‘87 Swimwear Given Touch of Elegance
Going to the beach this summer? Buckle up.
Buckle up in the car, of course. But also buckle up when you hit the sand, says swimwear designer Anne Cole.
Cole has dedicated her Preview ’87 collection to “the status symbols of fashionable women everywhere”: She’s used Tiffany-inspired gold buckles, as well as Hermes’ belt, horse-bridle and bow prints and little gold buttons a la Chanel, to make her statement. She showed the collection last weekend at Nordstrom South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa.
“Elegance is hot,” Cole said. “It’s the year of status. No one went to Hermes for years. Now suddenly everyone is going.
“There’s been enough ‘t&a;’ for a while.”(The abbreviated vulgarism that refers to two sections of the female anatomy was actually the name of one of Cole’s past collections.) “Swimwear needed a new twist. We gave it a twist of elegance.”
Cole’s favorite suit in the collection, a “one-piece two-piece” joined by a buckle and exposing the midriff, sold out at Nordstrom before the show. The suits retail for $48.
“We’re trying to bare new parts of the body in new ways,” she said, “to be both sexy and ladylike.”
New colors from Cole are salmon mousse, a bright white called ghost, a beige called chino and sable. Beside buckles, features include Hermes-inspired belt, horse-bridle and bow prints and little gold Chanel buttons. All her suits, Cole said, may be accessorized with gold bracelets.
“The best accessories, of course, are a 23-inch waist and a radiant suntan,” she said.
According to Cole, the “Band-Aid” and “jockstrap” looks are behind us, and the bikini is making a comeback.
“The bikini is back because proportion is back,” Cole said, adding that the proportions of the suits can vary. “You can have a small trunk and a big top or a small top and big trunk. But, in either case, it’s no longer two little Band-Aids.
“The bikini never left Southern California, of course. Here, we live in (practically) no clothes all the time. We feel more natural about our bodies.
“But in the East, they cover up--they’re like moles all year long. Summer comes, they look in the mirror (and feel) kind of all naked. It takes a long time to get used to themselves again.
“They need to understand that as long as your midriff is fine, the rest of you can be falling apart, and you’ll still look good in a bikini.”
According to Cole, her company was founded by her father in 1925. She joined in 1952.
“He was a man of great taste,” she recalled. “He’d been a swimmer and a movie actor, but his mother thought both were scandalous. She told him to go to work. He got a job in a drop-seat underwear factory, which was pretty deadly until he realized he could use that same machinery to plunge the neckline instead of the seatline and . . . Cole swimwear was born.” She began the Nordstrom show with a retrospective of swimwear from 1850 to the present.
“If you had a figure problem in 1850, no one would ever know,” Cole said. “The suit was all wool and weighed five pounds. One good dive and that would be the last they’d hear of you.
“Of course, people didn’t dive back then. They hardly went swimming. They went bathing. “
In 1909, Annette Kellerman was thrown off the beach in Boston and “taken to the pokey” for indecent exposure. Kellerman was a swimmer, she explained; though her suit covered her body, it was considered too form-fitting.
Cole also showed the “scandal suit” of the 1960s: “It was all that fishnet in the middle that made it so naughty--you could see the navel.
“It’s taken us 100 years to go up the leg from the ankle to the crotch,” she concluded. “We start 1986 out on that note.”
Looking beyond 1986 to the future, Cole believes knowledge about skin cancer will change our habits.
“I think the no smoking sign is about to go on our bodies--we’re just finding out what the sun can do,” she said.
“I don’t think we’re going to go back to the bag (the 1850s’ all-wool suit), the hat and the covered-up arms. But I do think there’s going to be more swimming and less sunning. Both, of course, would be wonderful for our bodies.
“Sunning has been a craze. It’s a social thing. The girls have been meeting the guys on beach towels, if you will. Soon maybe they’ll start meeting out in the water.”
Dan Gauthier has been named a national finalist in the Robinson’s “Face of the ‘80s” competition. Gauthier, who lives in San Diego, was chosen over 23 other male models at a fashion show held in the department store’s Fashion Island location last week. Success at the finals, June 7 in Rye, N.Y., will entitle him to a two-year, $50,000-a-year contract with the Ford modeling agency, co-sponsor of the search with GQ magazine.
