Tired of Chic Simple? Welcome to the New Romance

By GINIA BELLAFANTE

Mott Street in Little Italy, Manhattan's newest locus of hip, is where modish factions of the young professional class gather in cafes to talk about movies starring Steve Buscemi and to chain-smoke as though it were Milan or 1956. Mott Street is, in other words, a place you might envision as fashion's capital of spartan black. On a northern tip, though, sits a tiny 1 1/2-year-old shop named Calypso, where, on any given weekend, stylish young shoppers slither past one another to get at a collection of near-sheer pastel sweaters, lacy skirts, candy-colored coats and dusty blue slip dresses, coquettish clothes (most by little known designers) meant to let any suitor know that the woman in them doesn't call first and never goes dutch.

While fashion for most of the decade has been dominated by the spare chic of designers like Prada and Jil Sander, this season it finds itself in the midst of a full-scale romance revival, and women seem to be smitten. Minimalist Marc Jacobs is dabbling in pink and pleats. Tocca, a label specializing in girlish party dresses that began with a collection of 11 pieces in 1994, has evolved into a multimillion-dollar business. Jewelry is having a renaissance. "We're just all so tired of looking plain," notes Andrea Linett, a fashion writer at Harper's Bazaar and a Calypso regular. "The new version of a white T shirt and khakis is a camisole and sexy, fitted trousers. Femininity now signifies the urban look."

And that is perhaps how the French have always wished it. Fashion's new womanliness has its most passionate and celebrated advocates in two young designers brought in to revivify a pair of Parisian houses famously steeped in the romantic tradition. Alber Elbaz, the creative director of Guy Laroche, and Stella McCartney, daughter of Paul and Linda and the new chief talent at Chloe, have become stars of the fashion world, with spring ready-to-wear lines aimed at women whose idea of time well spent extends beyond eating dinner at their desks. When the new Chloe collection arrived at New York City's Bergdorf Goodman this winter, it sold so quickly that the clothes had to be removed from the racks so there would be enough merchandise left when its designer came for a promotional event in February.

When McCartney was installed at the house to much fanfare last year, critics of the move attributed it to her lineage. Chief among the detractors was her predecessor, Karl Lagerfeld, who snapped to Women's Wear Daily, "I think they should have taken a big name. They did--but in music, not fashion." McCartney, despite her age (she is 26), was in fact no novice to garmentmaking. She had attended London's venerable Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, the alma mater as well of John Galliano and Alexander McQueen (designers also snatched up to oversee ailing French houses). For extra training during her school years, she served as a tailor's apprentice to learn the art of Savile Row suitmaking.

After graduation in 1995, McCartney launched her own small line in London, building it almost entirely around sensuous collections of lingerie-modeled dresses and swingy silk skirts. "My mom always collected thrift-shop stuff--especially Italian slips," McCartney recalls. "I've always loved underwear and antique fabrics and lace for all their soft texture." Her famous surname did inevitably create buzz. Supermodel friends wore her clothes, and before long, a McCartney frock became a must-have item for the in vogue everywhere.

The line also caught the eye of Chloe president Mounir Moufarrige, who was intent on attracting younger customers to the label. Chloe had its heyday during Lagerfeld's tenure in the '60s and '70s, and although the designer returned in 1992, it never managed to regain its cachet. Moufarrige arrived at McCartney's studio in December 1996, pretending to be a Rome retailer. "I was attracted to the level of detail she put in her clothes," says Moufarrige. "And it helped that she did a very good job of convincing me that a 25-year-old and a 45-year-old could wear her."

Indeed, McCartney's spring '98 collection, her Chloe debut, features garments that could hardly be described as age-insensitive. There are exquisitely cut wide-leg pantsuits (one of her trademarks) and delicately patterned knee-length day dresses alongside lavender, lace-trimmed slip dresses, spaghetti-strap tops and diaphanous minis. McCartney's clothes bespeak a mature knowledge of flirtation. "We've done the feminist thing and beaten men down, and now we want to lure them back," McCartney, a tall, cheerful redhead, explains. "I think there's a danger in being too girly though."

Ask Elbaz how he became so infatuated with tulle in his current spring line (his breakthrough second collection for Guy Laroche), and you know you are speaking to a truly soulful craftsman. "Something about it immediately attracted me," he explains. "Not everything goes through the brain; some things go straight through the heart." Elbaz's clothes--pink and white dresses of layered tulle with dainty streams of sequins, billowy-sleeved jackets and Capri pantsuits--are so achingly beautiful that when the designer came to Manhattan to launch the line at a small show for select shoppers and members of the fashion press, at least one enraptured audience member actually began to tear.

Elbaz does seem to possess an innate understanding of women's lives that many male designers have lacked. "I just want women to enjoy themselves and be able to eat dessert," Elbaz told guests at the show. Talking about his clothes days later, he continued, "Women can walk in them and go from a cab to a party. They don't have to be zipped up and carried. They can wear them to work and not look like men." And he may know too that women often buy clothes for lives they think they'll have, the ones in which there is time to come home from the office and change into sweet dresses he creates for nights of elegant fun. "The idea of day wear into evening wear is over," he maintains.

Surely, if Elbaz's aesthetic says anything, it is that every moment of life should be savored. In fact, Elbaz, a 36-year-old Moroccan native, grew up in and attended design school in Tel Aviv, where he always knew his world could change in an hour. Elbaz was an unknown when he was hired by the president of Guy Laroche, Ralph Toledano, in June 1996. Although Guy Laroche was one of the most successful houses in Paris during the late '80s, it too fell on hard times as fashion turned its gaze to austerity.

When Elbaz, who had spent 7 1/2 years assisting Geoffrey Beene, first brought his sketches to Guy Laroche, Toledano recalls, "In my mind I said, This is my guy." Elbaz had taken a vacation to create his portfolio and produced designs Toledano found breathtakingly feminine. The designer's personal style was also appealing. "When he came to see me, he had on red shoes and a red jacket. The guy knew how to capture your attention." But because the decision was such an important one, Toledano knew he should see as many candidates as possible. "I wanted to protect myself from too much emotion."

There's no doubt that the executive's final choice was a wise one. "With Elbaz," says Richard Martin, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, "we are witnessing the arrival of a great talent." Elbaz and McCartney won more good reviews for their fall collections, shown in March. He featured luxurious skirt suits accented with fur or pink; she offered more alluring pants and rich dresses of blue satin.

Romance, it seems, won't be fleeting. While some may be tempted to write off the move toward adornment as a mere function of the blooming economy, it's important to remember that prosperity has been ours for some time. Last fall's stilettos and minis slit to the waist presented a crude, aggressive sexuality women chose largely to ignore. These were clothes, it seemed, for the woman always carrying around an extra ice pick in her purse, not the one just hoping for a lively Saturday-night dinner date. Women, though, were ready for clothes that invited some attention. In recent years, when sexual correctness was the rage, the romance trend might not have found such an embracing audience. "These dresses," notes Martin, "would have been impossible to make a decade ago."

And maybe, if we can find it in our hearts, we should reserve a small thank-you to Titanic for making women so hungry to look feminine right now. The era depicted in the movie "was, after all, the era of languid dress," Martin is quick to remind. And more to the point, perhaps, the grand era of fools for love.