Fashion 89 : Skirt Length: Paris Hems and Haws : Most Designers Bare the Knee; Lagerfeld Goes Longer
PARIS — That troublesome skirt length question is still unresolved in the spring/summer couture collections now under way here.
So far, Christian Lacroix, Marc Bohan at Dior and Emanuel Ungaro continue to endorse just-above-the-knee lengths, while Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel (who caused the whole controversy and confusion a year ago when he showed long mixed with short) puts the emphasis on low calf lengths.
Lagerfeld has a handful of top-of-the-knee lengths, but he is obviously happier with longer, pleated georgette or chiffon skirts teamed with elongated jackets. When the skirts were in motion, the longer proportion looked great. Some of the narrow versions looked frankly retrospective.
As if to indicate there was nothing old or aging about this proportion, Lagerfeld sent the models hopping and skipping down the runway like so many saucy little rich girls. Further emphasizing that jeune fille feeling: white stockings, black patent leather flats and big hats wrapped with wide taffeta bows.
Pants, the alternative to the length controversy in many ready-to-wear collections, have been present but not emphasized at these custom shows. Only two pairs showed up at Chanel and both were beauties: black satin, wide-leg pants teamed with a black tunic-length wool jacket over a white satin blouse, and a long, narrow cardigan jacket in black wool crepe above trousers in matching fabric.
The turnout for the Lagerfeld show Tuesday at the Theatre des Champs Elysees, home of the Orchestre de Paris, included everyone from the Begum Aga Khan and Princess Caroline of Monaco to Americans Susan Gutfreund and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman, not to mention Bernadette Chirac, wife of the mayor of Paris, Marie Helene de Rothschild and Madame David Weil of the French banking family.
A Flash of Color
While everyone else in Paris has collections filled with pretty pastels, Lagerfeld put the emphasis on navy and white, with an occasional flash of vivid color or a pastiche of delicate pastel.
The luxury in this collection was the hand-pleated chiffon dresses, representing weeks of work in the couture studios. Over many of these “Daisy Buchanan” wisps of garments were re-embroidered masses of huge “diamonds” with the ubiquitous Chanel pearls wrapped around the throat and trailing practically to the knees.
Again, as with Bohan’s Dior collection shown Monday, there were pieces here that would work with Chanels already in one’s wardrobe, as well as evening beauties that will surely wind up in a costume museum.
Before his show, Emanuel Ungaro said his inspiration was Katharine Hepburn.
“Looked more like Catherine the Great to me,” an American observer commented after the last of the 74-piece collection had come down the runway.
But couture is synonymous with luxury and luxury is what Ungaro gave his customers. While couture houses rarely discuss price, everything here looked megabucks: Think $25,000 to $30,000 for an outfit.
Back to Louis XVI
In this bicentenary of the French Revolution, the designer looked back to the ancien regime of Louis XVI: exquisite brocades reembroidered with gold threads; gold sequins and beads outlining necklines, lapels and pockets; hand woven lace insets shaping bosoms on flounce-skirted dresses billowing over petticoats, everything in the floral print mixes and fauve colors the designer loves.
There was definitely a new silhouette here, with Ungaro dropping his signature drapings. Instead, fabrics were smocked or puckered from just below the bust to the top of the hips and then flared on those masses of petticoats. New, too, is his high, pulled-up and puffed shoulder which he used on all his jackets.
Skirt Length
For day, when he wasn’t showing pants, he clung to a skirt length that always bared the knee, the shorter lengths stressed with shiny-surface tights and sling-back high-heel satin pumps.
The background music, a trumpeter and organist playing selections from Purcell and Handel somehow seemed more suitable to a society wedding or a Royal Occasion than a fashion show but, never mind, it was all part of that unique Ungaro ambiance.
Ditto the models’ coiffures; hair swirled in a snail-shaped pompadour perched on the forehead then caught back into a low chignon. Depending on the fabrics and colors of an outfit, the models sometimes looked like Toulouse-Lautrec can-can dancers, sometimes like 18th-Century royals.
A Few Standouts
There were a few simple standouts, however, especially the white satin halter-top dresses, the top pleated on the bias and anchored through the midriff with masses of silver and rhinestone beading.
The collections continue today with Yves Saint Laurent and, in the evening, Gianni Versace’s first couture collection at the Musee d’Orsay followed by a sit-down dinner and a private visit of the museum.
