They have the elegance of long dresses but the ease of a pair of jeans. They fall handsomely over the clunky platform shoes that are so popular today. They are palazzo pantswide-legged trousers that fit tightly at the hips but swell to bell-bottoms as much as five feet in circumference. The flowing material is often draped so widely that from a distance the eye cannot distinguish between a woman in a long gown and a woman in palazzos. Says Irene Satz, of Manhattan's Ohrbach's department store: "They don't look like pants, but they are."
Palazzos are already selling well in New York,...