It's That Old Short Story Again

By Martha Duffy

Italian designers hope that minis will bloom in the spring

The models breezing down Giorgio Armani's glass-topped runway were having too much fun to put on the mannequin's usual mask of boredom. It was a celestial fashion parade: zephyr-light chiffon shorts worn with a billowing shirt and slightly askew man's tie; immaculately tailored jackets with saucy miniskirts; poolside playsuits that looked as if they might evaporate at any moment. The international crowd of buyers and press applauded throughout the show, the highlight of last week's spring collections in Milan, and at the end stood to cheer the creator of all these youthful fantasies.

As usual, Armani had said it best, but he was not delivering any new message by stopping skirts at mid-thigh. Legs were the hit of Milan. Designers sent insufficiently willowy models right back to the agency and ordered up more and longer legs. Almost every show had minis: Karl Lagerfeld, designing the Fendi collection, made them up in a witchy little F print of his own devising that managed to lend the house's ubiquitous initial some charm. Sexy Gianni Versace went straight to the point and crafted brief siren suits. At Complice, Claude Montana did seemingly endless variations on the mini theme in bold red leather. Nor is Milan alone in hiking skirts. Preview releases from Seventh Avenue make clear that everyone from Perry Ellis to Stephen Sprouse is making short lengths, and in Paris this week, Montana will be doing in his own collection more of what he showed at Complice. Says he: "Especially with the Japanese, we've been seeing clothes that camouflaged the body. Now it's time to show off legs and shoulders again."

By a couple of indicators, Montana should be right. The fashion industry was well pleased that Milan had played up bright colors and soft contours. It has been borrowing heavily from menswear tailoring and proportions, so that by last season the code word androgyny was used even by people who had a sneaking feeling that it meant something lewd. The Japanese influence, with its cool rejection of human anatomy, was at its height in 1983 as well. Clothing got heavy and neutral and business slowed.

So it is time for a change. But does that mean fashion is harking back to the '60s? Probably not. For one thing, it is no longer possible for anyone to dictate to women the way designers and the glamour press did 20 years ago. Consciousness has soared higher than any hem. Norma Kamali speaks for her customers when she says, "As a woman I don't want anybody telling me how I have to look, and I don't want to tell anybody, 'This is what you have to do.' " Most of her colleagues no longer want to play king. Says Armani: "If the press is going to shout so much about my 18-in. skirts, I shall renounce paternity." In one sense he already has: all his skirts will be shipped to stores at knee length, leaving the exact specifications up to the purchaser. Gianfranco Ferre, who showed minis, thought the whole fuss was show biz. Said he: "I keep the same proportions on the runway as on the racks."

The clothes introduced last week are softer and freer than the stiff, squarish constructs of the '60s. The movie Flashdance popularized dancy, swingy short skirts. The swans who glide through the late-night brasseries of the Left Bank and Soho are never without their little black leather tube skirts. American Designer Betsey Johnson, who began her career 20 years ago, now says, "Ever since jogging shorts, when the health boom hit the streets, short lengths have been acceptable."

Most buyers and commentators see a good market for minis, especially among the young. But they have been wrong before, as recently as 1982, when a predicted mini boom failed to materialize. To Author Alison Lurie (The Language of Clothes), it will all depend on the 1985 economy: "In good times people feel gay and childlike and women want to dress like little girls." The mini is not the most elegant statement designers can make, and they know it. Kamali points straight to the anatomy: "It's knees we're talking about. Every woman will make her decision partly according to how her knees look." Or, as a cynical veteran of Milan summed up, "Short skirts are for looking at legs, not style."

-By Martha Duffy. Reported by Leonora Dodsworth/Milan and Elizabeth Rudulph/New York

With reporting by Leonora Dodsworth, Elizabeth Rudulph