Taking Long Shots : * Fashion: Dior, Chanel and Lacroix deliver more calf- and ankle-grazing lengths for spring. ‘Women won’t wear them,’ one observer says.
PARIS — It was par for the course that models smoked cigarettes on the runway atthe Christian Dior show. Maybe it was supposed to look glamorous, but smoking is out in the States. Indeed, French designers can’t seem to get much of anything right this season. It’s clear things are really off kilter when both Chanel and Christian Lacroix falter.
Halfway through Monday’s Chanel show, one American magazine editor sitting close to the stage shook her head and said, “No, it doesn’t work.”
That was the moment Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld had unleashed a towel set, a terry-cloth velour sarong skirt and cardigan jacket, onto the runway--a low point of the morning.
One problem at Chanel and elsewhere this week had to do with an issue that seems ridiculously outdated: How long is your skirt?
Above the knee. Just below the knee. Mid-calf. Ankle length. Short in front and long in back. The French have tried them all this week.
If designers can’t decide what looks right, it’s a good bet plenty of women can. They rejected the miniskirt last time it was pushed on them. Chances are they’ll reject mid-calf and longer skirts, too. They are awkward, immobilizing--and worst of all--unflattering.
“Women won’t wear them,” jewelry designer Paloma Picasso said before the Monday Dior show. “We don’t want anything extreme. Not extremely short or extremely long,” she said, adding, “I haven’t seen any collections I’ve liked lately.”
At Chanel, Lagerfeld tried every length, starting with a 1950s couture look, cut an elegant half-inch below the knee. That did work, and it looked new, especially in a series of reed-thin, pastel tweed suits with high-waisted, back-slit skirts. He showed them with hip-length strands of crystal beads mixed with medium-, not mega-, weight gold chains.
The show was a change in direction to a subtler, softer image for Chanel. For one thing, Lagerfeld peeled off half the accessories he has shown in recent collections. Fishnet and black leather have made way for pastoral fig-leaf jewelry, garlands of necklaces, straw hats resembling thatched roofs and country-girl wooden clogs. Colors were creamy blues, ivories and pinks or warm pastels.
But as the Chanel show went on, hemlines fell toward mid-calf on some white knit tube dresses. And the dresses seemed to rebel; they kept riding up to the models’ knees.
An ankle-grazing shirtwaist all but overwhelmed the tall Bardot-like model Claudia Schiffer, even though she wore it unbuttoned over matching short shorts.
Shorts under long skirts, worn open to the waist in front, found their way into many spring collections.
For evening, Chanel paired white ribbed muscleman T-shirts, the kind that come three to a pack at the drugstore, with luxurious black silk evening skirts--mid-calf length columns. But that didn’t work much better than the towel set. The fabrics refused to blend, the proportions were off, and the whole thing looked contrived and forced.
Pale tulle ballgown-size skirts went with Gap-style single-pocket white T-shirts, as well as nubby tweed daytime jackets. This made for a softer club-scene look than the black tulle and motorcycle jackets of Chanel’s last collection.
There were certainly things for Chanel shoppers to buy in this collection. The daytime suits that women are most likely to sink $4,000 or so into were some of the best clothes. But all told, the designer has gone back to the woods, in more ways than one.
Christian Lacroix has always shown his collections in his own salon, a whimsical, salmon- colored room on rue Faubourg Saint Honore where haute couture customers go for fittings. But the small space required the staging of as many as five shows per day during fashion week. This time, he moved into one of the tents in the Cour Carree, a courtyard of the Louvre where most of the shows are held.
Lacroix jackets were the best thing in the show. They were appliqued, embroidered, colorful and cut in short or longer shapes. They could be toned down or tuned up, depending on how a woman wanted to wear them.
One standout was a marine-blue duster, with a silver emblem embroidered on the back, worn unbuttoned over narrow white pants and a striped navy T-shirt.
An ivory silk dress, mid-calf length, all pleats and worn belted, was another strong step toward simple, elegant dressing. So was a knee-baring navy-blue evening dress with a sheer overdress that fluttered in the graceful, ladylike manner that is pure Lacroix.
But the designer started to go overboard when he brought out the prints. They collided in a riot of patterns, prints and colors. Lacroix’s signature heart and hand print, a new black and white graffiti print, and an assortment of pastel houndstooth checks seemed to clash in every outfit. Pants included a pair in a peach and pink print, cropped, cuffed and topped by a green houndstooth swing coat that took the outfit somewhere over the top.
Among the best of the daytime suits was a willow-green and ivory check style with tendrils of little red flowers embroidered on the sleeves.
Swimsuits/bodysuits in Lacroix prints, with floor-length flounced skirts wrapped over them, were a modern approach to eveningwear.
Only a few accessories accompanied each outfit, all of them Lacroix signature looks: brightly colored geometric-shaped bags, extra large straw-brimmed hats and elbow-length black lace gloves for daytime sun dresses.
Retailers disagreed about the collection.
“I love the man but not the clothes,” one buyer said.
“You have to think of Lacroix as an experimentalist,” said Lynn Manulis of the Martha Boutique in New York, one of the first U.S. stores to carry the label. “The whole fashion world goes to Lacroix as a source of ideas,” Manulis added.
Valentino gave new meaning to the word lingerie in his Sunday show. The hottest item in his spring line was a romper, just barely more substantial than a teddy, with a slip top and very short shorts, both trimmed in lingerie lace.
To expose it, models peeled off a mid-calf-length circle skirt in a matching print. It was a clever way to make long look palatable.
Valentino’s white-on-navy polka-dot trench coats looked right at ankle length--partly because long coats are genuinely useful in the rain and partly because he showed them over short shorts.
For evening, his look was almost exclusively very short and colorful dresses with full skirts.
Last season, the press and paparazzi got used to snuggling with Sylvester Stallone, chitchatting about his fashion model girlfriend, Jennifer Flavin, who was on the runway. But the celebrity scene has been quiet this season. Anjelica Huston was supposed to model in Thierry Mugler’s show, but didn’t. And Madonna was supposed to appear at Jean-Paul Gaultier’s show, but she wasn’t there, either.
Eye-catchers in the audience have been reduced to a few French actresses--remember Marie-Christine Barrault in the movie “Cousin Cousine”? She was at Dior, along with Baroness de Rothschild and Paloma Picasso.
The best-looking clothes on the Dior runway included perforated black leather tops worn with narrow pants.
Things went wrong when Dior designer Gianfranco Ferre got too creative. Green and white print pants with bronze leather piping and an exaggerated cut didn’t work. Neither did sheer navy-blue evening dresses with enormous oversize white collars.
But all the disappointments of the week were more than made up for Monday evening when Audrey Hepburn and French designer Hubert de Givenchy hosted an exhibit at the Musee Galliera to celebrate his 40 years as a leading fashion designer.
Seeing the white organdy dress with black embroidered skirt that he created for her to wear in “Sabrina,” the 1964 movie, was worth the trip to Paris.
A black cocktail dress with a petal flounce skirt from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” was another Hepburn-Givenchy merger from 1961. Givenchy’s mini-length wedding dress strewn with silk lilies of the valley was another tribute to his genius.
Madame Georges Pompidou, wife of the late French president, embraced Hepburn like an old friend when they met. Victor Skrebneski, the legendary fashion photographer whose photos of Hepburn wearing Givenchy dresses were on display, added to the glamour.
Hepburn, by the way, wore a just-to-the-knee black silk dress, sheer black hosiery and low-heel black dress shoes.
She looked absolutely perfect.
