Fall Grab Bag of Dos

A girl can't stay undressed forever. With the last sand shaken out of the last sandal, bikinis back in the mothballs and nothing left of summer but a handful of overexposed color slides, the old question looms as sharply as ever: What to wear this fall?

In other seasons, and in other years, answers came easily. Paris and Seventh Avenue left little to chance or to choice: hemlines were to be lowered, waists cinched, crinolines worn, hemlines raised, waists unbelted, and crinolines banned. No more. Today, the woman who wants to be chic can get there almost any way at all. She can slither in floor-length silk, constrict herself in a ten-foot boa, snap to in a thigh-high leather jumper or win applause in a shiny vinyl raincoat that stops at the middle of the calf. This year, so long as it looks good, anything goes.

Winter Drag. What seems to be going the most is the maxi. Pooh-poohed when it first turned up five years ago, and shoo-shooed into junior departments as recently as last year, the full-length coat is scourging floors across the country more effectively than an electric broom. To be sure, sales are largely to the under-30 set, and in particular to those under-30s who happen also to be over 5 ft. 5 in. tall. (That much covering makes a shorter girl look like a walking, talking sleeping bag.) Men, fearful of losing sight of miniskirts, are generally scornful of the style. Jack Hanson, founder of California's Jax stores, goes so far as to sneer: "It's like admitting you don't have good legs." In fact, many girls don't, and they are grateful for what the maxi can do to divert attention to their other features--an elegance of neck, an effulgence of bosom, a secrecy of infrastructure.

As a result, customers from Detroit to Dallas to Atlanta to Chicago are snatching maxis off the racks, as well as floor-length mufflers and scarves. At Manhattan's Bloomingdale's, two out of three coats sold are maxis, for prices ranging anywhere from $70 to $225. Come winter, when snow and slush can turn a full-length coat into a real drag, sales are sure to ease off. But for now, and with weeks of chilly football games still to huddle through, the maxi looks like the season's best bet.

Minis, of course, are more--or less --everywhere this fall. They come short, shorter and in newly abridged versions, cut of languorous fabrics like velvet panne, crepe plisse and slinky jersey. They are shown, with a nod to the '20s, as the kicky end to a straight line cardigan suit, or, in a mixture of high drama and low burlesque, beneath maxi coats. (Said one male observer of the scene last week: "I don't mind a long coat if it is handsome and the girl in it is Geraldine Chaplin, like in Doctor Zhivago, but underneath I like to find Julie Christie, in this year's mini.") They are pleated, gathered and flared, bold and brassy in horse-blanket plaid, workaday nonchalant in houndstooth check, hoity-toity in cut damask or brocade. They are clearly here to stay awhile.

Even so serious a critic as Fashion Historian James Laver sees no downfall in sight. Laver's original prediction, in response to an urgent inquiry last year from Dallas' Neiman-Marcus about the mini's potential life span, gave the style a year and a half. Last week he revised his estimate to "indefinite." Laver adds: "A demand for cover-up clothes seems unlikely." What next, then? Laver feels, "Clothes always feature an erotic zone --now the upper thigh. My guess is that this focus is going to move to the midriff--certainly not to the ankle."

No One and Only. Whatever their current length or longevity, the new fall fashions, from maxi to mini to the in-between midi, demonstrate that the day of the one and only look is over. There are no don'ts today in fashion, just a grab bag of dos that are more challenging to the wearers, infinitely more satisfying to the designers. "For the first time," says Luba, designer for Elite, "the customer is a source of inspiration rather than irritation. Before, there were only a few, the fashion-minded, who understood what you were doing. But today, the public wants to try new things all the time."

The price for eclecticism? Astonishingly low. For another first in 1969 is the sudden flurry and flash of performance from junior-dress designers. Victor Joris, 39, and Stan Herman, 35, this year walked off with fashion's coveted Coty Award, generally reserved for the high-fashion, $500-a-dress boys. Herman dresses can be had for $50, Joris coats for $75.

So, with length no object, reasonable price tags and a dizzying variety of styles to choose from, all a woman has to do--no negligible problem--is make up her mind.

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