Paris fails to give direction

Press, 1 April 1985, Page 8

Paris fails to give direction

NZPA-NYT Paris “Simple” is the watchword for his new collection. Yves Saint Laurent was telling everyone after his autumn and winter show this week. “Simple for evening too,” he added. He might also have said “sporty,” since most clothes for day and evening are constructed in separate parts and have a casual look, at least compared with the rest of Paris. The evening part of the new season’s dressing scheme was well covered by two women of elegance, Jacqueline de Ribes and Hanae Mori. Both presented slender, flowing dresses that had a quiet grace. Mori surprised her audi-

ence by offering commendable daytime styles as well, including some knitted dresses patterned with abstract designs on white, purple, black or red backgrounds. With the addition of the classically draped dresses presented by Alix Gres, and Valentino’s soft siren, crepe styles earlier in the week, there is a fine selection of gracious evening clothes that are not enveloped by an aura of glitter. The new French word added to fashion’s lexicon this week is “cagoule,” meaning hood. Saint Laurent reinforced

the trend that was prominent in many showings by adding a hood to every one of the jersey tunics and short skirts that opened his collection. In addition to grey, brown, and black, the tunic outfits appeared in varied color mixtures, such as a wine hood with a rust tunic and skirt, a grey hood and skirt with a hot pink tunic. The jersey dresses that followed also had hoods.

Short skirts to Saint Laurent means hemlines that stop well above the knee. He is one of the few designers here to make such a strong point of the mini, carrying it through for evening in black velvet skirts with a variety of tops. Sexy, all-beaded dresses Were also short; they would work very well as tunics with trousers. There were, of course, plenty of trousers throughout the collection to carry on the separates theme. Many of them were rounded over the hips, tapering to the ankle. Legs were always covered with opaque stockings, and the most popular shoe in the collection was a high heel, tailored style with stitched outlines on the

straps which crossed at the instep and fastened just below the ankle.

Raincoats looked new in prints, including nicely coloured plaids in grey with with tan, or blue with beige, and in marbled patterns like book-end papers. There were also a good deal of patterned, knitted clothes, including sweater dresses. The newest jacket was a draped, rounded style with the grace of a cape. While there were traditional tweed suits, boleros offered a fresh note — in corduroy with matching trousers and a lightly patterned, men’s wear worsted with a highrise waistband on the skirt. The model showing a green velvet, short jacket over a white shirt and tie, with a narrow black skirt,

received enthusiastic applause. Evening styles made a point of basic pieces in arresting colours, such as the crepe, surplice-wrap blouses with long skirts. Lavender with brown, and turquoise with mauve, were two of the combinations.

Fitted moire jackets had lightly jewelled borders, and short, black, evening separates were shown with fake diamonds the size of

golf balls as accessories. There were moments of high drama, typified by the long crushed velvet dress in rugby red that drew as much applause as the green velvet jacket shown earlier. But it was essentially a muted, serious collection with a relaxed, casual look. The best clothes by Jacqueline de Ribes continue to be her evening dresses, which have slender skirts with some kind of fullness at the top — floating capelets, for instance, or big, gathered sleeves. Sometimes the fabric is draped to form wings at the back, and, on a few styles, gathered ruffles form bustles.

Though they do not look complex, these are very grand evening dresses, designed to make a woman appear tall and willowy, like the designer herself. Many of them are in heavy Moroccan silk crepe, or black velvet. The capes and sleeves are in paler shades. It was considered something of a novelty when the designer, a perennial mem-, ber of best dressed lists onboth sides of the Atlantic, introduced her own dress collection a few seasons ago. She is serious about her work, and is making a con-

tribution to the fashion scene here.

Hanae Mori, whose headquarters are in Japan, has also won her place in the French fashion pantheon. It is usually her distinctive, Japanese-flavoured prints that command attention and, of course, she offers many of those. They include her signature, butterfly patterns along with landscape designs. But there are many long black, or red jersey, dresses. Her final scene centres on black velvet dresses with sheer panels of cut-velvet spiralling around the body, or inset in the front of the dress.

Before she gets to those sinuous dresses suitable for diplomatic receptions or charity balls, however, she presents jewelled sweaterdresses with cloud-like patterns embroidered in beads, as well as jewelled cashmere sweaters with either short skirts, or long pants. These offer a special slant on informal evening dressing. The French collections ended without displaying the energy of the London shows, or the luxury of the Milan presentations. It was not one of the brighter

seasons, as designers showed confusion about whether new clothes should be short or long, colourful or sober, plain or fancy.