Modern Living: Stretch & Smash

The woman traveler is rapidly moving out of the Drip-Dry Era into the Smashable Age. For years, her only alternatives were paying excess-baggage fees for wrinkleable clothes of regular stay-at-home weight, which had to be pressed again and again, or going lightweight and drip-dry, in the universally recognizable tourist costumes of Orion, nylon or Dacron, which, if well enough styled at times, were never really chic. But in this season’s suitcases, wadded and crumpled like hasty lumps of dough, are vacation wardrobes of considerable elegance and style. The seemingly unsalvageable lumps emerge as slight, figure-skimming dresses made of featherweight knits and various jerseys, including wrinkleproof synthetic jerseys with synthetic names (Ban-Lon, Arnel, Orion Cantrece, Creslan, Acrilan and Zefran). They can be stuffed fearlessly, without preservative layers of tissue paper, into any suitcase corner, and the lumps disappear, without pressing, moments after the dress has been put on a hanger.

Passing for Brocade. Undisputed master of the smashable dress is Italian Designer Emilio Pucci, who pioneered the idea as long ago as 1937, when he used stretch fabric in designing the uniforms for his fellow ski-team members at Oregon’s Reed College. Established since then as one of the world’s best designers of sports clothes, Pucci has a sense of style and color that makes his travel wear resplendent as well as resilient. Pucci’s stretch silk now passes for brocade, is used in ball gowns and bikinis. His six-ounce, pure-silk stretchable separates (skirts, slacks and overblouses, each $49.95) and dresses (V-necked and cap-sleeved or round-necked and long-sleeved, loosely belted sheaths, all $99.50) must be dry-cleaned, but patterns and colors are so varied that almost any stain turns chameleon and is lost. Brilliant pinks, yellows and deep-water greens clash but somehow blend in Pucci’s jungle fabrics, often looking like the wild middle ground between Henri Rousseau and Jackson Pollock.

Although the Pucci fabric has not yet been successfully copied, there are less expensive stretch fashions, many of which make up by low cost what they lack in high style. Some of them add the drip-dry feature to crushability. Among them: Haymaker’s flowery separates in a drip-dry warp knit, $29.95 each; and countless, nameless nylon shifts, $10 and up. The knits follow closely on Pucci’s stretchy heels: Kimberly’s wool dresses with jackets ($59.95), three-piece suits ($59.95 and $69.95) and plain dresses ($49.95 and $59.95), all in solid, placid colors with an occasional border contrast, are also relatively light and packable.

Fancier Than Scarlett’s. To go with the smashable fashions are numerous accessories, the newest and most practical using something called Curon, a thin, transparent, foam-plastic layer that is laminated to wool or worsted jersey as an interlining. Also among space-saving accessories: smashable turbans, many studded with creaseproof beads and fringe; wash-and-wear embroidered lingerie, fancier by far than Scarlett’s; Italian nylon drip-dry raincoats, which actually may be more wrinkle than rainproof; tiny, collapsible umbrellas that look like pistols and shoot up almost as quickly.