Denim Goes Upscale

By Martha Duffy

Novelty is king in high fashion. From the unexpected to the outrageous, it writes the rules of the upmarket game. This season, boutiques are full of dressy clothes in bright colors -- limes and lemons, oranges and magentas. Nothing new there. But wait -- the surprise element is that the costumes are made of that old standby of working clothes and off-duty wear, denim. A humble cotton twill, typically a weave of indigo and white, it has always meant durability and comfort. Now it also means class.

"I would do anything but blue jeans in denim," designer Rebecca Moses says cheekily, "including very ladylike dresses and jackets that are embroidered and covered with rhinestones." Zang Toi, a Malaysian who is Seventh Avenue's latest find, is looking for a little shock value too. "I had to do something completely different," he says. "I went with bright red and shocking-pink denim, with metallic gold stitching." One of his best sellers is a sexy little bustier dress in bold colors. His next line includes a two-layered frolic: a chiffon pleated skirt over a pink denim sheath.

The house of Chanel has lent its great international cachet to upstart denim. German-born couturier Karl Lagerfeld's romance with the fabric is a weapon in his war against what he calls "the diktats of fashion," whereby certain garments and accessories can be worn only in particular settings -- silk for splendor, denim for fun. In his designs for Chanel, the maestro is mixing up materials -- tweed, denim, grosgrain -- with such sleight of hand that some of his efforts look more formal than his variations on the house's classic cut.

In Milan, Italy's irrepressible gadfly Franco Moschino points out that the Tois and the Lagerfelds are Johnny-come-latelies. Moschino has used denim for years in his clever, occasionally rude collections. He sells to royalty and rock stars -- in fact, to anyone who is secure enough or desperate enough to want to stand out. Right now he is making shirts with looped embroidery across the chest. "I use denim as a symbol of our times," says Moschino, "in the same way that Andy Warhol, in his Pop Art, used wartime camouflage painted over faces, to give them a contemporary impression." He notes another important virtue of denim: "It makes you look younger."

Denim is hardly the first Cinderella to be invited to fashion's gaudy ball. Coco Chanel, always well ahead of the game, made jersey into a chic material in the '20s. In the '30s gingham was popular with American designers, and it's turning up again this year. Today rayon is undergoing a renaissance, from something that made up Harry Truman's sport shirts to the fabric of favor for mimicking silk among most top-of-the-line designers.

For the moment, designer denim is a hot item, but when the fad is over, it is unlikely to decline in ignominy like the Nehru jacket. Instead it will probably become part of fashion's standing repertoire of alluring textiles. "Denim is the one thing everyone owns," says Donna Karan, who uses it extensively. From now on, it is likely to be found in garment bags as well as on coat pegs.

With reporting by Farah Nayeri/Paris and Linda Williams/New York