Designers Love the Night Life: Evening Wear Dominates Runways
Whether they were the corseted ball gowns at Richard Tyler or Carolina Herrera’s multicolor striped mink jacket and flannel pants, elegant, elaborate evening wear is dominating the New York runways.
American women aren’t necessarily wearing more gowns, dinner suits and cocktail dresses, but the hundreds of influential retailers and 2,000-plus editors gathered for the fall 2000 collections here are certainly seeing more of those kinds of clothes.
Of the nearly 70 women’s shows on the week’s schedule, more than a third are considered solely evening-wear designers, a number that may be a record, said Stan Herman, president of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, which organizes fashion week. Add in those designers who show both day and evening clothes, and the total shoots to nearly 50.
“There are too many people doing evening clothes,” Herman said. “They’ve given the day clothes over to Banana Republic and those people.” They may have given up in defeat because the giant retailers are ever more swiftly copying the innovations that sportswear designers put on their runways. And the chains have the power and the resources to sell the looks at lower prices.
“Evening clothes are difficult for the mass market to do well,” Herman explained. “You are going to see [fewer and fewer] day clothes on the runway.”
In recent years, evening wear was considered a specialty that had lost its vitality and its relevance in the wake of more casual lifestyles. But an improving economy and renewed attention to glamorous stars have helped revive the category.
Emerging designers are often drawn to evening clothes because they offer an optimal starting point to create maximum impact with little money.
“If you are going to make a sportswear collection, you need a lot of money. You’ve got to run the full range of fabrics. You have to know the cuts and construction techniques. You need knits, coats, pants. You need it all,” said Barry Steinhart, chief operating officer for designer James Purcell’s 11-year-old evening-wear firm in New York.
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More established designers, such as Herrera, give the luxury evening-wear treatment to a wide range of clothes. Herrera delivered a collection that featured intricately pieced mink jackets; sleek, flared wool pants; silk halter tops; a hot-pink leather pant suit; embroidered broadtail tuxedos; and mink-trimmed sweaters.
At Purcell’s show Wednesday, he featured tweed pants and jackets sprinkled with crystals, pouf skirts, cutaway coats, grand gowns with sweeping trains, and a set of elegant perforated column dresses with sequined or plaid linings. He showed how a collection can be built on a few great fabrics and lots of different shapes.
Fabric vendors often sell smaller quantities of their more expensive evening fabrics, which helps newcomers clear another hurdle. Herman said sportswear designers have to commit to large orders of fabric in multiple color choices.
Evening wear also gives designers of all levels an important dose of cachet. From that high point, designers can sell their associations with glamour in any number of profitable permutations: designer jeans, perfumes or even business suits.
“There is a snob appeal,” said designer Marc Bouwer, who is known for his dramatic evening clothes. “If you have been dressing the masses and you come up with a couture line, then it’s a difficult transition.”
Image is paramount to today’s fashion designers. Many have found a shortcut to fame and fortune in a town far removed from Seventh Avenue--Hollywood.
Actresses are wearing glamorous gowns to awards shows, premieres and even to less formal parties where they are photographed for an ever-larger group of celebrity-oriented magazines and TV shows.
‘It’s become the way to get publicity,” Herman said.
One good dress on one great body at one high-profile event can propel a designer into instant fame. It worked for Randolph Duke, when he dressed Minnie Driver in red, and for Narciso Rodriguez, who created Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s wedding dress.
Movie stars helped build Tyler’s fame. His couture collection was destined for movie stars and other professionally thin and beautiful people. Tyler sent out multiple variations on corseted jackets paired with equally figure-hugging pants.
He also ventured beyond the airy and delicate gowns that have lately made his fame. Instead, he blended his exacting tailoring with the hallmarks of dressmaking. Evening gowns had bound buttonholes, and heavy cashmere was worked into a form-fitting corset that paired with side-wrap pants. His simple ideas, such as a ballet dress trimmed with strands of fabric twisted into ruffles, were the best. Tyler used to be one of just a handful of designers who could reliably craft elegant and dramatic evening wear and elegant nighttime sportswear. Now he has company.
Newcomer Christina Perrin’s name was on the pages of national magazines when she dressed five well-known stars at last month’s Golden Globes. At her Tuesday show, Perrin’s runway featured everything from a glow-in-the-dark fiber-optic gown to red patent-leather dresses and a slew of red-carpet-worthy gowns trimmed in beads, mink, crystals or lace.
Recruiting stars to wear your clothes is “a spectacular way to create awareness of your name,” said Steinhart of James Purcell. Purcell, who dressed Reese Witherspoon and Jenna Elfman at the Golden Globes, finds that Hollywood is dressing up more.
“When they go out, they need to look like a glamorous actress. If they don’t, their picture won’t be taken,” Purcell said. While not all of his celebrity clients buy their dresses, “they drive other business. It’s a fair trade. It’s image.”
The dressy clothes look all the more special because of the trend of dressing down for work and play.
“As we become a more casual society during the day, I do feel that makes dressing up more important than ever,” Purcell said.
Psychologically, women may be ready for spangles, bangles and beads.
“We are tired of being plain,” said Bouwer, who has dressed Whitney Houston, Toni Braxton and Angie Harmon. His show Tuesday was full of celebrities such as Lil’ Kim and Mary J. Blige, who ogled his embellished leather skirts, beaded mini-dresses and cashmere gowns.
“Though there is something very beautiful about minimalism, there was always something great about seeing Cher come out all those years in outrageous things,” Bouwer said. “It was entertainment. It’s nice to see people having fun with dressing up again.”
Many are confident of the future of dressing up, including newcomer Kathlin Argiro, a 29-year-old evening-wear designer, who launched her designer-level formal wear collection Feb. 4.
“There are always, always those important events. Everyone loves to get a special dress, whether it’s for a rehearsal dinner or a wedding or a charity evening. People need multiple dresses,” said Argiro, a former assistant to evening stalwarts Carmen Marc Valvo and Arnold Scaasi.
It may be easier to begin as a formal-wear maker, but it’s not always easier to stay in business, Steinhart cautioned.
“The lower the barrier to entry, the higher the failure rate,” he said. “If it’s too easy to get into the business, too many people will enter, and not all will survive.”
Valli Herman-Cohen can be reached at valli.herman-cohen@latimes.com.
