Mais Oui, OSCAR!

By MARTHA DUFFY/PARIS

It is Sunday in Paris, just three working days before the classic couture / house of Pierre Balmain presents its spring collection to the fashion world. A lot is riding on this event: Balmain, long known for the sumptuousness and taste of its creations, has been hurt since the 1982 death of couturier Pierre Balmain by the inroads that ready-to-wear clothes have made on couture. The house needs a lot more sparkle to revive its sagging fortunes and prestige.

The sewing rooms are teeming with the work that remains to be done at the last minute, which in the couture industry means virtually everything. Seamstresses are hunched over exquisite embroidery. Bodice? Belt? So far the delicate pieces have no discernible shape. The designer, a robust, immaculately tailored figure who seems to be everywhere yet remains cool amid the hubbub, warns two tailors not to put so many stitches in a vibrant aqua trench coat. "Every stitch can pull," he sighs. "Silk is a very hard fabric to tailor."

In the main workroom staffers are looking at semi-finished garments on the house models. Everybody speaks up -- about the width of a belt, the choice of footwear ("I hate those shoes!"). Staring into the mirrors with the intensity of a dancer in a practice studio, the designer ponders. A filmy navy chiffon skirt gets an instant reaction: "Georgette." It seems that the diaphanous chiffon is too light; the slightly heavier georgette will hang better. So an order is placed with the fabric house in Italy. It will take 24 hours for delivery -- if the fabric house has an acceptable navy.

The designer is obviously the key to the entire enterprise, and in choosing one, Balmain has taken a major gamble. Not only is he brand new to the house, but he isn't even French. He's -- mon Dieu! -- an American. Oscar de la Renta, 60, the elegant, experienced hand who has practically cornered the U.S. market on splendid evening clothes, is the first American ever to take over a French couture business.

Balmain's choice apparently signals a decision to keep its middle-of-the- road image. There are young French designers who look more to the iconoclastic creations of Jean-Paul Gaultier or Gianni Versace, others who are openly nostalgic for the glories of the past. Balmain's new man is unlikely to plunge in either direction. His talent lies in translating the traditional into the distinctly contemporary. He emphasizes wearable clothes, however luxurious they may be. If Balmain wants to catch up to the 1990s without leaping into the 21st century, the house made a very shrewd choice.

Oscar, as everybody calls him, fits perfectly into the Balmain aesthetic. He is not an innovator -- his few enemies call him a copyist -- but he executes gorgeous costumes with a peerless eye for fabric, detail and nuance. He understands the exotic world of couture from his youthful years working for Balenciaga and Lanvin. His private life has provided him with a window into the life-styles of luxury. His first wife, who died several years ago, was Francoise de Langlade, editor in chief of the French Vogue. He is now married to Annette Reed, a daughter of the late metals industrialist Charles Engelhard.

Born in the Dominican Republic, de la Renta has spent most of his adult life in New York City and became a U.S. citizen in 1971. He and his wife embody the ideal that wealthy, socially ambitious Manhattanites aspire to: a combination of grand luxe and good works. Annette is vice chairman of the board of trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Oscar is on the Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall boards. With friends ranging from Henry Kissinger to Brooke Astor to Isaac Stern, the couple's evenings are a round of rarefied dinners and benefit galas. These days, de la Renta likes to retreat to his spread in northwest Connecticut, where his eight-year-old adopted son, a Santo Domingo foundling, lives. But the family is looking for a place in Paris too; one can put up at the Ritz for only so long.

Roughly 36 hours to go before the collection has to be packed up for the defile, or fashion show. The action has picked up. The main salon is littered with piles of cartwheel raffia hats and with shoes that definitely were not made for walking. Almost none of the outfits is complete, but the runway models -- pricey, preening, lovely -- are arriving for fittings.

