Where to Next : We’ve dressed up. We’ve dressed down. : We’ve led the pack in innovation and, lately, sunk into a state of blandness. : But if history repeats itself, many Big Things in fashion will start here.
People around the world talk about the “California look.” Midwest store owners buy it here, sell it there. Paris fashion designers copy it. Hollywood costumers lift it onto the big and little screen. Kids in the streets make a life of reinventing it.
The one thing people seldom do is define it.
It is called original, informal, witty . . . lightweight in the literal sense. But what, exactly, does that mean?
It means that California style is the sum of its history.
The beginning was a time for dressing down. Swimsuits and blue jeans could pass for a wardrobe when ranchers, farmers and retirees filled the Southland between World Wars.
Dressing up had its moments too. By the 1930s, movies were part of the nation’s mainstream, and costume designers capitalized on their fame by launching their own ready-to-wear collections. Having defined American glamour by way of the movie business, they promptly made it available to anyone who had the money to buy it.
From then on, the two worlds, California casual and Hollywood glamour, never parted ways. Resort weather and Hurricane Hollywood still drive the local fashion scene.
A few moments to remember, in recent times:
* Wet suits moved from surfer beaches to “Baywatch” and Chanel’s fashion runway.
* The leggings women wore shopping after exercise class ended up on “Beverly Hills, 90210” and in Donna Karan’s showroom.
* Baseball caps and falling-down jeans were lifted from inner-city Los Angeles to music videos and Cross Colours’ fashion collections.
* The starlet look--with evening gowns and sunglasses one year, diamonds on loan from Cartier another--still launches from here to the ends of the Earth at Emmy, Oscar and Grammy time.
All the attention is likely to continue as long as Californians keep dressing their own way. The question now is: Will they?
Street fashion has suffered from slow growth lately. Basic T-shirts, oversize overalls and those dreary flower-print dresses women wear to ride out recessions are turning a fashion oasis into a desert. Financial belt-tightening and the lingering tensions of post-riot Los Angeles have left people uneasy about calling attention to themselves.
“It’s not an exciting time in fashion,” says Ellen Mirojnick, a top Hollywood costume designer (“Wall Street,” “Fatal Attraction,” “Basic Instinct”). “People are trying to figure who they are and where they’re going. You see it in fashion on the street.”
Blandness pervades.
But the Gap has not been a disservice to fashion. “It’s made middle-of-the-road dressers look neater,” notes Louise Frogley, who created a personality-packed, thrift-shop inspired wardrobe for Susan Sarandon in “Bull Durham.”
Nonetheless, Frogley refers to dress-down basics as “empty clothing.” They seem to foster zero personality. “At the moment, I’m disappointed” in Los Angeles style, she concludes.
In a plot twist worthy of a summer beach novel, as street fashion here stalls out, the state’s apparel industry--with annual sales of $6 billion and counting--is booming.
Until recently aerospace/high tech was the biggest business in the state. But “while aerospace/high tech is declining, apparel manufacturing is growing,” notes Jack Kyser, chief economist for California’s Economic Development Corp.
Big business means jobs and money, but it also means watered-down versions of the inventive street fashions that feed it. Designers get their ideas from local sidewalks, just like everybody else. But they have to tone things down for mass-market appeal. If street style is watered down to start with, the future begins to go blank. It takes real people, pumping out new inventions, to inspire the pros.
So will they?
Probably.
What makes anyone think so?
History. It repeats itself, and California fashion has had its share of highs.
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Once upon a time, there was an ocean. Beside it there was a state where bathing suits by Cole of California appeared in 1925 to join blue jeans by Levi Strauss, which had been around since 1850. Together, they helped identify the state’s fashion priorities.
In the 1930s, California fashion was best known for swimsuits, “play wear” and movie costumes. And that’s when a unique tradition began--designers crossed over from one world to the other. Among the first to take the plunge was Margit Fellegi, who went from Hollywood costumer to swimwear designer for Cole of California in 1936.
She broadened the range at Cole to include after-swim fashions. “Margit made pool and patio sun dresses women could wear anywhere,” recalls Anne Cole, whose father founded the company and who still designs her own signature line for Cole.
Today, swimwear and bodywear account for 21% of California’s fashion sales--the largest piece of the apparel industry pie.
The 1930s also ushered in pedal-pusher sets, shorts sets, and full cotton skirts, all born of the hot climate and casual lifestyle. The designers who created many of them, a group called the California Seven, earned a national reputation.
One member was De De Johnson, known for pedal-pusher outfits and for pioneering California’s junior market. Low-priced, trendy and young-spirited, it is a category of clothing that still seems the epitome of the California lifestyle. And it still ranks as a top export.
But it was the fantasy dressing of 1930s Hollywood that set the entire nation dreaming. Jean Harlow in a white satin slip dress was the idealized image of a California evening out. Carole Lombard in palazzo pants and golf shoes was the picture of the West Coast golfer. Hollywood seemed to influence every aspect of local style. Glamour jeans, glamour swimsuits, glamour golf.
