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Long and short of skirt lengths: recession or no?

BY MARYLOU LUTHER | Special to Newsday

March 17, 2008

So what do you wear to a recession? Black, for one thing.

As if anticipating the economic downturn, designers in Paris and Milan went in heavily for the color of darkness at their recent fall shows. Call it austerity chic - or perhaps just a means of playing it safe in these uncertain times, when even the luxury market is showing signs of struggling.

The economy and overall global malaise also may be responsible for a new escapism in fashion. You don't like the sound of tomorrow? Join Gucci's Frida Giannini and take a trip back to the '70s, where rich hippies rock and roll in a fascinating blend of boho and glitz - jeans, Gypsy prints, leather fringe, studded belts.

You want to forget your troubles and just stay happy in some distant principality? Alexander McQueen gives us pretty petticoated princesses and other assorted royalty, with the occasional maharani thrown in. Or skip back to the early '60s with Dior's John Galliano and his boxy-jacketed suits that recall Jacqueline Kennedy. You want to stop the world? Lift off with the patent- leather space maidens at Balenciaga.

Through all of this, hemlines are as up and down as the stock market, echoing the either/or nature of the season. For every mini at Balmain or short skirt at Versace there's a calf-skimming length at Dolce & Gabbana. For every knee-grazing dress at Bottega Veneta there's an ankle-length skirt at Chanel. For every top-of-the-calf full skirt at Louis Vuitton there's a slender just-above-the-knee length at Lanvin.

Back in the '50s, there was a phenomenon called the hemline indicator that linked skirt lengths to the stock market. High hems supposedly signified high times and low ones the opposite. That analogy has long since been disproved, and hemlines have moved up and down the leg for many years, with no apparent link to Wall Street.

Still, current hemline options include more skirts that descend to the calf and below than we've seen of late, and some retailers worry that the longer lengths might frighten already wary consumers. Others believe their customers will long for the new longs.

"Even though we've seen everything from micro-mini to knee, calf and ankle lengths, we believe our customer wants lengths that hover around the knee to midcalf at the longest," says Michael Fink, vice president and women's fashion director at Saks Fifth Avenue. Linda Fargo, Bergdorf Goodman's senior vice president, sees the hemline choices this way: "We will encourage everyone to embrace a longer hem - anywhere from just below the knee to almost maxi, as at Chanel."

THE FABRIC OF OUR LIVES

So what about the future tense of fashion? Is there a new shape? A new sensibility? Not really. The one truly innovative side of fall fashion involves fabrics. At Balenciaga, for example, Nicolas Ghesquiere's latex and plastic insertions have a kind of sci-fi/alien sensibility.

The sculpted, structured out-of-body shapes also look trend-worthy at Yves Saint Laurent, where fabric invention includes a designer Stefano Pilati calls flock - a cotton-polyester material with a velvet effect - and a cotton poplin bonded with mesh for a pique effect that looks truly other-worldly.

Credit Miuccia Prada with reinventing lace, from thick open work to delicate netting. And New York's Ralph Rucci, who showed in Paris this season, propels fabric creativity with materials that seem to vibrate. Through the use of some interesting draping and tucking (based, he says, on theories of quantum physics), a silk cocktail dress appears to move in waves.

- Marylou Luther