A Rousing No to Mini-pulation

By Anastasia Toufexis

The fall fashion collections shown last week in New York City had a reassuring, familiar look: lots of clean-cut classics, long on style, short on thrill. But for a sagging, badly scared industry, that was headline news. What set Seventh Avenue cheering was the skirt that wasn't there: the mini, last year's sexy shocker.

Not since the midi-length fiasco nearly 20 years ago has there been such miscalculation by designers and manufacturers. Perhaps they were bored, spoiling for a chance to make a dramatic statement. Perhaps they misread the trend over the past two or three years to raise hemlines slightly, to somewhere around the knee.

What is absolutely certain is that they ignored the needs and opinions of the most powerful new force in the marketplace: the professional woman, who is just as ambitious and conservative as her male counterpart -- and competitor. "I have worked very hard to reach a point where I am taken seriously in the business community," says Jean Brooks, senior vice president of a Los Angeles advertising firm. "A short, short skirt is not going to help that." Asks Andrea Mitchell, White House correspondent for NBC News: "Can you imagine me sitting down to interview the First Lady in a skirt hiked up over my thighs?" Barbara Sigmund, 48, mayor of Princeton, N.J., puts it best of all: "Could Lee Iacocca have bailed out Chrysler wearing short pants?"

Designers got the message the hard way. Those urban ranks of briefcase- toting women in their boxy suits and string ties really did mean business. "For the first time, working women have voted with their pocketbooks," says Alan Millstein, publisher of the Fashion Network Report, an industry newsletter. "No serious executive female wants to look like Tina Turner when she goes to work." Millstein is among several commentators who point the finger at Women's Wear Daily Editorial Director John Fairchild, perhaps the most powerful voice in American fashion, especially among buyers, for pushing the short length too hard. Ordinarily a fast, feisty man with an opinion, Fairchild was not talking last week.

Rejecting the mini and not knowing what to invest in, many women just wore their wardrobes for another season -- with perhaps a small hike at the hem. This summer very short lengths will continue to be seen. But for fall, when most women make their serious purchases, skimpy skirts seem a poor bet. In addition to the rebuff on principle, women shunned the mini for economic reasons. "Especially since the October crash, people are more cautious," says Karen Guthrie, 30, a title-insurance company manager in Los Angeles. "Now even yuppies have budgets." In a fit of fashion passion, Susan Rockford, 40, a Manhattan attorney, plunked down $1,000 for a sexy little suit but soon recovered. "It could go out of style in six months," she sighs. "I returned it."

For the apparel industry, the mini's failure has been a real financial chiller. "The guts of the market is daytime wear," says Neal Fox, president of the Washington-area Garfinckels stores. Abandoned skirts at hefty reductions off the original price twirl idly on sales racks at Manhattan's Saks Fifth Avenue. According to Millstein, the industry lost billions in markdowns. U.S. Commerce Department figures indicate that sales of women's clothes in February dropped 3.6% from the year before.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Designers are chastising the media for emphasizing the miniskirts in last year's collections. Runway lengths, they insist, were shorter than what appeared in stores; most of the skirts shipped to retailers were at or slightly above the knee. Buyers are snapping at the creative folks. Says Patty Casper, a manufacturers' representative at the Atlanta Apparel Mart: "I could have told the designers that women were not going to go for these short skirts. Women are just not going to be pushed into a fashion corner anymore."

The big question, though, is as old as time: What do women really want? Right now, a strong panic factor and the absence of truly innovative fashion | are combining to make them extremely wary. Seventh Avenue may have learned what they won't stand for, but the industry is going to just about every length in order to soothe disgruntled shoppers. Still, there is one clear signal. A definite "safety zone" exists for length, from a couple of inches above the knee to mid-calf. Calvin Klein, in an easy, elegant collection, said it well last week for both sides. Some outfits, including a classic dress in pollen yellow, were delicately above the knee; others, like a bracing houndstooth-check wool suit, were well below it. Donna Karan is playing it even safer, showing 50-50, above and below. Not much leadership there.

What many designers and buyers are hoping is that American women will fall in love with pants -- once again. Carolina Herrera, for instance, turned out a severe navy chalk-stripe pantsuit that would knock 'em dead in any boardroom.

But pants have always had detractors because they are hard to fit to the female body. Says Caroline Rennolds Milbank, author of Couture: "How you look from behind is pivotal with pants. You have to have a very good figure in order to wear Armani pants to a business meeting and not look funny." Perhaps to whet the customer's appetite, Perry Ellis and others offered graceful, billowy trousers, but these are really sophisticated play clothes. Of course, some smart dressers, like Tina Brown, editor in chief of Vanity Fair, won't have a problem selecting from the options. She follows a fashion royal's example. "I wear my dresses where they have always been," says Brown. "Like the Duchess of Windsor, at the knee."

American designers have provided a number of options for this fall, and it may be that wisdom lies in that direction. Whatever a woman decides to wear, the choice is clearly hers. Veteran Designer Bill Blass, who has seen just about every length over the years, believes the late '80s woman is no longer fashion's slave and has assumed the role of dictator. Long may she reign!

With reporting by Elizabeth L. Bland/Los Angeles and Jeanne McDowell/New York