Long-Ago and Far-Away Romance

"Haute couture is opera. It is dreams and phantoms and magic," says Yves Saint Laurent, the Sun King of fashion. So it was last week at the showings of the French couture collections for autumn: high fashion had indeed become pure theater. Vanished was the sleek, pantsuited look that Saint Laurent himself once institutionalized, and his revolutionary peasant look of last year was transmuted into costumes more sumptuous, more fantastical, more opulent --and more expensive (typically $3,000 to $10,000 per outfit)--than ever before. Romanticism--from Saint Laurent's Oriental visions to Marc Bohan's fin desiecle flirtations--is alive and well and living in Paris.

ORIENTAL OPULENCE. Saint Laurent's new operatic visions have moved eastward from Russia to the plains of Mongolia and the war councils of 13th century China. Mandarins and coolies alike are swathed in satin and silk, tasseled and tufted, brocaded and beaded. A collector of Oriental art, Saint Laurent has used for his clothes the colors of his objets d'art--jade green, Chinese bronze, and the rich reds and shiny blacks of lacquer. Soft opiate grays that add a smoky mystery to the costumes complement a perfume that he will introduce next year--named, appropriately, Opium.

In a sense, Saint Laurent has designed the emperor's new clothes. His soft, flowing dresses, characterized by full sleeves and a loose obi caressing the hips, are adaptations of angular Chinese designs. Over these dresses or over satin pants are worn gargantuan wraps--a peplum coat sewn with real gold thread cloth, costing over $200 a meter, or a massive Genghis Khan jacket made of iridescent brocades and lined with fur. Saint Laurent set off his ensembles with high-heeled boots and a variety of hats, including pillbox and coolie styles.

Other designers have also produced variations on the Oriental theme. For the House of Lanvin--which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the creation of its Arpege perfume with a special showing of six dresses designed by Jeanne Lanvin in the 1920s--Jules-Francois Crahay paid homage to Asia with thick, quilted Tibetan coats, Mongolian jackets, and brilliantly colored folkloric ensembles. Even the names of the clothes were redolent of the enigmatic East --Petrograd, Katmandu, Marrakech and Salome.

"I will always have within me an Oriental feeling," says Emanuel Ungaro, who drew sustained applause for his exotic breastplate dresses, consisting of gold metallic chest ornaments worn above sheer sarongs. The outfits will come with tiny electronic heaters, designed to warm the heart.

ART AND ARTIFICE. Some of the new clothes looked as though they had come from a studio wardrobe, and their presentation was also theatrical. Pierre Cardin flew a group of journalists to Lyon, the center of the silk industry, where they viewed his new models at the modern Lyon-Satolas airport--an appropriate setting, since Cardin was one of the creators of the 1960s futuristic look. His collection this year included accordion-pleated capes, wasp-waisted gowns and bright, tiered skirts.

In Paris, Serge Lepage showed his collection for the House of Schiaparelli in a grandiose public display. A massive outside staircase was erected to the couture house's second floor, and the models--making their entrances from the windows--emerged into the Paris rain and wind. Olympic torches on the landings blew in the wind as the mannequins in their capes and lavishly embroidered chasubles stood with arms outstretched like sacrificial victims.

Jean-Louis Scherrer staged his fashion rendition of the hunters and the hunted to the sound of baying hounds and music from the film Barry Lyndon. His Loden capes and hunting jackets gave way to evening gowns ornamented with leopard-paw clasps and, finally, to chiffon sheaths in panther prints.

BELLE EPOQUE. While most of the designers were evoking images of the celluloid past or far-flung lands, Marc Bohan for the House of Dior chose his motifs from a nearer era--France's Belle Epoque. Inspired by the writings of Colette, his clothes are flirtatious and feminine. Here there are no robes that conceal the figure, no heavy padding--only effervescent clothes that capture the spirit of Gigi, the gay gamine immortalized by Maurice Chevalier's Thank Heaven for Little Girls.

Pierrot collars and flounces adorned many of Bohan's dresses, capes and blouses. For evening, there were a strapless ball gown supported by whalebone, tiered party dresses, and taffeta capes with double Pierrot collars. The knee-length daytime outfits, including simple black wool suits and Spencer jackets worn with black stockings, narrow neckties and black velvet hair ribbons, drew sustained applause from an audience that included both Madame Claude Pompidou and Bianca Jagger. Said Bergdorf Goodman President Ira Neimark, who plans to buy ten or twelve Dior ensembles for his Paris couture promotion: "Excellent--in the tradition of Dior, but younger."

Indeed, the once serious world of haute couture, seemingly oblivious to the voices that have prophesied its doom, sparkles with youth and joie devivre. This in spite of the fact that most of the designers are taking their inspiration from bygone eras and remote cultures. But if the collections last week are any indication, a remembrance of fashions and times past, translated into the present with bravura, can itself make history --or at least contemporary magic.

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