NORMAN HA RTNELL SAYS: Nude Fashion Is Vulgar

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31985, 12 May 1969, Page 2

NORMAN HA RTNELL SAYS: Nude Fashion Is Vulgar

(By

NORMAN HARTNELL)

I am afraid I see through the “seethrough” look—and I do not like what I see. Woman has always been far more alluring clothed than unclothed. From a designer’s point of view, “see-through” or nude fashions are merely a gimmick.

They are a gimmick to lure the spotlight on to one’s own design, so that one may bask briefly in fame’s limelight.

It was Md to see Paris couturiers resorting to such publicity tricks at the last collections. Paris does not need gimmickry of that sort What was even more astonishing was that couturiers of the calibre of Courreges were producing clothes that exposed so much that anything left was hardly worth seeing. Ironically, away from the lurid headline snatchers were some of tha n4ce*elf>the»,l have seen in Paris for years. What a pity they were pushed out of the limelight. Not dtd the leading lights of French couture descend to what I can only call vulgarity, but the Italians too. Question Of Price I am glad I am not starting out in couture today. If the trend continues, clothes will become io small that you will hardly be able to get them on a coat-banger. And what sort of price can you hope to charge for a garment like that? In my old-fashioned view, bare-bosom dresses, and exposure fashions are like much ultra-modern music—without point or harmony. Ever since Rudi Gernreich and the body stocking, since the first bare-bosom dress, and the first “see-through”

have seen What a

blouse, we have been on this nude kick. I say it is time we put paid to it, and got on with some real fashion—the kind of fashion ordinary people can wear. After all, there are not many social occasions on which one can turn up virtually in one’s birthday suit History, climate, and politics all influence our clothes. They call our present nude look the “psychology of progress,” but to me that is a load of rubbish. What the -nude look Is a sign of is not the permissive society, but gimmickry resulting from a dearth of fashion ideas. Let us examine what this bare fashion actually consists of. In Italy at the last collections, models were dressed in loin cloths and hipsters split up the side, and topped by what were described as “varying bandages, draped through a plastic bangle." A buyer I know was amazed by a virtually-nude model brazenly embellished by a double dow of blossom, strategically positioned. At a beachwear show, anwhite mesh dress with virtually nothing underneath. In Paris, one outfit involved swinging plastic discs and very little elae. Swing

too much to right or left, and the discs left nothing to the imagination. The same designer produced a dress made of wire links, and announced that bras and underpinnings were very old hat indeed. . In Paris, too, at another famous house, models wore only waistcoats—no shirts or bras—to top their trousers. A ye ye boutique which dresses Brigitte Bardot put all customers into tiny sequin bras, see-through trousers, and allowed them only ono "cover up” a gold tummy chain. One of my own models has bought a shift with a cut-out half-moon over the turn, revealing her navel, but already she is in some doubt when to wear the thing. Her sister owns an organdie dress under which she must wear nothing, she has been told. Her only hope is that the enormous blossoms in the print will hide her modestyClothes, I have always believed are for wearing. If you cannot move, walk, sit, apply for a job, shop, holiwhat on earth is the point In having them?lt is a, good joke but'surely an expensive one. It is a fact of life that most women look better covered-

up, and to my mind a gentle decollete is far more likely to arouse interest and admiration than a totally topless lady. As for underwear being old hat, very few women can do without some support from underneath. Foundations and lingerie improve and beautify most women, to say nothing of keeping them warm. Besides, look at the lives led by today's women. They often have a triple existence —being a mother, a housewife and a career woman. What good Is an expensive dress that does not really cater for any of these roles? No. let us have done with this foolishness. Give women back their beautiful clothes—and with them, their dignity.