NORMAN HARTNELL SAYS:- I Do Not Like Trouser-Suits

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31933, 10 March 1969, Page 3

NORMAN HARTNELL SAYS:I Do Not Like Trouser-Suits

LONDON. Ever since my most recent collection my telephone has hardly stopped ringing. “Why,” women want to know, “have you started making trouser-suits when you always said you’d pack up lather than produce such ghastly things?”

They were talking about the one trouser-suit in multicoloured tweed, which I included in my collection at the last minute, and which for some mysterious reason got all the headlines the next day. I have always said I do not like trouser-suits —and I still do not But one cannot sit in the backwaters while the main-stream of fashion swirls by, and if trouser-suits are in the spirit of the times, then I felt I should include at least one. And so I did. Ironically, the journalists swarmed round it and gave it the publicity which—in my opinion —some of the prettier garments deserved far more. That does not mean that I am going into the trouser business in a big way, or that any of my more celebrated clients will be seen in trousers at Ascot or anywhere ! else.

If I thought trousers were that important, I would become a man’s tailor, not a couturier.

With my trouser-suit, in red, green and white tweed, I showed a stetson hat, and plain, “principal boy” shoes with thick heels. Jacket Length I like narrow trousers (if trousers there must be), and my tip to you all is to make sure the jacket is fingertip length, or, as we term it in the trade, a “bottom warmer.” I also showed a pants-dress, in white organdie and feathers, which did not get as much attention as the trousersuit. My pants-dress (call it “What a Bloomer”), is about as likely to sell to my clients

as the trousers, but, like my maxi-skirts last time—unsold until made shorter—it was picked for photographs. However, I do feel harem pants will become increasingly fashionable for evening wear.

Dressy afternoon clothes are dead: it is now a question of clothes for day and night. And when it comes to night, I forsee more and more glamour pants. Princess's Flair Princess Margaret was quick to praise the loveliest suit of the recent London collections with unerring flair. It was, 1 regret, not mine, but by the American designer Scaasi, and it was worn by Barbra Streisand for the London premiere of the film, “Funny Girl.” I saw Miss Streisand at this glittering first night, and certainly her wardrobe for her flying visit to London was most successful. The emerald velvet evening gown, short jacket, and enormous sable hat, muffs and cuffs were part of a “capsule wardrobe” which included trousers in brown, silver and gold brocade. This trouser-suit I consider the most elegant trouser-suit around.

The brocade trousers were worn with a high-waisted tunic, and the furs looked just as well on this. She also had a mini-dress in brocade as an alternative, under the tunic. I like this “togetherness” theme very much. I never thought women would come to wear dresses over trousers, but they are doing so. I have seen one outfit in heavyweight white crepe for spring, with appliqued pastel butterflies at the mandarin frogged neckline. You can wear the dress mini, or as a tunic over trousers. With all the fuss over trousers in my own salon, I have been looking back through my fashion notes, and turned up some nostalgic trouser-suits.

Remember Emilio Pucci’s palazzo pyjamas for hostesses, years ago? Or Bonnie Cashin’s leisure-wear in fringed, suede Minihaha outfits in 1964?

Or, in the same year, Courreges’ astonishing lurex trousers, wom with boots and bonnets. Years before this, Schiaparelli produced trousers. They were full slacks which, in the thirties, were worn for sport first, then—by a frowned-upon few—for shopping. These rather hideous slacks caught on. I have heard it said that in periods of male domination, the clothes of the two sexes are as different as can be, but in periods of female emancipation, the clothes of the two sexes tend to resemble one another even more closely. Now, with so many longhaired men and short-haired women clad identically in trousers, jerkins and sneakers, it is hard to know who’s the “mister.”

If, by producing one pair of Hartnell trousers, I have advanced the matriarchal society by one whit, you have my apologies.