DESIGNERS : French Fantasies Tamed (Mildly) by New Talent

A new generation of designers is emerging here, and with them a new direction for Paris fashion.

The best known among them--Herve Leger, Andre Walker, Arnaud and Thierry Gillier, and Dries Van Noten included--are finding ways to temper French fantasy with practicality in clothes that meet modern women’s needs.

Price is a serious consideration. Wearability is as important as flair.

Still, each responds to the challenge in his own way. Leger’s short stretchy dresses are a world apart from Van Noten’s old-fashioned suits with elongated skirts, jackets and blouses, for example.

Herve Leger, 34, launched his line in the United States two years ago and is already selling to Maxfield and Neiman Marcus in Los Angeles, Bergdorf Goodman and Barneys in New York.

His colorful, innovative dresses are made from bands of Lycra-viscose fabric sewn together by hand. They are sexy and original feats of engineering built on an idea plucked from the trash.

“I had no money to buy fabrics so I bought the remnants from a knitwear factory,” Leger explains. “These bands were sewn to the knits to give them shape. I started experimenting with them and realized I could make wonderful dresses.”

His isn’t an overnight success story. After graduating from Ecole des Beaux Arts, the prestigious Paris art school, Leger was a hairdresser and a hat maker, then a design assistant to Karl Lagerfeld at Fendi and Chanel.

Later he went to Lanvin, Diane Von Furstenberg, Chloe and Charles Jourdan, the French shoe company. His first-year sales reached about $1 million.

Brothers Arnaud and Thierry Gillier, 32 and 33 respectively, got into fashion in 1986 when they bought a knitwear factory.

It was a purely commercial venture, but once they became knitwear specialists, their interest in fashion deepened. Now, Arnaud handles the finances and Thierry takes care of fashion and marketing.

Their label of unadorned knitwear is inspired by the elongated shapes of the ‘20s and ‘30s. “Clothing for the realist,” as Thierry describes it.

A second label, Zadig & Voltaire, features trendier items for women who like “short-lived chic,” he explains.

Last year, company sales reached $15 million, and the team signed a licensing agreement with Mitsubishi Corp. that resulted in more than 50 in-store boutiques across Japan.

In the well-established tradition of Paris fashion, several young talents are not French-born. In the ‘80s, the city emerged as the world’s leading showcase for cutting-edge designers from Japan, Italy and England. Tokyo-born Yohji Yamamoto, Milan’s Romeo Gigli and London’s Vivienne Westwood are among the standouts in an increasingly international marketplace.

More recent talents to gravitate to the city include Andre Walker, 26, who was born in London and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y., by a onetime Jamaican go-go dancer and her husband.

He designs clothes cut in whimsical, asymmetric shapes that mix such unlikely fabrics as black vinyl and red tartan.

“I love it when the eye is forced to move all over the body,” he says. “I design clothing that is aggressively sweet, natural and friendly.”

Walker began in New York and soon became a fixture, staging his shows in lower-Manhattan nightclubs. Patricia Field championed him in her hip Eighth Street shop, known as a launch pad for new talents. His label is carried by Victoire, the bellwether Paris boutique lauded by fashion editors.

Belgian Dries Van Noten, 31, was born into a dynasty of menswear retailers, and his success--sales jumped from $1.2 million in 1987 to $7 million in 1990--stems from his creative yet commercial clothes for men and women.

Often compared to Ralph Lauren for the way in which he reinterprets and romanticizes classics, Van Noten draws his inspiration from European styles of the past.

“Today, people are interested in clothing not fashion,” he says.

His nostalgic, easygoing separates are carried by Los Angeles retailers Charles Gallay, Fred Segal and Ron Ross, in Tarzana.