Whatever American fashion designers spent on their spiffy new exhibition tent complex in Bryant Park here, they apparently saved on fabric.
As the weeklong spring 1994 ready-to-wear collections got under way, virtually united for the first time at a single site, the early watchwords of the season appear to be skimpy, sheer and generally more suitable for the sandbox than the street.
Australian-born designer Richard Tyler’s much-heralded debut collection for Anne Klein Monday morning started out sharp and savvy with black leather mini-kilts and curvy, striped jackets over short, pleated skirts. Too quickly, however, it lost its edge, melting into a puddle of sheer striped silk and transparent chiffon.
The bare-legged models looked raw and vulnerable in filmy, chiffon micro-minidresses, which disappeared under roomy jackets that, while well-cut, looked like something they’d borrowed from their boyfriends. Few grown women will want to go this bare, let alone wear suspenders with their skirts or don fluttery, white chiffon slip-dresses reminiscent of the spring pageant at a girls’ boarding school.
Things were hardly more mature at Nicole Miller’s show, where models with knotted, Rastafarian-style hair pounded down the runway in thigh-high black stockings, high-heeled booties and tiny stretch jersey and sheer linen dresses that ended just this side of indiscretion. For the adventurous, some skirts sported a couple inches of what appeared to be removable, tie-on hems.
If Monday’s most elegant show belonged to the sleek, crystal-beaded evening looks by Badgley Mischka, its wittiest show belonged to Byron Lars, who did a lively takeoff on ’60s super-heroines from the Avengers’ Mrs. Peel to the hip Cleopatra Jones. Designing to a go-go beat, he combined clean lines with a frisky color sense in red- and white-striped jackets over white pants, slinky black and white halter dresses and high-waisted stretch pants with ruffle-front baseball jackets.
Bill Blass is still designing snappy suits in natty plaids, checks and stripes for the elegant Ladies Who Lunch. But when it comes to evening wear, his ideas tend more toward what a wealthy and besotted older man would buy for his very-much-younger trophy wife: baby-doll dresses in black lace with frothy miniskirts, high heels and fishnet stockings. Lay off the lace, Bill.
On Sunday, Donna Karan launched the New York shows with her lower-priced DKNY line, whose initials she took for her spring motto: Don’t Knock New York. As far as the clothes went, there wasn’t much to knock: classic navy blazers with kicky, short pleated skirts, crisp blue and white-striped shirts with white collars, natty pinstriped minidresses and slouchy navy pants with sweatpants-style cuffs.
The long, petal-layered dresses in sheer chiffon and crinkled silk seemed much too tender and revealing for Manhattan’s mean streets. But the sleek, Lycra, striped running suits and long, billowy, hooded, nylon anoraks made for a fast getaway.
