Fashion: Oxygen for an Aging Lady

In the late '40s there were 20,000. Today there are in the whole world only some 3,000 rich and fashionable women who wear clothes hand-made by the 23 haute couture houses of Paris. To evoke their celebrated sighs, provoke the fashion press and attract the foreign manufacturers and department-store buyers in search of rip-off grail, a legion of designers, buyers, cutters, seamstresses, midinettes, mannequins and pressers labor mightily to produce the two big shows, for summer and winter.

Give them credit. By deciding to celebrate legs or bury them, to glorify bosoms or flatten them, by floating women's bodies in capes and drapes, shawls, cloaks, trains, panels, hoods, furbelows and twiddlybits, the great fashion houses emerge, year after year, as masters of trompe l'oeil. Otherwise, monitoring these collections would be like sitting through Aida for the 42nd time. As Mrs. Pierre Schlumberger, of the French oil-rich, noted before seeing the Saint Laurent collection in the laurel-bedecked ballroom of the Crillon, "We can't really expect them to keep coming up with something new twice a year, though that is what we are demanding." What Paris offered last week was manic vacillation.

YVES SAINT LAURENT came on with a romantic version of his tough-chic man-tailored pantsuits, followed by a new rendering of his 1976 peasant-Gypsy-Spanish-Russian look. This time he used delicate Indian prints, floral patterns and filmy mousselines--inspired, it was said, by Renoir (who was not exactly inspired by peasants). Y.S.L. remained the superstar.

COURREGES spilled out a whole locker room of sweat pants, parkas, tennis dresses, beach clothes and mechanics' coveralls. In contrast he showed a jersey dress that glows in the dark and a line of sexy swimsuits, their two pieces placed vertically, not horizontally, and held together by thin strings on the sides.

UNGARO, on an Oriental jag, splashed landscape prints across many of his skirts. Exotic evening dresses were modernistic geometric renderings of the kimono, with wide sashes at the waist and necklines that sometimes slashed to the sash. A shrewd departure, considering that 20% of haute couture clients nowadays are Japanese.

LANVIN, whose designer Jules Francois Crahay was one of the discoverers of couture paysanne, has citified the look with sleeveless jackets over peasant blouses, accordion-pleated dresses and brief, embroidered bodices above huge skirts.

CARDIN raised hemlines and eyebrows with his short "nymphette line" --which Le Figaro termed "adorable" and L'Aurore dismissed as "a style for perennial Lolitas." Less noticed were Cardin's romantically tailored capes, blouses and suit jackets, some with sleeves cut so wide that they afforded tantalizing glimpses of the bosom each time the wearer gestured, or breastured.

Through beautiful fabrics, fine workmanship, showmanship and oneupmanship, the grande dame of Paris fashion survived yet another season. As Pierre Cardin put it, "We needed to insert a little oxygen into haute couture. " Next time around they may need plasma.

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