A Look on the Wild Side

By JAY COCKS

The spellings are challenging, the pronunciation a little tricky, but it might be best to get used to these two names right now. They appear on the labels of some of the most intrepid clothes around, and they belong to two of the sprightliest newcomers anywhere on the fashion map.

The fresh and refreshingly feckless designs of Sybilla, 25, of Madrid, and Dirk Bikkembergs, 29, of Antwerp, have mostly their brio in common. There is no serious risk that anyone would ever get their labels switched. Bikkembergs works out of a small, somewhat dilapidated studio, where he turns out a line of men's clothing that alternates between the sober gray severity of sweatsuit-style knitwear and the giddy excesses of retro-hippie sports clothes. Sybilla, who designs in a "dream house" atelier in Spain's sunny capital, makes mischievous, inventively styled fashions for women that work from no fixed stylistic compass.

Sybilla's fancies include ball gowns with little metal fish falling from the folds; ear-shaped buttons securing, with just a hint of discretion, a sexy blouse; a shawl with fabric flowers sprouting from the shoulders. Sure, some of this is stuff you wear on a dare. But be warned: high spirits can be contagious, even at these prices (around $850 for a slinky silk Sybilla with a woven metallic shawl; $1,000 for a suede, fringed Bikkembergs jacket). Moreover, it may still be something of a challenge for fashion fans in the U.S. to find things by Sybilla or Bikkembergs. The places to look at the moment are at stores like Torie Steele in Los Angeles, Barney's in New York City or Alan Bilzerian in Boston.

Bilzerian's staff has solved a minor Bikkembergs dilemma -- how to get his moniker to move trippingly off the American tongue -- by referring to the designer as "the Dirker," as if he were some arcane medieval instrument used for storming castles. A native of Germany, Bikkembergs grew up in a strict, financially comfortable household. During his teenage years, he moved to Antwerp and became one of the leading designers in the city's gutsy fashion circle. Bikkembergs has some pretty strong ideas about his impact. "So far," he says, "I have made no money at all. But in four years, the world will be at my feet."

The world, once it gets a good look at Bikkembergs' footwear, may go easy around his extremities. One of his more conservative shoe collections was a madcap combination of combat boots and vintage Olympic running shoes, a sort of rough-trade revision of Chariots of Fire. Laces looped into mad interstices, toes were rounded off into inverted parentheses and functional elements of the shoe -- like the tongue -- threatened to become design elements all on their own.

This is not quite as frivolous, or as impractical, as it may sound. At least one Dirker design (a soft leather, multicolored running shoe for street wear) has been widely copied. Such intimations that Bikkembergs may be on a popular wavelength encourage his sweeping fantasies of success but do not dilute his often self-mocking sense of humor. One recent inspiration was to reverse the usual order of dressing and put underwear on over the trousers. The look may not catch on at Paine Webber, but Bikkembergs is hardly the first young upstart to show off his talent by flouting convention.

In Bikkembergs' current designs, however, convention is also playing a fast game of footsie with pragmatism. There are indications that the Dirker may be working toward an accommodation with the mainstream. He has recently struck a deal with the established Italian manufacturer GIBO, which handles such successful lines as Jean-Paul Gaultier and Sybilla. Where the Dirker comes down heavy on prankishness, Sybilla tends to the winsome and the ingenious. Her clothes are mostly hand finished and full of little surprises, like tucks that form boxes or a hem that looks to have been pushed up for a hasty jump across a puddle.

Born Sybilla Sorondo in New York City, she worked for a year in Paris at Yves Saint Laurent as a seamstress, getting down her technique but drawing inspiration from the streets of Spain, where she grew up. She showed her first collection in Madrid in 1983, a "100% idealistic period, when I only did dresses for people who came to me." By 1984, however, she was selling her designs to other shops, and in three years she was producing more than her Spanish manufacturer could handle. She switched to GIBO, and although she admits, "I'm always terrified of losing control," she continues to see her designs as small fragments of communication, serendipity on a clothes hanger.

"You make someone happy through a dress," she says. "You see what happens to a woman -- how they put it on, and insecurities, disappointments, complexes disappear. I think about women's complexes -- having breasts, not having breasts -- and I try to make something for the body. I try to make a waist for women who don't have one." She will, however, be wasting no time, so best snap up that Sybilla now. She promises to retire in five years.

With reporting by Cathy Booth/Florence and Denise Claveloux/Brussels