Fashion: The New Beat

Not so long ago she might have got by with illustrious bones, a rumor of a bosom, reliable cosmetics, and a stomach that could settle on Ry-Krisp and yoghurt, but fashions in fashion models change. These days the girl who can’t perform a mean frug might just as well turn in her hatbox. It’s a cinch that she will never make the scene.

For across the country, from department stores in Manhattan to a suburban shopping center in Virginia to a shop in Los Angeles, the rock ‘n’ roll fashion show is the kickiest thing to come along since the trampoline lost its bounce. In Manhattan last week, anybody who was anybody was not at Arthur (where the sound was the same) but on the rooftop of staid old Best & Co.

There, the visceral rhythms of rock ‘n’ roll were moving and shaking a fashion show. The music came from four swinging platinum blondes from New Jersey who called themselves The Skunks and turned out to be guys. The models frugged, swam, and monkeyed down the aisle. Surprising? Even more surprising was what happened next: the show sold a lot of dresses. And the biggest surprise of all is that the whole gas of a package had not been dreamed up in the pop-happy U.S. but in austere old England. As a matter of fact, the package had been tied up and delivered by Mary Quant, who at 31 is the dean of Britain’s new-wave designers. Says she: “The music and the new clothes are inseparable.”

At Manhattan’s Arnold Constable, the show belonged to Caroline Charles, one of the dozen young designers of the “Chelsea Revolution” whose presumptuous styles have forced even the London fog to lift. Backed by the wailing beat and flanked by dancers in fishnet stockings, the Charles collection mesmerized a series of teen-age audiences. And music, as sales figures testify, has something to do with fashion. Said Caroline, to the rhythmic sound of amplified guitars: “Dig one, you’re bound to dig the other.”