Fashion's Fall
By Martha Duffy
During last month's Paris shows for ready-to-wear fall clothing, director Robert Altman appeared with stars like Sophia Loren and Julia Roberts to shoot scenes for his new film, Pret-a-Porter (Ready-to-Wear). At first the fashion community welcomed him -- what a chance to show off! What free advertising! But a chill quickly set in. Banning the movie crew from his show, Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld said, "I'm afraid Robert Altman will make fashion look like a nightmarish cartoon." Evidently Lagerfeld has not noticed that he and his colleagues have achieved that all by themselves. The depressing news of the fall collections just shown in Paris, Milan and New York is that the nightmare is far from over.
An epidemic of cynicism passing for wit has overtaken fashion as designers work harder at being funny than at crafting beautiful clothes. There has always been a theatrical side to fashion, a love of the extreme. But lately the over-the-top gesture is usurping the real thing. A decent goal of female clothing design is to enhance a woman, but styles in the past few seasons have often made a grotesque distortion of the natural silhouette. Interruption in the form of extravagant collars, peplums and other superfluous add-ons to skirts has replaced any graceful flow. Having peaked several years ago, multiple layering is back, even bulkier and more intrusive than in its last incarnation. All the elements that make a great dress -- materials, tailoring, imagination -- seem to have been degraded.
When the venerable house of Chanel shows a black fur hat the size and shape of Mickey Mouse's ears, as it did this spring, something is wrong. Lagerfeld's other japes included fuzzy fake-fur skirts shaped unmistakably like muffs that barely covered the buttocks. He has made the classic Chanel suit look tartier by the year, a crude parody of itself. At this point it would be preferable -- and more courageous -- to retire it altogether; versions of the design go back to the '20s, so the suit may have run its course. Lagerfeld has also vulgarized the Chanel logo, plastering it large all over accessories and jacket backs.
Jean-Paul Gaultier first made a corset-like bustier for Madonna four years ago, and it was a good joke. Now further variations of underwear as outerwear have overtaken the runways. So have other tired gambits, which can only encourage a woman to stay out of the stores and wear what she already has in the closet. The metallic look is suffering from fatigue, but it's still in favor. And nobody looks good in disheveled fake fur, now everywhere. The effect is to present a woman as an unclipped poodle who just swam a stream and had a good, vigorous shake.
Across the board -- and the ocean -- skirts were mostly very short. One wonders where designers spent the brutal winter just past as they designed their collections for the coming fall. (Not only were skirts scanty, but there were also plenty of bare midriffs.) Of course, the micromini phenomenon is partly phony, since clothes are shipped to stores at longer, more freeze- friendly proportions. Nonetheless, if one house shows short, others apparently feel obliged to be just as daring. Never mind that mass-market stores like the Gap are selling thousands of midcalf dresses every week. A micromini with fancy tights or patterned, lace-topped hose looks glamorous when Claudia Schiffer sashays down the runway. But when she is snapped in mufti, she is usually wearing pants.
* Lagerfeld was afflicted with the fuzzy-wuzzies, but he was hardly the only one: mohair will be hard to avoid this fall. In the U.S. several younger houses -- Vivienne Tam, Isaac Mizrahi, Ghost -- used it. Ralph Lauren, in a collection that relocated his country look to Sherwood Forest in the Middle Ages, featured it in rare long skirts. In his CK line, Calvin Klein had bunny minis in furry pastels.
When designers were not selling sex, they were kissing babies. Altman should have been at Milan's Blumarine show when model Carla Bruni rolled a baby carriage containing another model down the runway. High-waisted baby-doll dresses, started by New York's Anna Sui last year, are ubiquitous in 1994. Even Giorgio Armani, who should know better, has one. Going along with the fake-innocent look are Peter Pan collars -- last seen on Mrs. Doubtfire -- that will be in the stores by fall.
In New York some of the newer designers seemed to be talking only to one another. Sui, a smart stylist who is capable of authentic downtown chic, concentrated instead on jarring outfits that needed translation, either to fit the body or to decipher where they might possibly be worn. Britain's Tonya Sarne, who designs Ghost and was a big hit last year, seemed intent on damning British society rather than selling beautiful or interesting clothes. Bizarrely, several outfits were named for Prime Minister John Major. They consisted of clashing hodgepodges of colors, stripes, prints and waiflike little dresses that exposed all undergarments -- a comment, presumably, on the flawed structure of the nation.
Such outfits were not outrageous couture fantasies; they were ready-to-wear clothes with prices accessible to many women. Most of the hell-raising pieces in Byron Lars' young collection are around $300. Anna Sui's are in about the same range. The Ghost line starts at $265 for an outfit. An Anne Klein skirt and jacket costs around $1,300. And, of course, fast, expert rip-offs make the popular styles affordable to anyone who can buy new clothes at all.
When interviewed by the press, designers enjoy saying that their efforts are for women who are much too busy with important things to have time for adornment. If that were true, they would all be aiming at Hillary Clinton, and this is patently not the case. Alternatives to night-club life do exist, however. At the high end of the scale, Oscar de la Renta's clothes for Balmain in Paris are exquisite, better than the ready-to-wear he produced for his own line in New York. Anne Klein's offerings, now designed by the deft Richard Tyler, are impeccable without being boring. And Calvin Klein remains a great editor of trends. He suited up models, mixed and matched and threw in some chaste jumpers and wearable fuzzies.
A few designers are operating at their very best -- among the established masters, Bill Blass and Geoffrey Beene; among newcomers, Han Feng and Byron Lars. Blass made some sense out of the current fad for bright colors by working in wools that were vibrant, with pretty, harmonious dyes. He used tweeds and wool jersey with an ease and fluency that mark a seasoned tailor. Beene also favored wool jersey, which he considers "the perfect material." His outfits, which came in all lengths, had the homely virtue of actually looking like winter clothes, garments that would keep the wearer warm in a bad winter. Beyond that, they had a timeless elegance that would make most of the competition seem dated and tacky before the first leaf falls.
Han Feng, who came to the U.S. from China in 1986, showed an incomplete collection: no coats, few casual outfits. But she looks to be a virtuoso with materials. From cut velvet to georgette, she made everything seem like gossamer and draped it skillfully on the body. Byron Lars, who is just 29, put on the most dazzling show of all three cities, full of swagger and unabashed theatrics, with the most sophisticated music -- ranging from bongo drums to Delibes -- since the early days of Lacroix. Such a bravura presentation could have overwhelmed the clothes, but fortunately they were just as confident -- well cut and witty.
Lars made "over the top" a compliment, but he was the exception. Too often, confusion and even desperation haunted the runways. As the wise veteran Geoffrey Beene remarked, "These are chaotic times, but that need not be reflected in chaotic clothing." But the buyer next fall had better be wary, for the reign of chaos is not over yet.
With reporting by Elizabeth L. Bland and David E. Thigpen/New York