The Sensual Woman
Three friends were discussing what one of them should wear on an important third date with a man who’d probably spank his favorite khakis into shape and hunt down a clean button-down shirt for the occasion.
The worldliest among them, a woman known for her ability to channel the spirit of Pamela Harriman, said, “Wear something pretty.”
“Pretty?” her willing pupil asked, mentally inventorying her wardrobe. “I can do sexy. I can do casual, sophisticated, rich, chic, cool or slick. But pretty, what is that? You mean something with flowers on it?”
Fashion has been offering up many images of womanhood recently, but until clothes reeking of a sweet, almost exaggerated femininity crowded the stores last spring, pretty was absent from the style vocabulary. Weren’t we surprised when a flood of ethereal, floral chiffon dresses campaigned for space in closets we’d stuffed with mannish suits and sleek black dresses. Many of them looked more like nightgowns than dresses, and lace-trimmed skirts were apt to resemble the slips we used to hide under our skirts.
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Now another kind of prettiness has arrived, and it isn’t a surprise that Ralph Lauren has defined it and tempered it with understatement. Because even when Lauren reinterprets menswear for women, he never ignores the contours of a woman’s body.
The new mood at Lauren owed more to a confident sensuality than to overt coquettishness. Picture a sky blue short-sleeved silk turtleneck worn with a matching bias-cut charmeuse skirt. It’s as if someone hung a warning sign in the Lauren design studio: No tricks allowed. A dove gray silk knit shell combined with a satin Shantung skirt possessed admirable restraint. These are touchable, come-hither clothes by virtue of their very simplicity. The skirts fell to the knee but clung seductively. Some sweaters were light enough to be slightly sheer, but never vulgarly transparent.
There were tailored pieces in the collection too--short, shaped jackets finished with topstitching. Although everything looked great on skinny models, it’s a good guess that leaner Lauren fans will opt for his soft separates and dresses, and those whose sizes are in double digits will go for the more structured pieces. (Who ever said fashion was fair?) A brown cashmere knit T-shirt topping a bias-cut skirt of oatmeal cashmere was an irresistible and more relaxed alternative to a suit, but those bias cuts tolerate no lumps.
Throughout the New York collections, appealing daytime dresses have been plentiful. Lauren’s ranged from classic sleeveless sheaths in light menswear fabrics to a sand-colored cashmere tank or a perfect knit slip dress cut on the bias. Despite the buzz about a move toward more ornamentation, Lauren didn’t clutter his clean, spare clothes even with belts or jewelry. High-heeled, sling-backed pumps looked right with the polished clothes, and shoes, it could be argued, are more a necessity than an accessory.
He did add detail to evening clothes, beading a silk skirt or an ivory slip dress with little flowers kissed by a dew of sparkles. Tiny pearls formed the straps of a pearl-colored dress or held up a camisole of cream cashmere. Lauren has long admired Hollywood glamour. This time, it looks as though he was thinking of Grace Kelly, a woman whose heat bubbled just below a cool facade.
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Richard Tyler is an unabashed fan of Hollywood glamour as well. In the collection Tyler rightfully calls Richard Tyler Couture (the less expensive Richard Tyler Collection showed in London this year), he is designing for the few--those who can appreciate his superior fabrics, exquisite tailoring and do justice to his unforgivingly body-conscious silhouettes.
There was still a lot of flesh displayed in Tyler’s bare dresses and evening gowns, but chiffon is now often layered under a veil of gauze, opaque over sheer. Cowl necklines draped languidly at the front or back of satin crepe gowns. “I think of the cowls as a little bit of Hollywood glamour,” Tyler said after the show. “Remember all those wonderful photographs with Carole Lombard and Hedy Lamarr wearing gowns with cowl necklines? We’ve taken that idea and just made them more modern.”
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One of the cliches designers love to spout is that they do classics with a twist. Ellen Tracy really does, and has earned a loyal following by doing that well. This season, it’s the twin set that got tweaked. The cardigan might feature tight, elbow-length sleeves and be paired with a bandeau or tube top instead of a more traditional shell. Tube tops grew to dress length too, and one, in black, masqueraded as an evening sweater atop a long black skirt slit high to reveal a flash of leg.
The ultimate sweater set variation was a black beaded tube dress under a cropped-sleeve cardigan. Although Ellen Tracy is known as a reliable source of clothes women love to wear to work, designer Linda Allard best showed her skill with simple pieces for after dark. A white T-shirt surpasses its name when it’s beaded all over and worn with full, white crepe trousers. A tube top and shorts transcend sportswear when the shorts are beaded. Tracy has been a commercial powerhouse, but her beautiful spring collection proved that Allard also deserves credit as a clever designer.
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Shorts, T-shirts and cardigans aren’t the property of any one designer. Neither are corsets, a little bit of fashion history that periodically resurfaces, giving quarter to women who don’t want to wait for Halloween to indulge their wench fantasies. Isaac Mizrahi tried his hand at the corset, and in the process turned out some fabulous evening dresses. Recognizing that the boned corset is cousin to the ubiquitous camisole, Mizrahi hid a white corset under a loose, gray sweatshirt jacket. With the addition of gray silk and cotton pajama pants, the outfit is either dressy day wear or a casual look for evening. The weather’s warm in spring, the stock market didn’t really crash, “The X-Files” hasn’t been canceled yet. Life is good. Whatever.
Mizrahi has lost a lot of weight (by eating in “the Zone,” we hear), and his own body consciousness led him to favor a narrow silhouette for spring. Even when a dress or jacket didn’t fall close to the body, he attached slender ribbons that clutched the fabric, bringing it in close. The effect, especially on dresses, was vaguely Grecian, but Mizrahi produced many of the season’s best day dresses, and ties crisscrossing a sleeveless sheath of silk and wool made it something only the most modern Aphrodite would covet.
