Fashion 87 : Dresses for Summer Are Proving That a Little Can Go a Long Way

They’re bare, they’re body huggers and, often as not, they’re cut above the knee. What’s more, they’re meant for wearing to work.

This summer’s hottest fashion item is the dress. And while not every dress is cut off or cut out to bare the back or shoulders, the trend is certainly moving that way.

Cathy Hardwick makes several short, backless dresses she sees as wearable to the office. The New York-based designer tops them with slouchy blazers, cotton cardigans or shawls for day.

Among the First to Switch

Hardwick, who used to specialize in separates, was among the first to tap into the trend. About a year ago, she opened a dress division, independent of her sportswear line.

She likes summer styles to be sleeveless as well as backless, with skirts that are tiered and full, if not tight and narrow, and her favorite length is two inches above the knee.

Age is no excuse for avoiding short dresses, Hardwick says. She suggests that even women in their 50s with well-toned bodies bare up to four inches above the knee.

Her one concession: “Wear tinted hosiery so you won’t look so naked.” With the hose, she recommends shoes with 1 1/2- or two-inch heels for day, higher for night, to wear with short skirts. High heels make a skirt look shorter.

“My dresses are very sporty and simple,” Hardwick says. The style describes the main features of all the leading new looks, especially those by designers such as Hardwick. As with their taste in sportswear, their clean-line dresses are ruffles-and-ridges-free.

Other designers, Betsey Johnson among them, are showing short pouf and petticoat dresses for summer, which often look best with wide, waist-cinching belts that accent the full hem.

One of the inspirations for Johnson’s dresses are the net crinolines she’s been showing lately, to wear like sheer skirts over skintight leggings.

For summer, she’s put petticoats under dresses for a change. She offers short styles, but says her longer dresses, fitted through the bodice and flared at the hem, are just as popular. “It’s a feminine balance to the rumpled, crumpled layered sportswear so many women wear so much of the time,” Johnson says of the dress difference.

She built her fashion reputation more than 20 years ago with stretch cotton “leotardic, second-skin” clothes, and she’s stayed with the look through fashion’s mood swings.

The latest surge of body-clinging clothes is pushing her into fashion’s foreground again. Recently, Johnson opened shops in Santa Monica and on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, and she plans to open one in San Francisco, she says.

While the newest look in dresses as well as in skirts is short and sleek, designers agree there is room in any wardrobe for long and very long lengths. “For when you don’t care about looking hip and fashionable, long is beautiful; it’s classic,” Johnson says.

Louis Dell’Olio, who designs the Anne Klein and Anne Klein II collections, says dresses are in the limelight this summer, because they’ve been overshadowed by sportswear for so many years.

“There’s a whole generation of women who’ve never worn dresses,” he points out.

Short, by Dell’Olio’s standard, means mid-knee length at most. He says ankle-length dresses look best this summer if they’re made of a lightweight fabric and worn with flat sandals.

For night, Dell’Olio says: “Live your fantasy.”

Store buyers don’t seem surprised that dresses are a hot fashion item for summer. They say the look is usually in demand at this time of the

year.

“They’re easier to wear than separates in hot weather,” the Broadway’s fashion director, Lee Hogan Cass, explains. The majority of dresses at Broadway stores are meant for office wear, she says.

“Executive dresses can be chemise looks or they can be tighter, slimmer belted styles but not bare or cut out,” by Broadway shoppers’ standards, Cass says.

“No length dress looks wrong,” Bullock’s Vice President Karen Weiss says. But only fashion trailblazers are serious about short right now, she says. For the rest, Weiss predicts: “Lengths will start to get shorter next spring.”

As for the shapes of dresses, Weiss notes: “Women are a lot more accepting of change. They’re open to wearing dresses with full skirts or narrow, shorter skirts.”

Most Banana Republic customers who opt for dresses this summer plan to pack them for travel. The store’s assistant manager, Lisa Lowry, says one best-selling style buttons down the front from top to bottom and often is bought to wear as a lightweight coat as well as part of a multilayered travel wardrobe.

This summer’s newest way with layers, Lowry says, is to wear a tank style over a safari style--dress over dress.