SPRING COLLECTIONS / PARIS : The Masters of Disguise Layer It On
The French fashion collections would make a great movie. Hollywood directors have said so for years. Now, Robert Altman is doing something about it.
He has been “researching” the Paris shows all week, starting with Issey Miyake and Comme des Garcons on Friday. Filming for “Pret-a-Porter,” the movie, is scheduled to begin in March.
Looking fashionably slim for a man described as beefy in his younger years, Altman, 68, hung out in the press tent like everybody else, waiting for the action to begin.
“Fashion interests me as theater,” he said. “My film is really about nakedness. What we wear becomes disguises.”
No shortage of them in the spring collections this week. At Comme des Garcons, designer Rei Kawakubo’s models resembled Grecian statues, their sculpted curls held in place with what looked like white plaster. They wore white gauze column dresses as the first layer of most outfits. Some had crocheted knit fabric bonded to the gauze, for a lightweight sweater effect.
Some were layered with pale chiffon dresses, or half-dresses that tied in place at the shoulder and waistline. This idea of building upon a sheer layer was seen in several shows. Karl Lagerfeld and Jean Paul Gaultier each used the idea in different ways.
Gingham shirt sleeves were a separate garment in Kawakubo’s collection. She tied them to gauze T-shirts. They could be used like any accessory, to wear with lots of things.
“What was that all about?” someone asked Altman after the perplexing show. “That was all about this” he said, referring to his movie.
As strange and unfamiliar as Kawakubo’s runway presentations often seem, the clothes do make sense when viewed individually in the designer’s showroom. Gene Pressman of the retailer Barneys said the label is now one of his top sellers. His Beverly Hills branch is scheduled to open this spring.
John Galliano’s show was beyond theater. “What vampire movie did I miss?” one magazine fashion editor scribbled on her note pad as models hurried down the runway, acting possessed, to the sound of wolves howling. They wore vast hoop skirts of striped silk, lacy bed jackets of sheer beige and multicolored mounds of falling-down, Victorian-style hair.
Clothing came closer to reality when Galliano cut to modern times. Well, to the ‘30s anyway. Bias-draped satin dresses with soft, cowl necklines were the most beautiful items in the collection.
All week, fashion ticket-holders stopped Altman to ask how to get into his movie. “I hope you will all be in it,” he said. Some designers and other insiders have already been asked to play themselves in the film. Altman mentioned his friend Sonia Rykiel, Lagerfeld and Gianfranco Ferre. The movie’s costume designer will be Catherine Leterrier, whose previous film work includes “Meeting Venus.”
“I’ve been coming to the shows on and off for 10 years,” Altman explained earlier in the week. “I got the idea all that time ago at one of Sonia’s shows. It took 10 years to get this going. Hollywood producers want Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. But now, we’re ready to begin.”
Miyake’s shows are theater in a more literal sense. This season he used modern ballet dancers, along with runway models, for expressionistic staging of cerebral spring styles. Ankle-length dresses, crinkled through the waist or crystal-pleated to the hips and flared to the hem, were standouts. So were the eccentric paper hats that resembled deflated beach balls, or tattered umbrellas.
Miyake’s new, low-priced Pleats Please collection will be at Neiman Marcus next spring. Crystal-pleated basics including sheaths, tunics and pants in soda fountain colors, will be priced less than $200 wholesale.
The big show at Christian Lacroix happened before the runway presentation, when MTV anchorwoman Cindy Crawford took a front-row seat. Photographers nearly crushed each other trying to get her picture, and her autograph.
The best of Lacroix’s show was an assortment of lovely items: an ivory lace T-shirt with scalloped edges, a provincial flower-print smock coat to the ankle, a black linen apron dress worn with a crocheted cardigan sweater. Lacroix is at his best when he keeps it simple.
If it was research he wanted, Altman could have gone home after Gaultier’s show. Talk about disguises--how about carpenter’s nails in your hair, a spike through your lip, a dragon face tattooed on your bare back?
Models carried sticks of incense as the sitar played on. The clothes looked kind of crazy, but there was more to the collection than just a show. Stretch body wear, including leggings, body shirts and cat suits, took a new direction. Printed with Chinese characters, occult images, such as the palm of a hand in flames, or views of the Madonna in a grotto, they served as first layers under pin-striped or tartan-plaid pants.
Gaultier sometimes mixed the prints in outfits that started with a body shirt or leggings and added a long narrow dress or short kilt. Sheer white leggings had parts of recycled blue jeans attached, giving new meaning to the term stretch denim.
Behind the humor was an evolution of the spiritual theme strongly expressed in many collections last season. Then, the clothes suggested cloistered nuns, Orthodox Jews and desert-dwelling hermits. This time, Gaultier moved on to the mountain. Gurus on Himalayan hilltops may be getting more calls soon.
Next: The Paris collections of Karl Lagerfeld, Emanuel Ungaro and Christian Dior.
