These notes are just to present the feeling for the Spring season's clothes. Please pardon our prose. We'll polish the prose presently. The data is just coming in hot off the wires. Yes I think it's coming in now. Dot dot dot, dash dot, dash dash dot. Hmmm. It's starting to make sense. Three words Spring to mind for Spring. Glamour. Glamour. Glamour. This Spring's shows were full of high glamour. High heels. Jewelry - not fake please - only the real thing will do. A Spring string of real pearls will do nicely. Tailored clothes, high heels and glamorous jewels. A Forties glamour feel with a Nineties twist to it. That means fitted jackets and high heels, evening fabrics like satin for daywear. In case you missed the point, the word for Spring is glamour. The long-awaited, and much mooted voluptuous hourglass body shape has returned. Curvaceous is back. Heels are high. And colour everywhere. It's all about fit. (Remember the glamour: don't forget the red lips.) The glamour reached new heights thanks to Valentino who exceeded his Spring collections of past years; bold and sleekly officious. Post-war influences nudge at your sensibilities, but Valentino has jabbed the look into the Nineties: bolero-style jackets and pencil-slim New-Length skirts. Busts are accentuated with plunging necklines, midriffs are exposed. The dresses are simple body-skimming shifts, navy blue or winter white. The English designer Vivienne Westwood had plenty of influential ideas on offer for the Spring Season. Cheeky turn of the century styles stood out from the rest of the crowd. Bright splashy colours, prim knitted cardigans, and a country feel. Proper attire this, good for a Sunday outing or church service. Gloves, hats, narrow waists - and very virtuous. All this combined in dazzling mixtures of yellow and blue, fan pleated candy-striped shirtdresses, and tablecloth-check high-neck blouses. Another English designer, John Galliano provided the Paris fashion scene with some extracurricular action at a photo studio out from the centre of the city. There were only 27 creations, but quantity was compensated for by eye-catching, high-impact quality. Very GI with Forties peplums and cocked pillbox and Robin Hood hats. Bias cut evening dresses, pencil skirts crying out for seamed stockings. Fabulous detailed jackets, featured ingenious tucks posing as revere collars, with sleeves slit and buttoned at the inner elbow. The Paris collections ended with a humdinger of a show from Karl Lagerfeld. He put together a Spring collection built around a dramatic Chanel extravaganza. There were short, waist-length jackets; titilatory slit miniskirts that revealed matching panties underneath; maillots and brassy bikinis. Lagerfeld brought it all to a stunning climax that presented Coco Chanel as a real life designer reincarnate. This spectacle was redolent of a Thirties photo and featured a multitude of men carrying chic Coco Chanel clones. Each one was replete with a Coco turban, strings of real and glamorous pearls, and baggy trousers and espadrilles all in black and white. |