Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Headline Article Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 17:01:12 EST Message-ID: \SE E;LIFE;WAY OF LIFE;IN STYLE \BY Ann Geracimos \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES SHOWTIME Fashion week takes place twice a year in and around New York's Seventh Avenue garment center - long ago officially renamed Fashion Avenue. It's a self-contained series of theatrical events, the audience exclusively retailers, news media, celebrity clients and - probably most important of all - an uninhibited horde of video camera wizards and still photographers. Buyers for many stores will have seen the clothes earlier in the showroom but wait for final picks after witnessing how each designer's collection looks on the runway. Each show, which can take as little as 20 minutes or as long as 45, is intended to be the creator-designer's view of how the clothes are to be worn and displayed. WHERE'S MACKIE? Touches of the lavish, eccentric and offbeat are welcome, although these have become rarer in recent recessionary years; this week's schedule is made decidedly more dull by the absence of Bob Mackie's flash. He scaled back to no public show. But then the spring-summer collections never are as exciting or newsworthy as fall-winter, which take place, logically, the previous spring. Many of the shows are being held in the New York Public Library in an adjoining forum, or open space rented this season for record low prices. At least Geoffrey Beene got smart Tuesday, putting clothes on mannequins - much cheaper than $1,000-an-hour-and-more models - in the New York School of Ballet at Lincoln Center. What's on stage - a mere platform ordinarily covered with white or beige paper or carpeting unrolled only at the last minute - may be less a barometer of change than what is worn on the audience's backs. The front row sends a message. Are the clients young, rich and newsworthy? Then count on free publicity for the week. The same faces turn up everywhere front-row-center on either side: representatives of the largest newspapers and magazines, stores, the ever faithful in something from the designer's last collection - signature pieces, they are called. This is an inbred crowd, as insecure as they come behind all those blase exteriors. Making and selling clothes is an ephemeral trade - not a business to breed content. LOCAL CUSTOM Clothes apart, one key difference between New York and Europe is a different greeting code. People kiss cheeks - or air - in New York, while in Europe they do it once on each cheek. Hand-kissing still works as well in Europe - man to woman - and helps keep lipstick traces at bay. These aren't the usual celebrity faces around, and few famous and expensive models. Cindy Crawford is having a baby. Claudia Shiffer reportedly charges $20,000 for her talents. "There will be a major change in the look of models next year," Vogue Editor Anna Wintour predicted backstage after a boring Bill Blass show (hardly a single clap of applause from the audience). "There will be a new parade of sexy girls; a new look is coming." Translated, that probably means cheaper models and a new youth movement in clothes, away from what she called "the short, tight aggressive sexuality." TIGHT, SKIMPY This is a waist-tightening season in more than one way. The mood is as subdued as the clothes often are naughty. There's real excitement generated on the runway maybe only once a day so far. Real change doubtless will come in the arcana of trade legislation affecting tariffs and imports, said Stan Herman, president of the 165-member Council of Fashion Designers of America. "Fashion as we know it at the council probably affects 7 percent of the women in America - and that's a lot." He means women interested in fashion as glamour, an image in the positive sense. "What of women straining to live in the real world?" a reporter asked to no avail. EXCLUSIVELY YOURS Designers are curbing expenses as well by signing on "an exclusive basis" with individual stores, such as Gordon Henderson, who announced this week he would henceforth be solely a Saks Fifth Avenue man. To survive, they must constantly reinvent themselves. Gianni Versace is at the center of a party tonight to mark the opening of a "Signatures" exibit (the best of bondage and otherwise) at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Knitwear specialist Steve Fabrikant is adopting designs from the current Matisse show at the Museum of Modern Art. And Washington's own Wayne James is borrowing from impressionist Camille Pissaro when he shows tomorrow . Dianne Furstenberg, of the '70s wrap dress, is now selling clothes on cable TV's shopping channel. And Emilio Pucci, of the 1960s bold prints, will be back in a show produced by his daughter. What next? The cave man, possibly, if clothes get any skimpier than what has been out there this week. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM