A NEW TOUCH OF CLASS

By Martha Duffy

A delectable pink skimmer. a sinuous little suit. A shiver of cocktail chiffon. An international parade of pretty clothes.

It may be the first time a major trend began on the obituary pages. Last year's fashion spreads offered up the usual chaos: butt-high skirts, little-girl looks, underwear as outerwear, fake furs, fake feathers, fake everything. But the death of Audrey Hepburn and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis inspired exhilaratingly lovely retrospectives, in magazines and on television, that lasted for weeks. These women always managed to be both sexy and classy-at a grand ball, on horseback, impersonating royalty or playing First Lady to the chandeliers. They had the combination of vitality, faultless grooming and alluring clothes that add up to glamour.

Can it be that designers, sick of their own tasteless japes and worried about a retail market that has been sagging since 1992, have finally decided to take notice? The fall ready-to-wear shows that began in Milan in March and ended last week in New York City showed a dramatic shift in direction. In a fashion world that has seemed, in recent years, increasingly remote, self-involved and obsessed with stunts, it was a remarkable about-face. Call it a return to elegance, to wearability, to more realistic apparel with commercial appeal. Most designers, at last, seem willing to trade the cutting edge for the cash register.

The movement is broad-based and a genuine good-news story for both customers and the industry. At the rich and influential house of Chanel, designer Karl Lagerfeld talks of a "new tendency for beauty to combat ugliness." New York designer Isaac Mizrahi observes: "People are in a kind of sobering position. In the '80s it was so incredibly over the top. Now it's about how can we express ourselves and still maintain a certain amount of dignity." Michael Kors, who presented a sleek, sophisticated collection in New York City last week, expresses the fashion industry's new sensitivity to the marketplace: "The plain fact is that it doesn't matter how great it looks on Helena Christiansen. If no one buys what I'm designing, then I really didn't do my job."

Retailers have been waiting to hear this for years. Says Joan Kaner, fashion director of Neiman Marcus, the upscale American department-store chain: "We have been complaining bitterly for the past few seasons that there aren't enough clothes for women to wear. Now there's a return to quality and beautiful fabrics." Says Nicole Fischelis, fashion director of Saks Fifth Avenue: "We are seeing a return to elegance, and it is unquestionably commercial."

An early, startling sign of things to come appeared in January at Gianni Versace's couture show in Milan. Versace is more Vegas than Milan, a man who in the past has gloried in vulgarity and pagan displays of naked flesh. But down his catwalk came purring beauties in simple, classic clothes-smart little suits and dresses that Jackie or Audrey, Grace Kelly or Babe Paley would have been delighted to wear. And that is just what he intended. "Fashion is once again finding the right equilibrium," says Versace. "When I was working, I thought of both Hepburn and Kelly." Versace pursued the new look in his ready-to-wear collection a month later, with flattering and practical costumes that featured a real innovation: color. Like dozens of his fellow designers, Versace favored red and its cousins, pink and fuchsia. Even more surprising, there were plenty of pastels for cold weather.

Last week's New York collections underscored the trend. Because Seventh Avenue specializes in sportswear, the theme was expressed less dramatically, but it was evident nonetheless. Calvin Klein was true to form with a spare, functional show, mostly in those old standby tones: black, brown and white. Geoffrey Beene offered long wool dresses and satin evening frocks-all comfortable silhouettes.

As heartening as fashion's return to elegance is, it will call for a lot of rethinking on the part of consumers, and even a little discipline. "The young generation has been educated to dress in a wild, free way," observes Gianfranco Ferra, the maestro of Dior. Hemlines, for example, seem to have settled in at knee length. That may be welcome for women frustrated with trying to follow the fashion vagaries of the past few years. But knee-length skirts look best with stiletto heels-and few women born since the late '60s have ever worn them. On the runways this spring, even experienced models were teetering perilously, cantilevered over very slender columns.

The dizzyingly high heels are probably an example of catwalk theatrics, but the skirt length makes its own kind of social sense. Marc Audibet, who designs for Prada and Hermes and was an early exponent of the to-the-knee look, argues, "It is the only length that can be accepted in a feminist epoch. A long length isn't practical, and a miniskirt won't work because of today's sexual wars. This skirt length is the only one that could be really new." Prada, originally an Italian leather-goods firm, is perhaps the hottest designer line of all, quadrupling its business in three years by re-creating the Jackie look at its coolest.

