Open Season

A few summers ago teen-age girls discovered that cut-off T shirts or skimpy tops fashioned from a couple of handkerchiefs looked good over their hiphuggers. Everyone who saw them thought they looked good too. Finally getting the message, designers this season have come up with a variety of ingeniously engineered micro-tops, near-nude beachwear, and dresses with deep cleavage, bare backs, bare sides and bare shoulders. The summer of '72 promises to be a wide-open season.

Everyone was clearly bored by three seasons of hemming and hawing. Letting skirts fall where they may this summer, designers to a man--and woman--have transferred their attention topside. The new mini-tops can go over anything and everything--long skirts, loose-fitting slacks, short skirts, hot pants. Designer Betsey Johnson, for instance, has turned out abbreviated leotard tops that can be worn in the office or in the pool, along with abbreviated "baby sweaters," a relatively warm way to stay cool (see color, overleaf). Scott Barrie's polka-dotted backless vests tentatively shield 30% of the upper torso of women with the nerve --and the figure--to wear them.

The traditional way of baring the female breast is to undrape from the top down. The new approach is from either side, or even from the bottom up. One of the more radical of the new styles is the muslin wrapping sold by Manhattan's Henri Bendel. Imported from Greece, it grazes only the top of the bosom, revealing underneath all you ever wanted to know and now do not need to ask.

Bill Blass, who "can't remember the last time I did a strapless dress," produced several for his spring collection. Perhaps the most "in" designer of all, Halston, who numbers Jackie Onassis and Candice Bergen among his clients, believes that "the well-exercised body should not be encased." But he wisely concentrates on baring the safest female area for general display--the back. One slinky black jersey by Halston has a centerfold cutout scooped so low that it frames the lady's sacrum, covering only her ilium.

Less may be more, according to the new designers, but for Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's dictum to be true, as he well knew, careful attention must be paid to structure, to supports, to underpinnings. Barrie frankly uses narrow crisscross straps, back or front. Crahay of Lanvin hangs his backless clothes from tied stock collars. Donald Brooks has engineered foundations into his backless dresses, so secure that a woman can even "curtsy and not fall out," he claims. But for women who want to be both bared and bra-ed, complicated problems lie ahead. One possibility is the "three-in-one halter crisscross decollete convertible," which, though it sounds like an automobile, is actually an all-purpose wisp of lingerie.

With so much seminudity on the streets, it is not surprising that beach outfits have reached a new nadir in coverage. The most daring of all are the "monokinis"--topless and almost bottomless suits that have been pared to fig-leaf proportions. Wearing them takes courage, but there is plenty of that on the beaches of southern France, where women of all ages have been going topless for at least three years. Even in the more conservative U.S., predicts Rudi Gernreich, the inventor of the shortlived topless suit of 1964, "in five years people will be swimming nude in public places--it's healthier."

The new styles have certainly been healthy for purveyors of women's clothing. New York's Bonwit Teller ran a newspaper ad on March 1 featuring three bareback tops. "We sold 800 of them from that one ad," says Fashion Director Danny Zarem. Sellouts are also reported in Los Angeles, Paris and London.

How will men react? Some women worry that the Bare Look could lead to an unwanted increase in male attention.

"Girls are afraid the guys won't leave them alone if they wear the Bare Look to the office," says one boutique manager. That fear may be exaggerated; the plethora of skin might result in more boredom than enticement. Already Designer Stan Herman, who spends much of his day around women dressed in seminude styles, says, "I find girls in tight little sweaters much sexier."

The Nude Look. "Bareness is the expression of our times," declares Monika Tilley, Austrian-born sportswear designer. Her effort to give "the wearer maximum exposure" is clearly successful in the bathing suit at the right. As with some bikinis, the top and bottom are sold separately. This enables women of unorthodox proportions to jigger the sizes as they must, but might in time encourage the economical shopper to go topless to the beach--or bottomless.

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