Flipping Over Fashion
When I was a child, I often played with a spiral-bound book, the cardboard pages of which were cut into thirds. Each page had a costumed character on it, and the game consisted of flipping the pages so that the costumes became jumbled in silly ways: a fireman’s hat with Marie Antoinette’s hourglass bodice with a harlequin’s diamond-patterned tights. It was a giggle. It was also a 99-cent lesson in what the multibillion-dollar fashion industry does every season, remixing trends from seasons past into something somehow more intriguing, something that will become, as the Chic Seekers like to say, a Fashion Moment.
A Fashion Moment is what happens when all the little blips on the trend-spotters’ radar screens converge into the style equivalent of a nor’easter, blowing from the runways, through the stores, to the closets of women everywhere. How long does a Fashion Moment last? Sometimes no longer than a paparazzo’s flash. Adjust your Chanel shades and you’ve missed it. Gucci’s big-shouldered suits of last fall, for instance, were heralded as sensational by the Chic Seekers, yet they disappeared before they ever appeared on the masses.
But sometimes Fashion Moments linger. Consider the slipdress that’s been worked and reworked by designers--short, long, plain, frilly--over several seasons and is still going strong. (See “floaty, billowing look” below.) As it evolves, the pages keep flipping, and women keep watching, wondering whether this is a Moment that’s truly momentous.
What does all this mean for spring? First, sleek and skinny is out; volume is in. That’s not to say fashion’s fickle finger won’t point to pencil skirts and cigarette pants. It will. It’s just that the winds are shifting ever so slightly. As actress Chloe Sevigny, a thrift-shop-scouring anti-fashion Chic Seeker said recently: “Tight is, as they say, tired.” Jean-Paul Gaultier apparently agrees. His huge tulle skirts recall Alice in Wonderland’s Red Queen. Miuccia Prada sent her own bubble skirts down the runway, Todd Oldham showed pouf-skirted party dresses and the Chic Seekers are already predicting that the full-legged pants shown by nearly everyone will soon be slouching toward Middle America.
Parachute silk joins wispy chiffons and liquid jerseys as the newest way to achieve the new floaty, billowing look. (Donna Karan and Calvin Klein featured enough to outfit an entire battalion.) Sheer is still popular despite women’s ambivalent response to it last season, and leather is back, but in different colors, weights and cuts than ever before, as proved by Ralph Lauren’s whipstitched shirtdress, Jill Stuart’s hot-pink hot pants, Ellen Tracy’s python-print suede slit skirts and Michael Kors’ cropped kidskin pants. And gray--in a reprise from the fall collections--is the new brown, which was the new black, which is the color that is really always the new, the old and the future black.
But Fashion Moments are not just a matter of being in or out. They’re a matter of context. Here’s how it works: A cashmere twin set with a taffeta ball gown is genius, while a cashmere twin set with a pleated skirt, the sort you’d find at Brooks Brothers, is boring, unless, like Marc Jacobs, you show those pleated skirts, like so many paper cupcake holders, in every variation (knife-pleated, accordion-pleated, box-pleated) and paired with sweaters in juicy colors such as amethyst and orchid. Still with me? Jacobs had his biggest critical success in years with clothes that were, curiously, as basic as they come. Says L.A. stylist Phillip Bloch: “It was as if he’d taken one idea and split it into a million molecules. A look as clean and beautiful as the sun.”
Pleats turned out to be one of the season’s biggest Fashion Moments. (See “skinny vs. volume” above.) Todd Oldham did pleated minis; Comme des Garons showed pleats in double tiers resembling cafe curtains. Even bad girl Betsey Johnson offered up long, full skirts as crisply crimped as lampshades.
And then there were those looks pulled straight from the locker room, dusted off and presented with chilly deadpan attitude. Another lesson in context might be helpful here: A warmup suit done in fuchsia nylon with zebra-striped insets and worn with lots of gold is beneath contempt to a Chic Seeker. But take the zip-front, hooded top, do it in cashmere and team it with a straight, knee-length skirt or a pair of clam-diggers and some rubber shower sandals, and it’s suddenly a Fashion Moment.
And remember fanny packs, those ugly things only a clueless tourist would be caught dead wearing strapped to the waist? The look that one designer once told me with a sniff reminded him of a colostomy bag has been rescued from ignominy, too, magically transformed from fashion dud to absolute must-have accessory by none other than Helmut Lang.
If you had to pick the most important detail from the Locker Room Moment, though, it would be the drawstring. (If this sounds familiar, see “skinny vs. volume” again.) Richard Tyler, with all his usual aplomb, dreamed up a halter top with a drawstring back that had the delicate, scalloped look of a seashell, and Daryl K’s sack-like minidress was gathered at the hip, evoking the blouson shape of the ‘70s. Calvin Klein was the King of the String, showing ties in every incarnation, including at the hems of dresses, which gave the vaguely unsettling impression of someone wearing an inverted laundry bag.
Also changing the shape of things to come are wrapping, ruching, scrunching, layering. Anything that added pleats, puckers and folds could be seen at the shows in New York and in Europe. Oscar de la Renta’s strapless dress came with a gathered front. Isaac Mizrahi’s wrap-front jeans and dresses, with ties wound round and round Grecian-style, looked loose and languid. Ralph Lauren offered a bias-cut side-wrap suit that appeared oh-so-Lauren Bacall, and Donna Karan offered up a side-tucked jersey dress in her D collection that managed to be simple without being plain.
Designers, who like to talk in oxymorons as a way of making the old seem new, are also touting “minimal glamour” (not to be confused with “easy elegance” or “sporty sophistication”). Translation: Simple shapes are adorned with just a dusting of glitz, the way Narciso Rodriguez showed his skirt suits with a strapless top banded with sequins. Badgley Mischka did the same sort of thing with a bateau-necked sleeveless top and knee-length embroidered straight skirt. At Giorgio Armani, ruffles dressed up an otherwise austere top.
Not everything, of course, was floaty and full. Some skirts stayed slim, and strapless tops popped up everywhere, from Carolina Herrera’s ladylike ruched bustier with a side ruffle to young Turk Stella McCartney’s strapless sheath. And there were some slim pants, too, albeit with a twist. Clam-diggers, or so the Chic Seekers say, are what we’ll all be lining up to buy come spring. Whether these could possibly be flattering on anyone but Gidget remains to be seen. Stylist Phillip Bloch claims the best way to wear them is as Donna Karan showed them, beneath sheer dresses.
Dresses over pants, by the way, are another Fashion Moment. Which sounds almost as silly as an 18th century ball gown over harlequin tights. Then again, if you don’t like what you see, just wait. The pages are sure to keep flipping. At the Marc Jacobs show, the song “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by the British group the Verve was played over and over again. In it, the singer repeats urgently the words “I can change, I can change.” Well, so can the designers. And you can bet your brand-new clam-diggers they will.
