Punch, Oui; Power, Non

The salons were just as crowded, the mannequins as crisp and undernourished, the designers every bit as giddy and harassed as usual. The French fall fashion collections last week attacked the same urgent questions (whither hemlines? whether bosoms?), but the answers were not expected to come out of Paris alone. The punch is there still, but not the power.

In the 1960s, there were few major U.S. department stores that did not depend for inspiration and line-for-line copies upon Paris haute couture. The knock-off Chanel suits and ersatz Givenchys were prized along with $1,000 originals and snapped up even faster. But the sudden flurry of boutiques, many of them stocked with French ready-to-wear as well as with newly inventive American-made designs, has put high style within easy access and a sensible price range. The youth rebellion crashed the old-guard fashion stockades by putting it all together (often out of trunks and thrift-shop remnants) with wit and drama.

Anna and Bonnie. Style, it developed, did not have to filter down to the streets: it might just as easily, and did, start there. The hue and cry for custom clothes, at full pitch only five years ago, has become a whisper in the stores. Says Bonwit Teller President William Fine: "The line-for-line derby is not consistent with the changing times and mood of the consumer." Saks Fifth Avenue, Macy's and Alexander's have dropped their import copies. Lord & Taylor plans to continue its reproductions in different fabrics. But the only Manhattan department store still actually duplicating the Paris collections this season is Ohrbach's, and skeptics doubt that it will hold the line-for-line line much longer.

Nonetheless, the new designs themselves were intriguing. One after another, the French designers displayed collections calculated to capture, if not the same bulk of orders from U.S. buyers, at least the fancy of women everywhere. Men might not be so enraptured: hems left not a hint of calf exposed, let alone knee. But the overall look was exotic and eclectic, a mixture of Garbo's Anna Karenina and Clyde's Bonnie, the aura of a Russian princess and the threat of a tommy gun.

Giant Steppe. Pierre Cardin was positively torn. Half of his presentation looked to the future, featuring skintight pants outfits with hoods and cutouts of circles, rectangles and even pear shapes slashed into long skirts. The other half turned on the past, with tight little jackets and dresses Susan B. Anthony would have been the first to vote for. Showstoppers: a series of sweeping Byronic capes and a black-sequined evening gown that undulates like a Japanese lantern in a gentle wind.

Chanel modified the shape of her suits with a bolero or cutoff blazer jacket, cropped and V-necked. Nina Ricci's Gerard Pipart kept his daytime clothes straight and simple, took a giant steppe to Russia with evening wear that featured fur Cossack hats, officers' coats, boyar pants (Russian-style knickers) and gypsy dresses. Louis Feraud concentrated less on shape than on fabrics. Guy Laroche seconded Pipart's Russian notions, and then some: to a background of music, slides, and Tartar dancing, his models turned out in tunics and knickers, babushkas and cummerbunds, capes rimmed with fur and embroidered with flowers.

Courreges concentrated on pointed hoods and capes in crinkly vinyl for day, satin-lined velvet for night, cutout minitunics over pants and slinky skirts, and a gaggle of see-through blouses. Givenchy shaped his long dresses with meticulous pin-tucked pleats, and emphatically ratified the romantic look with a black velvet pantsuit rounded at the hips and ruffled in black taffeta.

Even Emanuel Ungaro, famed for his superhard edges, turned his virtuoso hand to fluid fabrics, softly sashed dresses and loosely pleated skirts. His best look: a long dress in a pinwheel print, belted, bloused and all at once both elegant and sensuous. Dior's Marc Bohan is every bit as enraptured with the languorous look. Bohan softened his necklines with bows and scarf ties; and his hiplines had a series of stitched pleats that flattened first, then flared out. Deep colors glow like Tiffany stained glass; fabrics are light, jerseys, crepes and silk velvets. And again and again, capes --hooded in suede, lined in fur, long, loose, swinging.

Long and Longer. But, as so often in the past, it was Yves St. Laurent whose literally dreamy collection drew the week's top applause. Soft voiles, crepes and chiffons fitted tightly over the bosom, fluttered into pleats at the hips; gently fitted shirt-coats unbuttoned to reveal sinewy sheaths; appliques, borrowed from Matisse collages, formed butterflies on blousy knickers, birds in flight on a blue suede coat. The St. Laurent way for evening: sheer silk chemises, re-embroidered with tiny seed beads or baby sequins, delicate as veils and every bit as enticing.

The surge of optimistic innovation showed that Paris, like a declining dictator, was the last to get the word of its own ebbing strength. "This year," predicted Robert Ricci, "is the year of the big change. Last year was bad for business because women hesitated to buy. There had been no decision. This year will be much better." The decision, of course, was to strike the mini-midi-maxi declension from the fashion texts. Now, as far as Paris is concerned, there are to be only two kinds of hemlines: long and longer. Perhaps. But women busy liberating themselves from so many other ukases may not go along meekly on this one.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.