Summer ’85 preview — fun season

Press, 15 May 1985, Page 17

Summer ’85 preview — fun season

In vogue

Paula Ryan

I just can’t resist it ... while working constantly on next summer and into winter ’B6, I simply cannot resist the temptation to slip in early news on forthcoming seasons. Summer will have many themes, but I’ll be more specific later. What keeps emerging over and over again are the new summer sweaters and boxy shorts for girls, and the “loose change” for boys.

The newest knitted dressing for hot weather will be bare, bare, bare. To many of you, sweater dressing and summer weather may seem a contradiction in terms, but next season’s looks will prove that they are not. Some of the newest and best selling fashions at trade level are knit pieces, city-level pieces, a wealth of new dresses, skirts, sweaters and tops. Why? These are new yarns that make sweater dressing a pleasure in summer, and these will be available in ready-to-wear garments, and knitting yarns for the home knitter. Knitwear for summer will become feasible, comfortable, and very packable.

One delight for summer is the new way with bareness. Fashion designers and knitting pattern developers are cutting sweater shapes with deep armholes, with shoulders showing, or with flirty, open backs. They are also offering revamped versions of the sixties midriff and knitted halter with updating on deep armholes, low front-and-back singlets. Knit, short-and-clinging “flirt” skirts will also have their place of importance along with above-the-knee versions of the city shorts.

The best of the new knits come with an inherent ease, coupled with a sense of leanness, or super-loose and shoulder-falling. In menswear, there’s an “about turn” towards a newer, looseawareness. Some will call the looks pajama dressing but the fact is whatever we call it these looks are not expected to be hemmed in by trendy terms.

It is simply fashion at its most unconstructed, maybe unconventional form. It is perfect dressing for home, or boat lounging, and only is designed to be. worn when the weather is’ warm and

the dress modes are casual. Fluid, lightweight, and often in over-sized silhouettes, these styles are more a gesture of refining experimental themes than a deliberate departure from old standards. The innovation of the “loose” looks, is that designers have worked from the inside out, removing all padding, dropping shoulders, and adding fullness to sleeves. In many summer designs, length has been added to both shirt-tails and jacket skirts for a leaner silhouette. Important to this new, casual theme, are a mix of fabrics, tonal colours, and large prints and stripes in unexpected colour combinations. So when summer comes round again don’t be put off by the new, loose, fluid, menswear theme. These clothes spell comfort, and I expect could have an impact lasting well beyond one season.