Designers Like a Twist of Lime
Black isn’t where it’s at, as anyone who watched this year’s Academy Awards or the California Mart fashion show over the weekend may have noticed.
The last to go of 25 women’s wear collections shown during market week here, Mamengo Couture filled the runway with stunning black gowns and cocktail suits. They were sophisticated, sensual, cut from luscious fabrics, faultlessly tailored and tastefully spiced with rhinestones, beads and feather-trimmed hats. But, coming only a few weeks after an Oscar night in which even Winona Ryder’s sexy black Chanel seemed a dubious choice, the somber parade served as a reminder that black has lost its safety-net status.
Forgive our meddling, Mamengo, but how about lime for that asymmetrical, single-shoulder gown with its sweeping back skirt? Or any of the other greens in the show that whispered, “Get a life.” Isda & Co.’s lime-sherbet wool reefer coat, for example, worn over a beige shirt and tan striped trousers, cast a memorable, Katharine Hepburn sort of glow. French Laundry’s chartreuse and black zebra-patterned jacket worn over a solid green skirt was a combination worthy of Marilyn Monroe, and David Dart’s sheath in dark olive velvet recalled the subtle seductive powers of Audrey Hepburn.
As the millennium draws near, designers are craning their necks backward, fondly reworking even previous losers like the maxi coat and Halloween-inspired polyester separates. Among the most successful revisions was Simon Chang’s dramatic maxi finished with high cuffs and a big collar made of faux fur with psychedelic swirls. Separate entries from Rene Dehry and Indira proved that even such hippie-inspired materials as beaded vests and patchwork velvets can look fresh and immensely wearable when they also meld elements from the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘90s.
Dorothy Schoelen has reworked her own image, going from a “missy” designer to one who appeals to a more youthful woman, as demonstrated by her Silver Connection and Platinum collections. Standout pieces included a pearlized green pleather jacket and a faux leopard-patterned three-quarter-length fitted coat that evoked the “La Dolce Vita” days of the ‘60s.
The Karen Kane Collection was typical of the designers’ intelligent working-woman’s approach to dressing. Kane’s colors ranged from soft-spoken sage for a group of dresses, suits and separates to an electrifying pearlized blue for silk-velvet vests and blouses worn with more of the evening’s softly sophisticated pants.
As trends materialized on the runway, the vest emerged as one of the obvious must-have items for fall. Schoelen offered a matching vest under her dolce vita coat. If there had been an award for most outstanding, though, it would have been Joseph Ribkoff’s outerwear vest in a plush fabric printed with jungle animals.
Virtually every collection featured something in faux fur. Esotica’s beautiful line of suits, coats and separates included a black suit trimmed with zebra-stamped cuffs. And Sandra Harvey Hall, who created some of the tightest, sexiest clothes seen on Saturday night, many of them in the widely used velvet, draped a ‘40s-style wool suit with a modern replacement for that now politically incorrect accessory: the fox-fur collar. She replaced the fur with feathers and the shine of those road-kill eyes with cascading beaded strands.
