Back in 1954, Coco Chanel made a comeback, so the story goes, because she didn`t like what Christian Dior had done to women. She wanted to stop the rampant romanticism that was the legacy of the ”New Look” Dior had introduced in 1947. She believed that ”a garment must be logical” and that all those full-skirted, wasp-waisted fashions went against what women wanted
–meaning, of course, real clothes.
But 30 or 40 years ago, it really didn`t matter much what women wanted, except perhaps for Coco herself and a few iconoclasts like Katharine Hepburn who always thought, said and wore what they wanted. Most other women wore what every other woman wore, which pretty much was what ”fashion”–that is to say, designers–decreed that they should wear.
Though women picketed Dior when he paid a visit to Marshall Field`s in the fall of 1947 with his then-revolutionary fashions, eventually they accepted the look. They had little choice, really.
And in the decades since Dior and Chanel were powerhouses in
disseminating trends, innumerable fashions and fads have come and gone that women have adopted–sometimes willingly, sometimes grudgingly. They`ve worn poodle skirts and ponytails, saddle shoes and sheaths, go-go boots and Frye boots and cowboy boots, minis and maxis, hot pants and punk and preppy, Annie Hall and androgyny, sweatshirts with shoulder pads and even denim for the office as well as for dining, dancing and occasionally riding the range. They have worn things that may have appeared at first strange to the eye–and the body–but designers said they were okay; and with their blessings, women were off and buying.
Most recently, some women have been adopting crinolines and petticoats, bustiers and bustles as their fashion pets, even though those fashions are revived relics of another time, seemingly the antithesis of modernity.
A NEW RUMBLE
And now there is another rumble on the fashion Richter scale. Time and Newsweek are declaring that minis are back. A new length is the titillating topic of conversation once again, and the question sweeping the nation is:
Will women jump at the chance to slip on the new short skirts?
Of course they will. Some of them are out there this very minute going through the racks of new arrivals. You know who they are:
— The ones who have great legs. They`ve been wearing sort-of-short skirts all along (sexy black leather, most likely, denim jeans skirts, clingy knits).
— The ones who follow fashion, whether it`s flattering or not, sane or silly.
— The ones who crave change. Calvin Klein says the time is right for short because women are ”just plain tired of all those loose, long things that now look like fantasy clothes, the type of thing for running through the rose garden.”
Thigh-high skirts haven`t been around for decades, but body-conscious, feminine clothes have been germinating for several years now. Oscar de la Renta designed a pair of pink and yellow bubble-skirted, above-the-knee dresses with a jeune fille aura in 1980. A Tunisian-born Frenchman named Azzedine Alaia started designing his second-skin knits in the early `80s. Even Christian Lacroix, who is credited with almost singlehandedly reviving grandiose clothing, has been doing bustles and bows–along with some racy, leggy clothes–for a few years now.
The big difference now is that everybody–even Ralph Lauren–is on a short kick. Understandably so. ”The cyclical nature of fashion calls for swings from severity to softness, from long to short,” says the Chicago Historical Society`s curator of costumes, Elizabeth Jachimowicz. The last few years have seen man-tailored and minimalist, oversized and multi-layered, with occasional forays into sweet and short.
”But apparently we weren`t psychologically ready,” says Jachimowicz.
”Now, it`s a natural.”
Why?
A lot of young–and not-so-young–women are into fitness, and short gives them an opportunity to strut their stuff.
`WOMEN WANT TO EXPERIMENT`
”Women want to experiment a bit,” claims Donna Karan. ”It`s a time when women want to explore, perhaps to be a little flirtatious, to experience a different point of view in what they wear.”
”It`s refreshing. Short gives a new lease on life,” says designer Harriet Winter. ”It makes a statement: I am female. And besides, it`s the one thing men can`t wear, unless they`re blowing bagpipes.”
And it is, needless to say, a shot in the arm for business. If it makes even half the women of the world feel guilty that they`re not ”in” if they`re wearing something long, if it makes them feel like old fuddy-duddies to see their neighbors in short, sales figures will leap like mad, causing great joy in designerland.
