Now There Are Three

Hyperbole rose in the summer air like incense. As always, buyers fainted, sobbed and elbowed one another, threw themselves into designers' arms in ecstasy. It took a calm and practiced eye (of which there seemed to be few last week in Paris) to discern that, though there might be news in the flare of a skirt or the flash of a new material, there was no basic change in hemline or shape that would force any girl in Duluth or Santa Fe to throw away her whole wardrobe. Still, no Paris showing, where countesses materialize to plunk down $1,000 for a little nothing, is ever complete without its crisis and its sensation.

The crisis was provided by Princess Lee Radziwill. The Princess, Jackie Kennedy's sister, had taken on a marvelous fun assignment from McCall's to cover the collections. In haughty displeasure, Couturier Hubert de Givenchy declared that that made her a member of the "working press," barred her from his showing. Lee stalked off to Ravello in a huff. "It couldn't matter less," said she. "I haven't been buying his clothes; I've been wearing St. Laurent's." She was not telling Givenchy anything new.

The sensation of the week was St. Laurent himself. The 26-year-old designer, whose first success came five years ago (when he inherited the House of Dior on the master's death and inaugurated the trapeze line), had been out of the running for a while. Drafted into the French army for two years, he returned to Dior to find Designer Marc Bohan in his place. Paris divided on the issue, and St. Laurent had a nervous breakdown. Squaring his narrow shoulders, St. Laurent opened his own house last season to mixed notices. But this year, bravos came in salvos from the gilt chairs; the snouts of television cameras poked through tall, flowering plants like machine guns, recording the moment of triumph for a TV special to be broadcast late this month over the French national network. At show's end, St. Laurent crept down from the head of the stairs, where he had crouched like a small boy peeking at a grownups' ball, to be smothered in the embrace of celebrities and clients like Dancer Jeanmaire, Vicomtesse Jacqueline de Ribes, Cosmetologist Helena Rubinstein. His designs, basically for the young and slim, are lean and tubular, shaped by precision seams, not spectacular but consistently the loveliest.

With St. Laurent's elevation to the ranks of the fashion greats, the Big Two (Balenciaga and Givenchy) became Three. The fall fashion trends: more fur (on cuffs, collars, scarves and hoods); jewel shades of color (garnet, topaze and turquoise) along with the not-so-new fruit and flower tones (fuchsia, heather, plum and black currant); opulent fabrics (heavily worked brocade, beaded silk and lace). "The little-boy look," cried Women's Wear Daily, "is out . . . The Big Three have rediscovered Eve."

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