Home& People Saint Laurent decrees... knees for dancig

Press, 22 April 1978, Page 10

Home& People Saint Laurent decrees... knees for dancig

By

ALINE MOSBY

Pans The designer, Yves Saint Laurent, revived the evening minidress and his traditional sportswear look — even for evening — in his autumn to winter ready-to-wear collection recently. Whether women will return to baring their knees, even if just for evening, was debated by buyers and press streaming out of the two-hour show in the

Palais de Chaillot theatre on Troca iero Square.

Karl Lagerfeld, of the Chloe firm, almost as influential as the mighty Saint Laurent in the world’s ready-to-wear field, showed his 1940 s wide-shouldered dresses that also bared the knees. The Saint Laurent minis looked like black underslips with thin shoulder straps. Coloured scarves

wrapped around the hips long black coats, or flowing sheer scarves dotted with glitter softened the knee shock. Most buyers interviewed agreed the collection was fabulous , and saleable, though possibly not as spectacular as his past glories. “I think women will wear the minis,” said Sonja Kaproni, fashion director of the I. Magnin

store chain in the United States. ‘‘They want something a little more humorous for evening after wearing serious daytime clothes.” The sportswear look for evening should please women who cringe at complicated evening gowns. Skinny satin trousers went with casual satin windbreaker jackets and silk T-shirts — a glamour version of what a college student wears when washing his car. Sometimes the blousy satin jackets had fox fur <jr maribou feather collars. Evening blazers of vel-

veteen or lacquered satin, embossed to look like Florentine leather, went with T-shirts and satin trousers, or swirling satin mid-calf skirts. The daytime sportswear, all at St Laurent’s traditional mid-calf length, had the latest look of squared shoulders. But Saint Laurent left the exaggerated Joan Crawford look to his rivals, who lifted the square shoulder from his January show. The barrel-shaped trousers swamping the two weeks of April ready-to-wear shows also stem from Saint Laurent’s January show, but he fooled the rag trade by showing only a few tapered pants. Most of the daytime wear, like the evening wear, was separates: windbreakers, side-wrapped skirts in leather or velveteen or corduroy, narrow trousers. The show was a riot of plaid — pants, accordionpleated skirts, raincoats, even the lining of doublebreasted mannish coats. Saint Laurent showed lots of black — a trend in the winter Paris shows — and soft green, mauve, purple, brown and caramel.