Falls for Fall

"It's the finest investment in the world," says Washington Society Matron Margot Hahn. "You can't do anything in Washington without one--it's my dearest possession."

What she possesses is a fall, a gorgeous mane of human hair that pins to the top of the head to produce an extravagant but natural-looking cascade of tresses. From the Potomac to the Pacific, the fall is the runaway hair fashion of the season.

Neither as hot nor as heavy as a wig, which covers the entire head like a bathing cap, the fall has one great virtue: versatility. It can be worn long and straight, it can be braided, or it can be piled up into an elaborate coiffure for evening. In a matter of only minutes, a woman can magically transform her hairdo from short to long, curly to straight, and, because the fall blends in perfectly with her own hair, nobody need be the wiser.

Inexpensive versions in Dynel are available for as little as $10. But for the genuine article, made of European hair in lengths of 16 in. to three feet, Michel Kazan, whose falls for the Galanos showing last January launched the fashion, charges anywhere from $150 to $600. Manhattan's Kenneth charges just as much, sells 100 of them per week; at Lilly Dache, real hair falls outsell wigs 25 to 1; and they account for 75% of all the hair goods sold in Joseph Magnin's 28 West Coast stores.

The rise of the fall may be partly a reaction against the severe and boyish geometry of last year's Sassoon haircut. Suggests Kenneth: "It gives the proportion to women's heads that is needed with the smallness of clothes today." Among the women who have fallen hardest for the fall are such socialites as San Francisco's Franchise Fleishhacker, Manhattan's Anne McDonnell Ford and daughters Anne and Charlotte, Princess Grace of Monaco. Jacqueline Kennedy, and Joan Kennedy, who bought a fall especially for her upcoming trip to Africa and the Middle East. "I'm just not going to have time to go to a hairdresser," she explains, and she plans instead to rely on the fall to stay elegantly coiffed with a minimum of effort.

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