So short is a shoo-in.
Or is it?
When the New Look and then new length took over in the late `40s and the mid-`60s, they became the only styles available. Besides, every other woman was wearing the prevailing proscribed look–what else was there to do?
But some very provocative things happened along the way to the `80s, things that forever changed women`s ideas about a lot of things, including what they would or would not put on their backs.
A war, a book, a movement, the economy, new views on morals and womanhood — all played a part in the way women now accept or reject a particular fashion stance.
It started when women had the gumption to find an alternative after designers decreed that the midi was the look for fall of 1970. Instead of buying the dreaded calf-covering skirt after almost a decade of showing lots of leg, women pulled on pants instead, forcing restaurants and other businesses to change or reassess policies on attire and causing the garment industry never to trust totally the gullibility of women again.
As time went on and more and more women started making decisions for major corporations and handing down rulings and calculating more than grocery budgets, they knew the time had come also to make decisions about where they wanted their skirts to end.
They didn`t necessarily toss fashion out the window; they just started doing it their way.
And now short may very well coincide with what they want.
A VERY LEGGY SEASON
Bill Blass, who has always maintained that his ”gals like to show their legs,” is in his glory this season with one of his shortest collections. So is Geoffrey Beene, who for years has claimed that short skirts and modernity are synonymous.
Calvin Klein is pretty passionate about short skirts as well. ”But this thing is not about designers dictating. We`re taking our cues from what women want,” says Klein; they`re voting with their wallets. ”They`re ready; they have been buying everything short we showed this spring. Short skirts, especially the little striped ones, are flying out of the stores.”
Still, there isn`t a store in town that won`t have some skirts that cover the knees, and some that graze the ankles–as well as those trendy thigh-highs.
Retailers know the herd instinct no longer rules. They know exactly who`s going to decide where hemlines will settle.
”Today, women feel secure to make all kinds of choices; in the case of fashion, that means the security to control their appearance,” says Jachimowicz.
Giorgio Armani, who first gained fame 10 years ago for the way he redefined his men`s suit styles for women, now is an advocate of soft and pretty short skirts–as well as long skirts and pants.
He says, ”A woman can now say `I enjoy being a woman` in different ways.”
And that is the major change in fashion–and in women–that has come about in the last 40 years. —
style
WHO`LL WEAR SHORT-SHORT? SOURCE: By Margaret Sheridan.
We asked several Chicago women what they thought of the new shorter skirts–and whether they`d follow the trend. Their answers:
— Joan Esposito, Ch. 7 newscaster: ”I think they are fantastic for women with long, skinny legs. My legs are terrible. When hemlines went up in the past I said no, but eventually I wore them. I guess sooner or later, I`ll succumb–but never the real short skirts. I like my hemline about four inches above my ankles.”
— Sugar Rautbord, writer/socialite: ”I`ll wear them. The hemlines I saw recently at the Carolyne Roehm show in New York made all of us gasp. They hit about where my tennis skirt falls on the thigh. It`s a neat, healthy, terrific look. I ordered three.”
— Jere Scott Zenko of Stanley Korshak: ”I think if you have great legs, why not. To the knee, I have dynamite legs. Sure, I`ll wear them. I have one dress with a hemline about two inches above the knee.”
— Linda Johnson Rice, vice president and assistant to the publisher, Johnson Publishing: ”I absolutely love them. The length is better on me–I`m 5 feet 4 1/2, and longer lengths make me look dowdy. Shorter hemlines have a younger, fresher, sexier look.”
— Ilana Rovner, U.S. District Court judge: ”I love them for women with great legs. I`m happy with my legs; they work. But I am more comfortable in something that covers my knees.”
— Barbara Proctor, president, Proctor & Gardner Advertising: Hemlines are ”irrelevant. I will wear what I feel comfortable in. It depends on the occasion: I will not wear one to a client meeting, but maybe to a party.” —
