PARIS : Is It Art . . . or Fashion?
There are two things you can count on about Paris in the springtime: l’amour and la mode. As French designers launch their fall ’92 women’s collections here this week, the action shifts steadily from fashion shows under white tents in a Louvre Museum courtyard to entwined teen-agers ambling along the river Seine, just across the road.
Yohji Yamamoto was the first of the majors to face the competition outside. He acknowledged it by lighting his Wednesday afternoon show like the filtered golden sunlight that saturates the Seine.
And he paid tribute to young love by dressing a near-term pregnant model in several of his characteristically full-cut outfits. Or was it just a pillow she wore underneath the clothes? The audience debated that question throughout the show.
This line seems to be Yamomoto’s own coming to term. He can be ambiguous and impractical as any artist working today, and he is an artist as much as a designer. But for fall he cuts through to a clear, simple way of dressing.
He started his show with a stream of rib-knit turtlenecks and narrow pants, all black. He converted them to bohemian basics by adding crumpled top hats, but that didn’t dilute the idea.
Elegantly arty suits, in moss-green with ankle-length skirts, had sweater-knit trim on one lapel, or along the open edge of a wraparound skirt. Some denim dresses with one short, one longer sleeve, crossed the real with surreal worlds that forever collide in Yamomoto’s work.
A group of navy-blue coats were among the best of the show. Most were knee-length and wide, swinging shapes, and played quietly off a military theme.
Rei Kawakubo, who designed the Comme des Garcons collection, came to Yamomoto’s show wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket and a long fitted skirt as well as her signature China-doll bob with bangs. The next morning she showed her own collection--all black and only long skirts.
This was a tough show. Dresses had droopy shoulders and sleeves that fell well past the models’ hands. Hems on ankle-length cutaway jackets were unfinished and frayed. High heels bent to a 45-degree angle halfway down, to make them look broken.
Sophisticated, soulful, sensitive and expressive--but who’s going to wear them?
Apparently not Sandra Bernhard. The American actress turned up on the runway at Kawakubo’s show. Partway down the catwalk she shot a look at her floor-sweeping black coat, wide-leg pants and house-slipper shoes, shrugged in what seemed like bewilderment, and turned back.
Still, one thing to say about Kawakubo: The woman knows how to drape. The clothes were unexpectedly sensual, hugging the hips, exposing the back or baring part of the breast.
More than anything, her show suggested a major exhibit that opens here this summer, the art of Toulouse-Lautrec. Kawakubo’s collection captured the vulnerable, defiant but down-and-out spirit of the women in the artist’s paintings.
There are hints of lighter moments ahead. Invitations to upcoming shows--delivered daily to hotels where the press and buyers stay--suggest other directions.
Kenzo sent a blue paper pansy on a stick, while Lolita Lempicka sent a watercolor of a mannequin in a short pink dress surrounded by gilded chairs.
Thierry Mugler, the indomitable host of late-night fashion madness, announced that he isn’t hiring Ivana Trump or Diana Ross, or any of the other usuals, for his show this season. He’s not having one until July, when the clothes arrive in the stores.
And in a wonderfully ironic twist, Romeo Gigli, whose sweaters knit from tree bark and capes made of copper wire threads testify to his non-commercial leanings, has chosen a new location for his show: the Paris stock exchange.
