FASHION : Witty Designers Snub Mania for Menswear
NEW YORK — Naomi Campbell has a butterfly tattooed on her bottom. And everyone in the room found out about it at Anna Sui’s fashion show. Campbell, the model who moonlights as a backup singer in music videos, spun a black poet’s cape off her shoulders to uncover a leather thong, and tattoo, underneath.
This really wasn’t one of those shows. But it definitely had its moments. Sui uncapped a costume-trunk full of ‘60s-inspired ideas for her new collection. The runway was awash with Mad Hatter hats, leather bell-bottoms, suede-fringed dresses, tapestry jackets and musketeer hats with ostrich-feather trims.
Carnaby Street, Haight-Ashbury and all of hippiedom careened across the runway in a retro-review that was irresistible.
Even the most serious outfits--mohair plaid suits with short, soft, pleated skirts--were among the freshest seen here this week.
Sui is new to fashion design but not to fashion. She used to be a stylist and worked with Herb Ritts, the Los Angeles-based photographer for Vanity Fair and other Conde Nast magazines.
Her fanciful ideas are infectious, and she may have caught a bug from Todd Oldham. He showed furry, B-movie-star stoles; plush leopard vests with matching Superfly hats; tangerine fake-fur chubs; zebra-print suits in poison green--all engineered to get a giggle.
Most of the jokes played on interior decoration. Oldham reproduced the wallpaper from a Chinese restaurant for one pantsuit. He turned a twisted silk fringe from manor-house drapes into a short shimmy skirt. And his “mirror” dress in matte silver beads resembled an antique.
“It’s the opposite of all the menswear we are seeing this week,” said Kal Ruttenstein of Bloomingdale’s. “It’s the other side of that sea of gray.”
Too true. Ralph Lauren’s collection looked like something from an Edwardian man’s closet. Lauren’s models wore bowler hats, chalk-stripe tail coats and double-breasted suits as they strolled down the runway to the music of “My Fair Lady.”
The greatly appreciated nod to the ‘90s included stretchy chalk-stripe knit skirts, stretch pants and lean riding pants with suede insets. And Lauren softened some outfits with jackets in beautiful shades of violet or China blue.
But still, it was all too stiff, structured and contrived, not right for life outside the Eastern city limit. These clothes could use a week at Lauren’s ranch.
“I would have loved seeing the suits set off by a wonderful ruffled organza dress, the sort of thing Katharine Hepburn might wear,” suggested Joan Kaner, Neiman Marcus fashion director.
Christian Francis Roth looked back to the same Edwardian era as Lauren, with even less success. The best news was a short vest-dress in menswear fabric; a suit with a waist-nipping jacket that looked custom made, and a strapless dress that seemed cut from a man’s brown-and-white wing-tip shoes. But they drowned in a sea of ankle-length skirts with bustles and sidewalk-sweeper coats with sorceress collars.
The highly structured menswear in so many New York fall fashion collections is so wrong for California. It is heavy, hot-looking and over-built. And it’s no way to show off a great body.
West Coast retailers are already a little worried. “We’ll have to add some feminine touches, a lace bodysuit or a mesh T-shirt,” suggested I. Magnin CEO, Rose Marie Bravo.
Or we could forget it completely.
Of all the big-name New York designers showing their fall ’92 collections this week, Calvin Klein seemed most in touch with California. For one thing he figured out a way to Calvinize the Gap, with cashmere-hooded sweat shirts and rich, suede backpacks tossed over one shoulder.
His lightweight wool pants tucked into brown leather desert boots, his minimum construction tweed jackets with alligator money belts strapped around them had the casual, flexible, yet status conscious qualities that are what dressing for the West Coast is all about.
There were a few zingers--leopard-print high-heel booties and matching berets, for example. And Klein succumbed to pin-stripe pressure with some too-restrictive, mid-calf-length coat dresses over matching pants. Some of his longer skirts got twisted around the models’ legs when they walked the runway, which didn’t bode well for the real women who might try to navigate in them.
Between shows, Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour talked about skirt lengths. Designers are showing mostly long for fall. She’s wearing long and short. But some people close to her don’t like long. “Oh mummy, you can’t go out like that,” her little boy told her the other night.
Michael Kors might beg to differ. He showed plenty of long skirts in his collection. But the best thing about it was the way he mixed unexpected fabrics. Suede with lace, and leather with chiffon had a light sensual look.
Kors cut the clean, undecorated shapes he is known for--sarongs, pea coats, and for evening, slip dresses, tunic sweaters and pajama pants. The colors were his usual pale blend--sand, dove, and sea foam green.
Kors has a formula, and a following of women who won’t be surprised by this collection. But it would be nice to see him try something new. One season is starting to look just like another.