Shalom, an Israeli who appears to be made of porcelain, is clearly de la Renta's favorite. "Shalom, Shalom, Shalom," he sings as he dances around her, pinning and adjusting. She is wearing the wedding dress that traditionally ends couture shows. De la Renta's gossamer touch with wedding dresses is so renowned that Pebbles Flintstone, Fred and Wilma's daughter, has chosen him to create the gown for her marriage to Bamm-Bamm Rubble (Feb. 7, abc ).

Suddenly, Shalom's agency calls: she is overdue at Valentino's show, and "he is freaking." She is unimpressed; maybe Valentino does not sing to her. Her last costume is a sexy sheath with a deep decolletage. There is some consternation because she does not fill it. Perhaps another model should cruise the runway in this slinky number. "Are your tits as big as Kristin's?" demands one of the American assistants. More ruffled than she was by Valentino's summons, she whispers, "I think so."

De la Renta seized upon the Balmain offer in part because he felt he needed a fresh challenge. He has certainly found one. The fashion world has been wringing its hands over the troubles of couture -- handmade clothing fitted specifically to the customer's body -- for more than two decades now. The creations are expensive: roughly $5,500 for a suit, $13,000 for a simple evening dress, up to $75,000 for a ball gown. To call the industry labor- intensive is a grand understatement. No couturier makes money out of the enterprise. As Pierre Berge, Yves Saint Laurent's business partner, puts it, "You lose money every day, and the more you sell the more you lose. There are just not enough customers."

So why would Balmain be pinning such high hopes on de la Renta -- or on anyone? Because the prestige and glamour of couture help a fashion house sell its more profitable ready-to-wear clothing, accessories such as scarves and jewelry, and perfume (on which Saint Laurent, among many others, has made millions). Some designers also sell their name in lucrative franchise deals involving goods like sheets and chocolates. Says de la Renta: "In the luxury business, couture is still the best way to create and sustain an image."

Twenty minutes after the show was supposed to begin, little white panel trucks carrying the clothes are still threading their way through traffic. The defile gets started nearly an hour late. By that time, the covered courtyard of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts is jammed with the press and the fashion faithful -- a tribute to the stir that de la Renta and Balmain are causing. On hand are a healthy number of designers and well-known customers: Valentino, Claude Pompidou, some major Agnellis and Rothschilds and a generous sprinkling of American celebrities, among them Marisa Berenson, Paloma Picasso, Mica Ertegun and Barbara Walters.

The clothes are just what they should be: exquisite but distinctly unfancy, rich but wearable. American insistence on the contemporary, the focus on the way we live now, is the spirit of the show. The daytime suits, several in navy, manage to be both impeccable and just sexy enough.

The assumption in France, though, is that while a designer makes daytime clothing, his real arena is the evening. In a very successful show, Christian Lacroix produced dazzling ball gowns, grand, inventive yet harmonious. Erik Mortensen, of Jean-Louis Scherrer, had a couple of extravaganzas worthy of an Edith Wharton parvenu. Compared with these flights into fairyland, the Balmain show is almost severe. De la Renta's gowns show the most exquisite materials and embroidery but are presented, as it were, in translation -- to a modern idiom. The last-minute bolts of georgette appear in a series of elegant sheaths, delicately layered, that have the cool beauty of a waterfall. One knockout skirt is of raffia -- the straw-hat material -- that looks amazingly like embroidery.

The week ended in triumph for de la Renta. After the defile, he and his assistants swept into Cafe de Flore for a celebratory lunch, and the whole room stood and cheered. Even better news awaited back at the atelier, where phones were jammed with clients ringing for fittings. The French press gave its blessing, predicting that the tasteful collection would ensure a steady clientele for Balmain. So the old house has been restored to life.

Still, its savior faces the daunting prospect of endless encores: four Paris collections (including ready-to-wear) a year, plus two more for New York City. The day after his show, he was busy ordering shoes for the fall couture collection. How is it all possible? De la Renta is blase: "If a tycoon can run several companies, so can I."