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In New York, the Chinese designer Han Feng, whose skill is also in color and fabric, showed her most sophisticated collection yet, and the Vietnamese Vivienne Tam floated some graceful, filmy cocktail dresses in black and white. Both offerings were abbreviated compared with the 100-outfit extravaganza launched by de la Renta, but collections like these are among the small pleasures of following fashion. Feng and Tam stick strictly to what their fabrics tell them and succeed in creating highly individual silhouettes.
The white-hot English designer John Galliano, meanwhile, was the chief prophet of another theme in the fall collections: Hollywood-inspired '40s retro glamour. His suits and dresses were stiletto-slim, with huge, dramatic sleeves or swaths of material around the shoulders or waist. Jackie wouldn't wear one of these, and Audrey would be overwhelmed in one, but it is easy to imagine Joan Crawford or Bette Davis stalking an errant lover using the costume as a weapon. Ghost, designed by Tanya Sarne -- who is also English -- was back in the black-and-white era too: waterfall dresses, flowing crepe trousers and handsome bias-cut skirts.
With such an array of beauty now available, one would think the fashion world had left its flamboyant excesses behind. Think again. This is an industry that seems to thrive on crises. Drama counts. For every sublime Miyake, there is always someone out there on a toot. Even designers who usually make well-cut, wearable clothes, like Donna Karan, get the fever. In her DKNY show, the city girl went western, featuring dubious slinky pants with a phony chaps look, crinoline-shaped frontier skirts and hats that were at least seven gallons. In Paris, Jean-Paul Gaultier, perennial idol of the fashion press, indulged in one of his toughest tart looks ever. Each of his models had one eye blackened, and sullen stares seemed to be a decree. Some of them wore cyberspace-punk bodysuits printed with computer graphics. Still, draped over them were practical coats and jackets-Gaultier's meal ticket.
The apogee of excess, however, was a $3 million extravaganza staged in Paris by Thierry Mugler, who took over the Cirque d'Hiver to celebrate his 20th year in the business. A standing-room-only crowd of 1,700 watched as nearly 100 models and dancers cavorted on a multilevel stage. He had the finest flowering of supermodeldom, plus drop-ins by former Hitchcock star (The Birds) Tippi Hedren-one of whose gowns was decorated with feathers-and heiress Patty Hearst. Mugler is about the only person left who presents corsets and bustiers, but at least he made them sexy.
Wearable? Certainly not. Elegant? Hardly. Mugler's glitzy, over-the-top show was dated before the crowd found its way out of the circus. Modern fashion will never follow a single leader, but if designers, retailers and women have anything to say about it, sanity is here to stay a while-along with a touch of class and maybe a whiff of charm. Mugler served at least one important function: bring in the clowns, the bearded ladies, the acrobats. It's all downright nostalgic. --Reported bY Greg Burke/Rome, Dorie Denbigh/Paris, Barbara Rudolph and David E. Thigpen/New York