Gucci, Gucci, Goo : FICTION : SPRING COLLECTION,<i> By Judith Krantz (Crown Publishing $24; 358 pp.)</i>

The moment I open “Spring Collection,” Judith Krantz’s latest miniseries treatment, er, novel, I am shocked and amazed.

No, not by the first sentence (which begins symbolically enough with the letter O in 48-point type). Before I even get to that first sentence, I am shocked and amazed because as I skim the obligatory catalog of those works that reflect Ms. Krantz’s distinctive weltanschauung, I realize that I have read almost all of them. How did this happen? When did this happen?

“Scruples”--certainly, I remember reading “Scruples.” Well, not really reading it, more like hunching over it with my best friend during chorus rehearsal, in search of the dog-eared “good parts.” (In fact, I can attribute much of my early sex education to Krantz, and that explains why, among other things, I believed for so long that Gucci somehow played a crucial factor in the female climax: The presence of a few tasteful accessories ensured ripples of pleasure, a full suit got you hoarse cries and clenchings and a couture gown--well, honey, welcome to the ninth ring of Saturn.)

So I suppose it is not surprising that I feel right at home as “Spring Collection” unfolds. As on any return journey to a foreign land, there are a few distinguishing landmarks:

1. All the female leads (and most of the plot) are introduced in the first 30 pages. The women (and most of the men) are stunningly beautiful and saddled with names straight out of “The Guiding Light.” In New York, we have Francesca (a.k.a. Frankie), a former dancer, who works for Justine, who runs the Loring modeling agency and really hates her father.

In Paris awaits Jacques Necker, the father in question, who abandoned Justine’s mother before Justine’s first trimester and now is fabulously wealthy but in that rare yikes-this-camel-does-fit-through-the-eye-of-a-needle way. He wants to at long last meet his daughter and make amends.

Naturally enough, he “buys” Marco Lombardi, a fashion designer, and sponsors a modeling contest. Surprise, surprise: Three Loring models are chosen as finalists, with the condition that Justine accompany them. Within moments, said models--Tinker, April, Jordan--are shipping out to gay Paree, sans Justine, who refuses to be manipulated by that “bloody bloody rotten man” (strong words for a girl from Chicago). They are accompanied instead by Frankie, a male photog named Mike, and Maude, a top journalist for Zing magazine (oh, tell me to whom to send my resume) who has a penchant for tight trousers and vests. Ahem.

2. Great costuming. The only woman with a “normal” name is Donna, as in Karan. She is invoked with such frequency that the phrase “product placement” springs to mind and distracts one from a true appreciation of such poetic passages as a description of a tunic “not quite plum, or precisely grape--more like an eggplant” (at which point this reader has lost interest anyway since her one and only fashion tenet is: Avoid looking like an eggplant).

Whether clad cleverly in “a bare, but somehow demure, black silk slip dress with a graduated string of pearls,” a “Donna Karan [see?] black cashmere sweater worn with her black stretch pants, a combination that guaranteed lithesomeness, if there is such a word” (there isn’t) or a black satin “dress that looked like a whore’s tattered nightgown,” women in Krantzland know that accessories speak louder than words. Especially to men whose attire combines “the Ivy League with early Gene Kelly and vintage Fred Astaire” or makes him “too blunt for Ralph Lauren, decidedly too butch for Calvin, yet not quite the hunter-gatherer needed for Timberland.” Imagine. Fortunately, it doesn’t matter, because:

3. All of the female leads are, as Frankie so succinctly puts it, “off men.” Justine’s got that father thing, Frankie had a bad first marriage (a sportswriter name of Slim, Slim Kelly--what was the girl thinking?), the three models are all too “driven” and Maude, well, she wears those vests. This is completely understandable because:

4. All men are rats. But not really. It just seems that way at first. Jacques, of course, is a pregnant-woman-abandoner. Mike is an arrogant ex-jock turned “top fashion photographer” (too butch for Mizrahi, too fey for John Deere). Marco spends his time, between creations of high-fashion magnificence, thrusting his throbbing self at every nonconsenting woman in the place. And Aiden, the contractor who, back at the ranch, comes to fix Justine’s plumbing and heating systems (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), wears corduroys and then breaks her water heater.

Having established that “Spring Collection” is decidedly Krantzian, I must now unfortunately allow that it is far from the vintage variety. Some might argue that such a differentiation is the literary equivalent of complaining that you got slipped a bad Moon Pie, but the fact is that “Spring Collection” has neither the sweep nor the complexities of earlier Krantz. It feels rushed, as if it were written on a laptop while she circled La Guardia.

In previous works, we got to travel the world, see the glam-elite of at least several nations give each other dirty looks as they surreptitiously fondled kneecaps and signed mergers under the Irish-linened tables. In “SC,” we are whisked out of New York without even the courtesy of a cocktail reception and dumped in Paris where, aside from the dastardly Marco, everyone turns out to be nice as pie and the only real conflict is whether April can master that I-can-balance-a-champagne-flute-on-each-of-my-pelvic-bones-can-you? walk requisite on runways everywhere.

Oh sure, the three models are ostensibly competing to be Miss Lombardi, but they are all too busy falling in love to really care much. Granted, there are a couple of sexual assaults; a lesbian awakening scene too hot for, say, “The Well of Loneliness,” a quick groping tour of the Louvre and other allusions to non-felonious hetero sex, but that, besides endless descriptions of clothing, is about it. No byzantine international corporate warfare, no familial back-stabbing and general muckraking, no antics in public restrooms, no drugs or guns, not even a really good hissy fit. And, come to think of it, absolutely no Gucci.

* JUDITH KRANTZ will be interviewed by author Digby Diehl at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Saturday, April 20, at 1:30 p.m.