The Unbuckled Sunbelt Look

It is more a frame of mind than a fashion, a zip code rather than a style. Yet the new look from California--it might be called the Pacific Overture--is swiveling eyes and stoking department-store sales from coast to coast. So far this year, the young California Contemporary Fashion Guild, representing 32 West Coast designers, has rung up about $40 million in sales; in 1976 the group grossed $100 million.

The unbuckled Sunbelt look made a big hit last month at showings in frozen New York, if only by way of contrast to the hermetic cover-up that made the city look like one big Central Parka. But the summer collections stood, and preened, on their own merits. In a way, they are antifashion. Unstructured, untailored, seasonless and often sizeless, the ready-to-wear and mostly inexpensive California clothes are simple, sexy, fresh, feminine and flexible. They are made largely of natural materials like cottons, light wools and silks, and favor loose ties and drawstrings rather than zippers, buttons and belts. They vibrate in all the colors of the great outdoors--hot yellows and oranges, blues, turquoise, cerise, pumpkin, pepper (both red and green)--as well as eggshell soft pastels.

The best from the West is not dramatic or overly serious, but rather a free-spirited extension of the multipurpose, body-liberating "reality clothes" that have become the mark of American chic

(TIME cover, March 22). Says Vogue's editor in chief, Grace Mirabella: "It's a wonderful, energetic group of people who don't know about the history of manufacturing, so they just make things that are a part of reality today." Adds Bloomingdale's ready-to-wear fashion director, Koko Hashim: "The Californians' clothes are coming out of their environment--how they think, feel, live. They're not doing it to become famous American designers, the way an author sits down to write the Great American Novel. They're just doing it."

The guild's members make the point that they have greater freedom--and mutual trust--than they could find on Seventh Avenue. "There's no backstabbing here," says Dennis Goldsmith, 31, a Jonathan Logan alumnus who started his highly successful Ma Chemise in Los Angeles only some 18 months ago. C.C.F.G. President Donald Cooper, 38, a native New Yorker and an owner of D.B.A. by Theodore, claims: "The goal of the guild is total mesmerization. We wanted people to jump up and down --and they are."

The guild's top jumper is Harriet Selwyn, 46, a tall, vivacious New Yorker who went West five years ago, and calls California "the center of creativity." Her company, Fragments, grossed more than $1 million last year--60% of it in New York City. Her biggest hit has been the Fragments Bag, which holds seven basic separates--six of Qiana jersey--in a range of compatible colors that can be combined to make about 100 different outfits. Also in the bag: a see-through chiffon blouson top and, egad, a silver necklace with a cylinder that holds a toothbrush. From its Christmas catalogue, Lord & Taylor alone sold 57 bags at $475 a throw.

New Hero. Typical of the designers whom the guild likes to discover and promote is Georgia Michaud, 27. Michaud's designs, many using hand-dyed hospital gauze, are simple and versatile: for example, a pimento handkerchief-style dress that can go to the beach in the morning and the disco at night. Linda Somers, 33, works in chamois and deerskin. Her clothes are expensive: her black deerskin tiered skirt costs $230, her chamois bathing suit $50 and chamois beach cover $ 164.

Another comer is Cal Vainstein, 46, also a New York transplant, whose New Hero line features drawstring pants, caftans and other casual clothes, like a $47 hot-pink jumpsuit with harem pants and a neckline plunging to the waist. New Hero expects to earn more than $2 million this year.

These Western designers, in Editor Mirabella's words, are, above all. "providing alternatives--slightly more flamboyant, seemingly uncommercial clothes." Seventh Avenue, she adds, will probably not steal their designs--and, in any case, cannot compete with their prices. Big Apple, make way for the Sexy Sunkist.

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