The current direction, inspired by the '50s and early '60s, is in some ways a reaction against fashion that had become so extreme that it had reached the vanishing point. Skirts-or shorts-could get no shorter, boots no heavier or more aggressive. The entire apparatus of underwear had been exposed. Behind this facade was a highly artificial notion of femininity: butch, heavily lacquered, with lurid makeup and hennaed hair. At its best-when virtuosos like Jean-Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld or Vivienne Westwood were camping it up flagrantly-it had rare wit; but the idea has been consumed in its own fire.

Grunge was another game whose time was up. No need to buy something new when the whole point was to look used. Inside-out seams, stitched-in wrinkles and prefab holes were a good enough joke for a few months, especially when worn by a beautiful youngster. But, as is often the case, fashion pushed too far; and by last year, when Kawakubo's Comme des Garcons was showing black-and-white prison stripes, concentration-camp survivors were rightly protesting.

A few designers sat out the carnival while making fortunes out of basic, neutral clothes. They include Giorgio Armani, who started the last real revolution in fashion with his destructured jackets, and his colonists-Calvin Klein, Jil Sander and Donna Karan, among others. Now the fashionable cycle has restarted. Versace saw it coming. "I dressed Claudia Schiffer and Madonna like my mother used to dress," he says. "You see, women are changing again. They don't want to look androgynous anymore."

And they don't want to buy the just-kidding clothes that were being pressed on them. The fashion business is suffering. Howard Davidowitz, a fashion-industry consultant, says 1994 "may have been the worst year in 20 years" for women's clothes. Part of the reason has to do with merchandising rather than fashion. There are too many stores selling the same merchandise, too much of too little. "Consumers are having trouble differentiating," says Peter J. Solomon, an investment banker who works closely with retailers and apparel designers. "What's the difference between a Limited and a Gap and a Saks Fifth Avenue?"

U.S. Commerce Department statistics show that women are spending their money on other things: furniture, household paraphernalia like bedding and towels, cars and even computers. That shift may reflect the aging of the baby boomers, who are now more concerned with kids and homes than with their own wardrobes; but it may also be that the car and sheet designers are producing more attractive wares than their fashion counterparts. "Women are shopping in their closets" has become a sad and much repeated tag line in the fashion industry.

The new move toward sensible clothes represents something of a victory for the retailers over the fashion-industry insiders. Members of the fashion press, buyers, stylists and other fashion trend setters see hundreds of shows a year and get to the point where they can only walk along the cutting edge, respond only to extremes. After the March Paris shows, buyers and pundits from the U.S. returned home with long faces. "There's nothing new," they moaned. The translation: there was nothing radical.

But champagne was popping back in the American fitting rooms. Says Kaye Davis, fashion director of the Atlanta Apparel Mart, which serves more than 125,000 stores in the Southeastern U.S.: "The trend is away from trendiness. Women want a more structured, sophisticated look, and designers are finally offering what we want." Donna Castleberry, manager for fashion of the California Mart, expects that conservative chic "will take off. Clean, tailored classics carry people through so much-from the office to wherever." Kaner of Neiman Marcus contends that the new looks will "filter down well," meaning that a $1,500 jacket from a top name like Oscar de la Renta or Bill Blass will devolve easily into a similar jacket that costs $300.

The stores need some sort of pick-me-up. Both designer clothing and the so-called bridge, or cheaper, lines have seen shaky times recently. Many American department stores have been quietly cutting back on the space allocated to their designer boutiques. In a significant move last December, the house of Anne Klein released Richard Tyler, a sharp tailor known for his Hollywood connections, in favor of Patrick Robinson, only 28, who had masterminded Armani's Collezioni line. Robinson's first effort, put together hastily after his appointment, was both safe and dull, but his attitude has to have retailers cheering. "The point," he says, "is to create excitement in the stores, not the runways."

The industry's optimistic reaction seems justified. Take coats, for instance. They were the strongest single element in the shows held in the three major fashion capitals-not innovative, but fastidiously cut and elegant. They even looked warm. Many of the best were redingotes, originally an 18th century man's mantle, with a fitted waist and full skirt. Hermes, which went far beyond its traditional horse-culture clothes, had some midnight-blue beauties. For the truly romantic, Yohji Yamamoto continued his exploration of Victorian dress with very full crinoline coats. All around the designer map, from Dior to Ralph Lauren, the alternative to the redingote was the so-called bathrobe coat-belted, very long and roomy.