Technicolor promoted another fact about California fashion. From the early 1940s through the era of the 1950s movie musicals, Hollywood showed the rest of the world how Californians relate to color. People here wear brighter, more adventurous shades than people in other parts of the country. Chartreuse, daffodil and powder blue have long been common to wardrobes of California men as well as women. Danny Kaye in “White Christmas,” with his lemon-yellow pullover and pleated camel pants was the quintessential image.
The ‘60s brought a new fashion high: surf city.
Jams, the baggy, knee-length, flower-print swim trunks, swept the fashion scene. And the teen-age, bikini-clad blondes immortalized by the Beach Boys set a standard across the country.
But “life’s a beach” was not the only attitude influencing California in those years. James Galanos stood poised at the other end of the spectrum. From a tiny studio on Sepulveda Boulevard, he crafted couture-quality dresses to show in New York--which reinforced his image as a top-level ready-to-wear designer. Nancy Reagan wore his designs and helped solidify his reputation.
Rudi Gernreich levitated somewhere between surf and chic. Startling images, from men in jumpsuits to women in breast-baring swimsuits, went from his drawing board to the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Another image stuck: California became the capital of future fashion.
Gernreich was one of many futurists. Recent history shows that if you see it first in California it’s not necessarily crazy; it’s probably just ahead of its time. Cycling shorts as streetwear. Neon swimming trunks beyond the beach. Tank suits topped with evening skirts at black-tie events.
They said it couldn’t be done. They were wrong. Californians did it.
While the street kept spinning out new ideas, growing numbers of West Coast designers started their own small, innovative businesses that enhanced the state’s image as a hothouse of creative design.
In her Sunset Boulevard shop, Holly Harp upgraded the ‘60s hippie look she saw on the streets. Her collections included velvet bell-bottoms and fringed shawls, hand-painted jersey and flowing chiffon dresses, soft as handkerchiefs.
One day in the early ‘70s, singer Joni Mitchell visited Harp. ‘She said she didn’t want to go on stage in her jeans anymore,” the designer recalls, and her painted jerseys and chiffons became the basis for Mitchell’s new look.
Harp’s styles seemed softer, more feminine and fanciful than those of her East Coast or European counterparts.
“All I did was take all the construction out,” she says. That simple step helped win her a boutique at Henri Bendel in New York, one of the most exciting stores in the country at the time. (She now has a boutique at Bergdorf Goodman in New York.)
The affluent 1980s sparked a new sort of play clothes for California adults. Again, the streets led the way. Men in tuxedos and high-tops were a going concern at formal events. Vintage Hawaiian shirts flew out of Melrose resale shops and turned up under suits. Thrift-shop chic became--and remains--a recurring theme in local style.
In the mid-1980s, surfwear ruled many summer wardrobes. Volleyball shorts and surfer doodle T-shirts let out-of-towners head home with California beach culture packed in their suitcases.
At the same time, a new wave of women’s career-wear designers made their presence known on the East Coast. Leon Max and Mark Eisen started small, kept an individuality about their collections, and positioned themselves in the best stores across the country. They are still among the strongest names to come out of California.
But when the economy fell flat, fortunes changed. Surfwear toppled from its own weight, with too many companies making too many clothes that looked alike.
Contemporary designers, whose clothes were made for young career women with a healthy income and a taste for trends, faced a different demon. “Four years ago, (they) were going gangbusters,” says Sandy Richman of Directives West, which advises big retailers what to buy in the contemporary and junior markets. “But when business started getting difficult, stores pulled back. They can’t afford to take a chance.”
That and a few more Gap T-shirts got us where we are today. In the current tight economy, small, innovative designers get swallowed up by larger companies with lower-priced merchandise.
The big names in California apparel now are not individual designers such as Max and Harp, but mass-market manufacturers, who set an image marked by fewer fashion risks. The Gap/Banana Republic, Guess?, Cherokee and B.U.M. Equipment can’t afford to be overly inventive. The average shopper won’t buy it.
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As always, true adventure lies in the streets. What might surface next is anyone’s guess. Those who venture an opinion talk nuances, not sweeping change for the near future.
Mossimo Giannulli made his first million on neon volleyball shorts, but has since broadened his line to include some of the state’s hottest selling sportswear for young men and women. He says street fashion is still based on inner-city styles.
“Today, kids are politically savvy,” he explains. “To them, Day-Glo looks like a joke. They need more substance.”
Frogley sees extended life for the current version of the starlet look. “Doc Marten shoes, cycle shorts, tank tops and enormously big hair, in the manner of Amy Irving,” she explains.
Bill Hargate, costume designer for “Murphy Brown” and others, laments most every look around. “I’d like to see a sense of humor about dressing,” he says. Till then, he’s ordering big white cotton shirts from mail-order catalogues for actress Annie Potts to wear in the TV series “Love and War.”
“It’s either ultra-simple or very fashion trendy,” says costume designer Mirojnick about what she sees now and for the near future. She chose the first option for “Intersection,” her next movie. Charcoal-gray jackets are the basis for a wardrobe of monochromes that actor Richard Gere wears to play an architect in middle-aged crisis.
When will it end? “We’re in the last days of transition,” says Mirojnick.
Where to next? Keep your eye on the streets.
