feminine equivalent is cashmere twin sets (a crew-neck sweater and matching cardigan): pricey but versatile enough to wear weekends with leggings or evenings with ball-gown skirts. “I get constant requests,” says Rebecca Schaefer of TSE, a hot new label with a shop in South Coast Plaza. Her company charges about $450 per set. (Designer labels, such as Oscar de la Renta, command $1,000 or more.)
In the same spirit of less is more, look for many women to give up designer signature labels and switch to lower-priced spinoff collections. Last year, some of the biggest names in the business launched or upgraded their existing secondary--or diffusion--lines, priced at about 30% to 40% less than signature lines. Among the best of the new are Emanuel by Emanuel Ungaro and Kors by Michael Kors. Others, such as A-line by Anne Klein, started strong then petered out. Still to come is AX from Giorgio Armani, with a store opened in New York this month and one planned for Los Angeles this spring. Many of the diffusion lines offer career wear, but AX is for weekends.
By the way, pastels are likely to be the weekend palette of choice, especially for anything made of denim. And denim will make a major comeback in the new year, as will Western wear. Of course, the look never dies in this city, but the new ways of wearing it should inject some imagination into cowgirl basics: indigo denim work shirts tied over painted ball-gown skirts, fringed ponchos worn as skirts and matched with stretch crop-tops pulled from the gym bag, and tooled leather bustiers and belts sprinkled with tiny rhinestones.
The Western look fits in nicely with fashion’s favorite new buzzword: global. It is, in fact, one of the first global fashion trends of ’92. Designers from Paris, Milan and New York went Western for spring.
Beyond global fashion there are global fashion companies (designer-owned, pioneered by Ralph Lauren, with storefronts or offices in at least two fashion capitals, preferably Paris and New York), global fashion industries (Italian manufacturer Gruppo GFT, producer of Valentino, Emanuel Ungaro and other designer collections now does some manufacturing in Massachusetts), and oodles of global aspirations. Oscar de la Renta and Geoffrey Beene both say they are now shopping for a Paris boutique.
As designers think global, shoppers will be thinking discounts. Next year, record numbers of Angelenos are expected to hit the discount malls springing up in the Southland. The latest, opened last month, is the Lake Elsinore Outlet Center, where prices for labels such as Liz Claiborne, Cole Haan and Van Husen are as much as 70% off retail.
“People got used to buying quality merchandise in the ‘80s, but perhaps they can’t pay as much now,” says Cheryl McArthur, president of McArthur/Glen Group, the developers behind the Elsinore project. “They just don’t have the disposable income they had.”
No shame in that. In fact, there is only one terrible shame to guard against in the new year: taking the fun out of fashion. With all this frugality and practicality, it could get mighty serious out there.
“It gets depressing to wear the same jeans and jacket,” groans Herb Fink, head of the Rodeo Drive Committee and owner of Theodore as well as the Sonia Rykiel boutique on the street. “Besides, people want to be noticed.”
One antidote will certainly be MTV. The 24-hour-a-day cable channel offers more flights of fantasy than any fashion magazine or trendy shopping street could ever do. Consider Cher’s latest, for her new music video: X-rated lace lingerie, cheeks exposed. She wears a more tame version--but just barely--for her new exercise video. It almost guarantees that the locker-room floors of L.A. health clubs will be littered with X-rated lingerie-like thongs and corset-inspired weight belts before the new year grows old.
Fashion designers watch MTV too--especially the younger crowd. And what they see is destined to be translated for their ready-to-wear collections. Charlotte Neuville used rapper’s oversize chains and pendants to accessorize her winter ’91 collection, and Todd Oldham asked rapper Queen Latifah to model for his spring 1992 show, after he designed costumes for her to wear on stage.
Accessories will offer another line of escape. In a recession, women tend to indulge in jewelry, belts or luxurious shoes. It’s less expensive than a new suit. “Accessories companies will do land-office business in ‘92,” predicts analyst Barnard. And the more frivolous, the better: gold fig-leaf belts, Mad Hatter hats, rhinestone steer heads as brooches, silk gingham mules.
For full-out fantasy dressing, the sort this city is known for, Italian designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana are likely to set the pace. For Los Angeles women who hold to fashion’s outer limit, Dolce and Gabbana will be to the ‘90s what Azzedine Alaia was to the ‘80s. The young designers are forging a new kind of fanciful feminine dressing with their shimmering taffeta cocoon coats, heart-shaped bustiers paved with luminous pearls and bra tops covered with dainty silk flowers.
By spring, junior departments are likely to bubble over with lower-priced versions of the pricey creations.
The top-to-toe D&G; look is the stuff of starlets and girls whose indulgent daddies buy them stunningly expensive trinkets. But other women might well find themselves buying a piece, an item, by the designers. To slip a soft jacket over one of those flower-strewn bra tops, or a bodysuit under an iridescent taffeta wrap, could lift almost anyone out of depression.
Doing so, by the way, will be deemed socially correct.
“Drop shopping doesn’t mean drop acquiring,” Yankelovich’s Hayward says. “We’re not entering an anti-materialism stage. There’s a clear and definite permission to indulge--once in awhile.”
