A Scaled-Down Fall : New York Designers Are Cutting Corners at This Week’s Shows and Presenting Clothes Aimed at Pleasing Well-Heeled Patrons
New York’s Fashion Avenue, in the heart of the garment district, could use a new road sign: proceed with caution. That is the message for some of the city’s top designers who showed their fall ’92 collections here on Monday, the first day of Fashion Week. They are scaling back, not only in what they show but how they show it.
After years of booking the ballroom at The Pierre hotel on Fifth Avenue, Bill Blass moved to his own Seventh Avenue showroom. And he cut out the coffee and pastries, too.
“This is cheaper,” explained a Blass spokeswoman. “The Pierre show costs us half a million dollars.”
Carolina Herrera did the same, and she put Ivana Trump in the back row. While Herrera showed at the Plaza, Trump sat out front. Of course, she was president of the hotel in those days.
Cost cutting has forced Blass to concentrate on his main customers--older and richer. He turned to such standbys as cashmere twin sets (a crew-neck sweater and jewel-cuffed cardigan) with jewel-colored satin ballgown skirts for evening, knee-length coats and matching skirts for day, and basic black with lots of slink for formal wear.
The last few seasons, Blass took it over the top with jeweled Cleopatra collars on T-shirt dresses, pink tulle ballet skirts and beaded bustiers. This time the only risk he took was at the hemline. He tried mid-calf and knee-length. Shorter worked better.
Herrera is in her element during these rich but righteous days. All you have to do is remind yourself that Jackie Onassis is one of her steady customers and you get the picture.
She continued to pay homage to Cristobal Balenciaga, the late Spanish master of the linear cut. Sheaths and variations on the A-shape were the basis of this collection, with fewer short, dirndl skirts than usual.
A plaid pantsuit in chrome yellow, and others in shades of lavender and plum, showed just how potent that look will be for the next several seasons. It’s never been one of Herrera’s favorites. But she did it well, cutting elegant narrow shapes and finishing each suit with very feminine mid-heel dress shoes.
For a younger look, Herrera showed sequined jeans in a yellow and brown giraffe print, worn with a brown velvet T-shirt.
Most telling of her current attitude about fashion, however, was the finale of her show. She mixed fencing-style jackets in pale beaded gold fabric, embroidered with coins and cameos, over everyday, pleated gray-flannel pants.
So far in the New York shows, if it’s not conservative it’s costumy. For Perry Ellis, designer Marc Jacobs played raucously on the rock music scene in a show of rock ‘n’ roll entourage wear.
Carly Simon sat in the front row next to Alec Baldwin, who came in carrying two Brooks Brothers shopping bags. She left with plans to go shopping. “I want at least 75 of those outfits,” she said.
Shiny python jeans, plush leopard-print pants and matching stoles, top hats worn with circus-master jackets, Beatle coats and tall lace-up snakeskin boots were the basis of Jacobs’ fall wardrobe.
What made it all work was the fact that most pieces could be pulled away from the mix and toned down to make wonderfully wearable outfits, though hardly what you’d call tame.
Norma Kamali left high-rent locations behind and put on her show in the third-floor space of her East 56th Street shop. These days the first thing you see in the store is her new “basics” collection, priced from $100 to $250 per item. And she opened the show with fall additions to that group.
She cut black denim and plaid flannel in unexpected shapes such as skating skirts, vests and car coats. She used rayon prints with a ‘40s feeling for her mid-calf flare-hem dresses. Her coat dresses in short and long lengths had huge circle skirts.
She repeated some of the same shapes in better fabrics for her higher-priced signature collection, which she also included in the show.
That idea is one several designers have tried lately.
“People are thinking about price first,” Kamali explained. “The days of proving how much money you have through clothing are over. Now that’s offensive.
She pared her evening wear down to black velvet gowns with classic necklines and even showed one with a suit jacket, for the ultimate low-key look.
“To buy cutting-edge fashion now is a very foolish thing to do,” she said. “It’s a time to build a wardrobe around things you can have for a very long time.” That seems to be the attitude here this week.
Robin Leach looked a bit out of place in the audience of Nicole Miller’s show.
Her clothes are not the first you think of when someone mentions, “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.” Funky, flannel-check suits with fake leopard collars, a “Fish Club” logo on the back of a jacket, and high-heel hiking boots were some of the best of Miller’s show.
Wall Street-gray plaid dresses with necklines so low the models were spilling over the top missed the mark.
When she gets lost Miller heads for the junior-department look. And that’s what happened too often this time. Halfway through the show, a European fashion editor sitting in the front row put down her notebook and pulled out her powder blush compact. That pretty much said it all.
Hugo Redwood was also in the audience, which made more sense in some ways than Robin Leach, at least by current L.A. standards. A new designer who’s not having a show this season, Redwood was wearing one of his own creations--a black jacket with the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe appliqued on the back.
He hadn’t heard about the tree in a Los Angeles neighborhood where the saint’s image is also said to be seen this spring.
