Boiler Suits Worn To New York Parties

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31499, 13 October 1967, Page 3

Boiler Suits Worn To New York Parties

(By

PATSY ANN DAVIDSON)

NEW YORK.

Andre Courreges, of Paris, has a big influence in New York. American women play follow the leader, and since this couturier showed boiler suits at his last collection, they have become suddenly most popular for evening wear.

The French designer likes boiler suits, play suits, romper suits, and freedom-and action clothes. He added a flower to the working man’s denims, and called them feminine fashion. Thus the boiler suit, once a symbol of honest toil, is now high fashion.

Today’s boiler suit resembles its first cousin, a pair of jeans, and is only slightly less comfortable to wear. It comes in chocolate, white, navy and khaki denim. One manufacturer of boiler suits said recently: “The working man has become a fashion influence in his own right!” The other side of the coin was seen when couturiers designed more glamorous factory wear and overalls in Lon-

don. Remember Hardy Amies’ air hostess and waitress clothes? Acrylic fibre has become very fashionable in a matellasse knit. It looks swirly, in diagonal tiers. It is canary yellow, thick and quilted and very lush. Marvellous for evenings, but only for the thin. Quilted fabrics like this new orlon make even snakes look fat. What else did September bring to New York? It brought long black stockings called leg-pulls, leather leggings or seven-league boots, shiny stockings, and altogether what is called a PanSlav look in fashion—meaning Ta’sarist maxicoats, muzhik dirndl skirts, and swaggering Cossack blouses and tunics. September brought a crop of capesuits, which dot the sidewalks just like leaves in the fall, and September also brought “Le Smoking.” “Le Smoking” is what men used to wear when they retired to smoke and talk mantalk. Now women wear velvet pantsuits in lush black, with frilly white “Lord Fauntleroy” shirts. The only way to tell the girls from the boys at a party is to watch the hairline. The girls pin on false ringlets. The boys do not—as yet. (All rights reserved)