Line of Most Resistance

The midi goes to great lengths to look like a loser. Unflattering (except over legs that never quit and hips that never start) and impractical (except to cover up a bad case of knees), the latest dress length seems as anachronistic as the New Look and more of a drag than the bustle.

Still, to the persistent tune of Women's Wear Daily pronouncements that "The Longuette is now it," U.S. designers are elbowing each other to be next in line with the line. Norman Norell is silent on skirts, but has let it be known that he intends all fall coats to be mid-calf length. Jacques Tiffeau says that "you can't say to women, 'You've got to drop your hemline 20 inches.' " Still, he is doing just that for some coats and skirts, although he is keeping his dresses short and snappy. Bill Blass is turning out a half-hearted 50%-midi collection; Oscar de La Renta promises to go to "all lengths for spring and summer," but is flinging caution--and leftover minis--aside for a fall collection destined to be 100% pure midi. That will leave him two seasons behind James Galanos, whose current collection shows not so much as a smidgen of knee. Says he for the midi: "It was unavoidable. The time was right, and women are ready." Mrs. Richard Nixon appears to be, anyway. On a shopping trip to New York last week, she selected several knee-covering styles (one of them a genuine midi by Geoffrey Beene, was judged two inches too long, and lopped off to a length described by Designer Anne Fogarty as "moxie").

Midis already account for close to 5% of the dresses currently in stock in most U.S. stores, and French and Italian copies (most of them long-line Valentinos) filtering in this month are pushing minis even farther back on the racks. Last week Ohrbach's ushered in an import collection of 50 styles, each and every one the long length. For Seventh Avenue, the midi could be the answer to every merchant's prayers--a way out of the current buying slump. If midis catch on, they could bolster business by more than 30% this year.

Pulling the Wool. Not if much of the public can help it. "The midi is all right in its place, like in a dungeon," muttered Los Angeles Film Maker Michael Huemmer. "It makes women look like tea cosies," said a Chicago housewife. "Instant age," sniffed a Boston fashion writer. "If God wanted women to go around all covered up that way," says Atlanta TV Reporter Tom Loughney, "they'd be born like that." Still, such protests rarely reach farther than across a bar or a park bench. What the midi mania clearly calls for is mass resistance.

Mrs. Juli Reding Hutner of Los Angeles first got the idea for POOFF (Preservation Of Our Femininity and Finances) after she spent one too many ladies' luncheons bemoaning the sudden threatened obsolescense of her friends' wardrobes and her own. In one week, the organization's membership grew from 19 to 1,000 (among them, Actresses Lizabeth Scott and Connie Stevens, Mrs. Harold Robbins and Barbara Mutton's daughter-in-law, Cheryl Reventlow). Dues of $20 a year were established, mainly to cover costs of petitions and bumper stickers like the one already being printed in shocking pink and shocking language: UP YOUR MIDI. "We're not going to let them pull the wool over our legs as well as our eyes," says Mrs. Hutner, miniskirt flashing. "Women aren't going to be sheep any more." Sheepishly, L.A. Mayor Sam Yorty agreed to celebrate this week as POOFF week, with booths for petition signing set up in front of the city's major department stores and restaurants. Besieged by enough petitions, Mrs. Hutner feels, designers and buyers will have to respond by boycotting the midi. "We'll win by fall," she pledges.

Men, too, are rallying to the cause. L.A. Investment Banker Neil Kneitel last week founded SMACK (Society of Males who Appreciate Cute Knees) to circulate POOFF petitions in the city's downtown area. "There isn't anything but smog and beer cans around here," Kneitel explains, "and when we get out of the board rooms and off the phones to go out to lunch, we want to see all those lovely miniskirted girls." Another male group, also called POOFF (this time, for Professional Oglers Of Female Figures), has been formed by what its founder, James Knight, describes as "a group of unsanitary senior citizens, all of whom agree that the stock market goes down with hemlines and who would gladly vote for micro skirts above all."

Making Their Own. Chapters of Mrs. Hutner's POOFF Inc. last week broke ground in Middle America. Nebraska POOFF Chairman Mrs. Sylvia Bayless last week led her band of protesters to their first mass rally at a Bellvue shopping center. The theme--"Wear a Mini, Bring Your Man to Protest the Midi" --drew 1,000 sympathizers, all of whom dutifully signed on the dotted lines of petitions. Says Mrs. Charlotte Darwin of Goldsboro, N.C., of her prospective

POOFF plans: "If stores will no longer stock the mini, my home economics students and I will simply make our own." Even in the gloomy shadow of Seventh Avenue, a New York chapter is just getting under way. "We will fight as hard as we can," promises Division Head Mrs. Ros Frenkel, "and as long as people like us object vigorously, we have a winning chance."

Fortunately, vigorous objectors abound in Manhattan. Last month the brand-new International Council of Legmen issued its first public manifesto. Major aim of "this dedicated group of gam aficionados: to establish a unified voice on fashion decisions relating to female leg exposure." Says Council Chairman Thomas Redington: "Designers are paying too little attention to legmen. We're going to change all that, even if it takes some high-pressure lobbying." Already, letters have gone out to all members of Congress; Legmen predict large-scale support.

No wonder. Unless the midi is stopped short, it promises to be the biggest letdown to girl watchers since the window shade.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.