It was in the realm of daytime dresses and suits that Jackie and Audrey most haunted the collections. The biggest surprise came at the Chanel show, its strongest in many seasons. Just a year ago, Lagerfeld's offerings were a hoot-fluffy, puffy microskirts, silly hats, gold chains and logos attached to just about any surface. The designer's about-face is complete. Several of his knee-length suits had no gold trim at all. They were in black or mellow tweeds and looked like something you could invest in-like a car or a computer. Lagerfeld said he was "going back to the starting block, to putting the body first." It's important that Lagerfeld, who presides over France's most successful fashion house, is aboard.

Other conservative designers came out looking good this spring as well. In New York last week, Blass showed tweeds and corduroys in vibrant colors. Lauren played with a muted Hollywood theme and managed to get through the season without going home on the range. De la Renta staged a long, superglamorous show that concentrated on his specialty: heady evening clothes.

Designers who have traditionally followed their own muse, adjusting only lightly to the headline trends, are looking especially smart. Christian Lacroix creates with his head in the past-the past of the French masterpieces in the Louvre. To some women his work is overdecorated, but his clothes are endless reveries on color executed in minute detail, such as Lesage embroidery, usually found only in handmade costumes. Similarly, Japan's Issey Miyake, who has never cared a whit about hemlines or gold chains, played a gentle counterpoint to the mainstream with radiant fabrics and a magicianly way with material that amounted to sculpting.

In New York, the Chinese designer Han Feng, whose skill is also in color and fabric, showed her most sophisticated collection yet, and the Vietnamese Vivienne Tam floated some graceful, filmy cocktail dresses in black and white. Both offerings were abbreviated compared with the 100-outfit extravaganza launched by de la Renta, but collections like these are among the small pleasures of following fashion. Feng and Tam stick strictly to what their fabrics tell them and succeed in creating highly individual silhouettes.

The white-hot English designer John Galliano, meanwhile, was the chief prophet of another theme in the fall collections: Hollywood-inspired '40s retro glamour. His suits and dresses were stiletto-slim, with huge, dramatic sleeves or swaths of material around the shoulders or waist. Jackie wouldn't wear one of these, and Audrey would be overwhelmed in one, but it is easy to imagine Joan Crawford or Bette Davis stalking an errant lover using the costume as a weapon. Ghost, designed by Tanya Sarne -- who is also English -- was back in the black-and-white era too: waterfall dresses, flowing crepe trousers and handsome bias-cut skirts.

With such an array of beauty now available, one would think the fashion world had left its flamboyant excesses behind. Think again. This is an industry that seems to thrive on crises. Drama counts. For every sublime Miyake, there is always someone out there on a toot. Even designers who usually make well-cut, wearable clothes, like Donna Karan, get the fever. In her DKNY show, the city girl went western, featuring dubious slinky pants with a phony chaps look, crinoline-shaped frontier skirts and hats that were at least seven gallons. In Paris, Jean-Paul Gaultier, perennial idol of the fashion press, indulged in one of his toughest tart looks ever. Each of his models had one eye blackened, and sullen stares seemed to be a decree. Some of them wore cyberspace-punk bodysuits printed with computer graphics. Still, draped over them were practical coats and jackets-Gaultier's meal ticket.

The apogee of excess, however, was a $3 million extravaganza staged in Paris by Thierry Mugler, who took over the Cirque d'Hiver to celebrate his 20th year in the business. A standing-room-only crowd of 1,700 watched as nearly 100 models and dancers cavorted on a multilevel stage. He had the finest flowering of supermodeldom, plus drop-ins by former Hitchcock star (The Birds) Tippi Hedren-one of whose gowns was decorated with feathers-and heiress Patty Hearst. Mugler is about the only person left who presents corsets and bustiers, but at least he made them sexy.

Wearable? Certainly not. Elegant? Hardly. Mugler's glitzy, over-the-top show was dated before the crowd found its way out of the circus. Modern fashion will never follow a single leader, but if designers, retailers and women have anything to say about it, sanity is here to stay a while-along with a touch of class and maybe a whiff of charm. Mugler served at least one important function: bring in the clowns, the bearded ladies, the acrobats. It's all downright nostalgic. --Reported bY Greg Burke/Rome, Dorie Denbigh/Paris, Barbara Rudolph and David E. Thigpen/New York

With reporting by GREG BURKE/ROME, DORIE DENBIGH/PARIS, BARBARA RUDOLPH AND DAVID E. THIGPEN/NEW YORK