Bared Bodkins

They say that Co-Chairman Amanda Burden asked Susan Stein: "What shall we wear?" And they say that Co-Chair man Susan Stein replied: "Nothing."

It couldn't have been that easy, but who cares? The annual 5100-a-ticket benefit party for the New York Shake speare Festival is usually Dullsville. Last week's affair was anything but -- a fact that was signaled in advance by the peekaboo, fold-out invitations created by Stage Designer Rouben Ter-Aru-tunian, replacing the universally ordi nary engraved white cards. The rea son was that Amanda-darling, daughter of Mrs. William S. Paley, and Susan, bright offspring of MCA Founder Jules Stein, got a couple of dozen beautiful young people to show up at Manhattan's Plaza Hotel in "nude" fashions inspired by Shakespearean heroines and created for the occasion by U.S. and European designers.

Backless, Frontless. For some, it was tricky going. Emilio Pucci's sheer white halter top and harem pants arrived at Linda Hackett's Park Avenue apart ment with a written warning that she would have to do something about keeping her bosom in. "Band-Aids don't work," she later declared. But Linda, who designs clothes herself, engineered it all with a mysterious combination of "spirit gum and something else."

Movie Starlet Pamela Tiffin, who is the wife of a serious-minded journalist, was almost undone by her little nothing. She came as Kate in a strapless jeweled bra and one-shoulder toga slashed to the hip by Tiziani; by evening's end, all but one of the four metal anchors se curing the bra had cast loose their moorings.

Baby Jane Holzer, a sometime mod el, played at being Ariel in Simonet-ta's backless, almost frontless halter-top dress of pink chiffon, but stubbornly sat out all the dancing "to promote my new image," whatever that meant. Obviously there was a genuine chance that in a moment of abandon her dress might abandon her. Maybe the new Baby Jane just doesn't do that sort of thing any more. Not at the Plaza, anyway.

No such scruples for Christina Paolozzi Bellin, who made a great Doll Tearsheet in black and white crepe with a diaphanous midriff designed by John Kloss. She kept wishing she were nuder. "You can't even tell I'm naked," wailed the girl who made her fame by being scratched from the Social Register four years ago for posing nude from the waist up in Harper's Bazaar. And how did Christina feel about representing Shakespeare's most notorious trollop? "It's fun to play a character you'd be least likely to be in life," she said ever so primly.

Five Cheaters. Harper's Bazaar editor and former model China Machado wore what she called "just me" beneath Yves St. Laurent's Cleopatra dress --a snowfall of shimmering spangles around bosom and hips joined by sheer, flesh-color chiffon. But others, who felt uneasy about the quasi-nude fashions, decided to cheat. Newporter Minnie Gushing, tall and stately with cascading hair, wore a body stocking under her gold latticework Desdemona robe designed by Oscar de la Renta.

Freelance Writer Gloria Steinem played Lady Macbeth in a Luis Estevez creation that consisted of five widely spaced bands of chinchilla held together by transparent black net. In between was supposed to be little more than a bare bodkin. "I'm supposed to have on one body stocking," confided Gloria, "but I have on three." "I like to look pretty, not kooky," said Chessie Rayner, explaining why she put on a white silk slip underneath Bill Blass's fishnet A-line dress.

Katharine Balfour, dressed as Calpurnia, even hacked up an old nightgown to wear under Pauline Trigere's see-through black lace sheath. "I'm just furious at her," fumed Trigere, who had intended the dress to be worn with only a body stocking. Amanda Burden, co-chairman or not, finally decided to take no chances--perhaps in honor of the fact that she has been named the Best Dressed Woman in America. "I do love the new things, but I think my husband [a fledgling lawyer] might object," she said. So she picked out a real Shakespearean number with long sleeves, high lace collar and floor-length hoop skirt from the festival's storage shop.

Members of the New Society wasted no time congratulating themselves on the party. And why not? It attracted more than 500 guests, raised $55,000 for the festival, which, in addition to offering free Shakespeare in Central Park six nights a week all summer, is planning to put on a winter season of contemporary plays. At least, last week's party was contemporary.

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