Paris Fashions Go to Peking

With Cardin 's couture, a Great Leap Sexward

Sex is not something they talk about openly in China. Nor do they dress with it in mind. The country's slim, trim women wear no perfume, jewelry, nail polish, or shadow on their almond eyes; for the most part, they march around in the same austere white shirts, shapeless blue pants and sandals as the menfolk. While early marriage is discouraged (men are urged to wait until they are at least 28, women 25), the People's Republic frowns equally on premarital amour, and the unappetizing national costume seems designed to defuse dalliance.

But wait! Things are changing. Thirty years after its Communist revolution, China may now be ready for the sexual revolution. If so, historians will undoubtedly hail an unreconstructed capitalist as point man in the Great Leap Sexward. The man, naturellement, is Pierre Cardin.

Designer Cardin at 56 has attached his name to practical fantasies that can be worn, walked on, slept in, sat upon, munched, drunk, flown, pedaled or driven in 69 countries. His latest coup is an agreement to serve as exclusive consultant to China's embryonic fashion industry. The Parisian may have his haute couture models reproduced in China, where the workmanship is exquisite and cheap, creating a new export trade for the Middle Kingdom. If the contract works out, 10% of Cardin-Cathay will be reserved for sale inside China, which is probably wise, considering the fact that in France even a readymade Cardin frock sells for at least $200, as much as the average Chinese worker's income for about seven months.

Nevertheless, the clothes to be shown in China will differ not a whit from the 200 designs paraded last week for Western buyers and fashion reporters at L'Es-pace Cardin in Paris.

The collection, to be displayed in its entirety next month in Peking and Shanghai, ranges from garments with thigh-high slits and see-through torsos to dresses and coats with overstuffed "pagoda" shoulders and gold kimono jackets worn over tight silk pants. The designer, who has spent four years plotting the Cardinization of Cathay, makes abundant use of the country's magnificent silks and cashmeres but yields nothing to Maonotony. "Vroom!" he cries. "It's the shock that will be interesting. Why should I copy Mao collars when what they want is dresses from Paris? The Chinese have lost their suspicion, and dream of giving their clothes a Western image that will set China at the level of other nations."

That level already exists--at some altitudes. Cho Lin, Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-p'ing's wife, changed from one dazzling ensemble to another during her U.S. visit last week. Many Chinese panjandrums wear silken tunics that barely bow to Mao. Sumptuousness, after all, is not exactly new to the people who created such marvels as the Ming Tombs and the Forbidden City. After decades of isolation and unisex, it is not too surprising that the Chinese should again aspire to elegance, or seek it from Paris, where some of their leaders were educated. As for Cardin: "When I was 20, a fortune teller told me that my name would be on all the walls of the cities of the world." Now, the Great Wall?

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