High fashion best paying export

Press, 25 February 1984, Page 12

High fashion best paying export

France’s best paying export at the moment for its economically fragile Socialist Government is high fashion clothes from its handful of superstar designers.

If Yves St Laurent were British instead of French he would long ago have been Sir Yves for the prestige and money he has raked in for his country. But it is the Americans who have honoured him during his lifetime (he is still aged only 47) with a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, which is attracting 4000 visitors a day.

So this season it was to an even greater crowd of fashion professionals than usual that St Laurent showed his Sprint Haute Couture collection for 1984. Although primarily intended for a rich private clientele, the Haute Couture collection is a forerunner of style for the whole trade. His ideas this time are a white satin rain-proof trenchcoat for the evening, worn over a sequinned sweater; and trouser suits

— but very feminine with spencer jackets opening on silk blouses, with a sash looped through the waistband of the trousers or the skirt. For the first time the St Laurent bride wore a white trouser suit, but with a veiled boater and high heeled white pumps. With St Laruent’s expert sense of proportion and flair it looked splendid, but it was more of a statement of the whole collection than in-

tended as a guideline for brides. The dominating colours for this collection are bright red, jade green, turquoise, rose pink and purple, mixed in with white and navy blue. Each couturier usually has his pet celebrity, the woman he most likes to dress. For St Laurent it is French actress Catherine Deneuve. She was already wearing his new spring colours of pale eau de nil green and violet. For Marc Bohan of Dior the pet celebrity is Princess Caroline of Monaco who made her first appearance at his collection as a newlymarried woman accompanied by her young husband, Stephano' Casiraghi. Bohan showed silk blouses, worn with mallow mannish ties, silk and satin teeshirts, fastening in front or on the hips with a sash.

Pierre Cardin used mixed quintuplets to show his line in children’s clothes. Indeed “mixed” was rather the key word for his collection, because what with the children and the rather awkward American student male models, who looked as if they were only there because they needed the money, it all seemed a bit blurred.

However, Cardin had all his usual lines — geometric suits, high collared swinging coats, flying saucer hats. He puts it neatly himself: “The body should take the form of a dress. A vase doesn’t take the form of the water in it.” — Copyright, London Observer Service.