Winter fashions for male peacocks

Press, 3 February 1987, Page 6

Winter fashions for male peacocks

NZPA-Reuter Paris The peacock era of bold and colourful fashions for men surged forward at the week-end with tapered trousers, quilted jumpers, and even silver codpieces on show at ready-to-wear previews for winter. With more and more women entering the work force, men now found it necessary to distinguish themselves by what they wear, said a spokesman for the Paris International Men’s Clothing Exhibition.

One of Europe’s most important clothing fairs, it has this year lured .20 designers and 40,000 buyers and fashion press to the French capital. Men’s ready-to-wear

last year reaped a $5.63 billion turnover for France. Jean-Paul Gaultier, the current favourite of young Paris fashion, presented a rocker-inspired show intended to shock. Models were dressed in lycra bicyclist trousers with silver codpieces attached to the crotch by chains.

Other trousers had a skirt panel between the legs. One model pulled off his skirt to show black see-through tights over striped boxer undershorts.

Claude Montana, named best international designer at a recent exhibition in Munich, showed broad-shouldered leather blousons and jackets tied with a drawstring over zip-necked quilted cotton

jumpers and tapered trousers.

His line was primarily sportswear, with oversize blazers, parkas, and duf-fle-coats, some lined with fur or in stripes. For evening he showed a black suede tuxedo suit with satin lapels and a broad satin stripe down the back.

Colours were navy with purple, camel with navy, khaki and black. Jean-Charles de Castelbajac’s colourful collection combined red, blue, and yellow with an ample sprinkling of warm brown, rust and loden green. Suits had a prosperous Tyrolean look, with highbuttoned jackets lined in contrasting colours. Sports jackets featured external shoulder pads

sewn on with big stitches and patched trouser pockets, reminiscent of United States military fatigues. Jeff Sayre showed bigknit, bulky jumpers with alpine, whaling, and foxhunting themes, plus patchwork combinations of knitted plaids and stripes. Thierry Mugler’s collection was directed at the wealthy and established fashion rebel who has deserted Saville Row. suits but wants the equivalent in refined collairless suits or carefully tailored Nehru jackets. Mugler’s new design was a side-buckled suit with blouson jacket and rolled collar over pleated trousers. His colours were subdued — bronze, khaki,

grey-blue, camel, and bordeaux. j-,,''-

Paul Smith, whose youthful adaptations of traditional British tweeds and cashmeres have captured the yuppie (young urban professional) market in England, Japan, and the United States, showed a collection in Paris for the first time in seven years, \

Smith, aged 40, said he sold to young bankers who used to frequent their father’s Saville Row tailor as well as to Mick Jagger, Harrison Ford, and David Bowie.

After a decade as a menswear designer, he claims a business turnover of £3.5 million in Europe, £4 million in. Japan, and SUS 3 million in the United States.