FASHIONS: Something Old, Something New

In the crowded, flower-bedecked salons of Paris’ top couturiers, the first big postwar showings of the new fall fashions have been going on day after day. Despite a shortage of materials and the low state of the French economy, “collections” were nearly as large as prewar. Most designers had extravagantly used far more material for their models than any U.S. designer would dare use under the dying WPB’s austerity regulation L-85. Last week, as pictures of the new models arrived in the U.S., designers scanned them to see what was up and what was down.

The neckline was definitely down: most noteworthy feature was the “Restoration bosom,” in both evening and daytime dresses. Lucien Lelong hailed it as the “rediscovery of the shape of the body, emphasizing the bust.” His black crepe daytime dress, Cythère, cost $360, and his evening dress, “Amphytrite,” looked like a revival of the old hourglass figure. Lelong dubbed it the mermaid figure.

Jacques Fath, a slim, blond newcomer, added a bodice of torturing wire stays to his model of dusty blue taffeta, “Argengon” (price: $650). Hermès, famed for his sport dresses, featured his low-necked “Boston.” Another newcomer, Pierre Balmain, managed to be very chic and comparatively reasonable: his mauve taffeta and tight-skirted black silk evening gown (price: $360) also had long gloves of matching taffeta. Spanish-born, ex-Communist Balenciaga was the only one who went against the mode. The New York Sun’s Judy Barden quipped about Balenciaga’s conservative collection: “It reminds me of 1910.”

After leafing through pictures of the collections, one Manhattan designer sniffed: “If this is the best Paris can do, we have nothing to worry about.”