Stalking the Elusive Hemline

How the "fashion dragons"forecast what women will wear

For the fashion press, it was a typical week in Milan, with clamoring crowds, blazing lights and thumping disco music. Photographers argued and jostled for position. Police tried to arrest most of the 60 American models for working without proper papers; one mannequin hurdled a fence, and many others fled, returning the next day with temporary permits. Meanwhile there was a dizzying parade of ready-to-wear clothes, some 2,500 costumes from 40 mostly Italian designers. "It bloats the stomach and boggles the mind," admitted one U.S. editor. "Can you imagine having to write about it?"

With Milan challenging Paris for primacy in the ready-to-wear fashion world, a record 300 journalists from twelve countries were on hand to do some serious --and not so serious--writing. They belong to an influential but little-noticed subspecies of international journalism, the "fashion dragons," as they are known in the trade. With a mangled metaphor or a burbling encomium, they can rearrange fortunes in the clothing business, and change the buying plans of well-dressed women. On hand in Milan last week were representatives of glossy magazines, large daily newspapers, trade papers and some lesser lights (one improbable accreditation: the North Jersey Suburbanite). For many, Milan was the start of a month-long fashion circus, with successive showings of fall and winter collections in London, Paris and, in late April, New York. In October the tour reconvenes for the unveiling of new spring and summer clothes.

The fashion dragons have declined in puissance somewhat since a decade ago, when Women's Wear Daily, the industry's bitchy bible, failed in its attempt to foist the midi-length skirt on recalcitrant U.S. women. Since then the customers have become even more independent-minded about their costumes, but the journalistic arbiters are still critically important. "The press creates interest," said Aldo Pinto, whose wife, Mariuccia Mandelli, designs the Krizia collection. "When Women's Wear talks repeatedly about a designer, it creates a stir."

The writers were positively pampered in Milan. A leading restaurant catered all their lunches, and the designers picked up the tab. In the evenings, top dragons were wined and dined lavishly by the big fashion houses. Not surprisingly, the reporters were beguiled by their Italian hosts. The first sentence filed by Bernadine Morris of the New York Times: "For the people who gave you the Renaissance, organizing a week of fashion shows is like child's play." Some writers found all the exotica useful. Said the Washington Post's Nina Hyde: "I like to write about what the buyers are wearing, what the fashionable restaurants are. Don't you think that's a lot more interesting than whether a blouse is blue or pink?"

More insidious was the torrent of gifts, usually clothes or perfume, that flooded the journalists' hotel rooms every day. "The houses don't give the journalists free gifts," purred an Italian p.r. man, "but they do give them discounts of between 10% and 100%." Publications like the New York Times and Washington Post bar their reporters from accepting discounts, but others are more lax. Recalled a British reporter: "I shared a hotel room with an Italian journalist once, and after a few days you could hardly get into the place for all the presents."

Judging by the outfits of most of the fashion press, all this largesse goes to little effect. Said one designer: "Many of [the reporters] seem to have an almost psychological resistance to personal elegance. It is almost as if they were proclaiming their superiority to this frivolous business." But designers and dragons alike could derive some inspiration from Anna Piaggi, contributor to both the French and Italian Vogue, who showed up one day with a large velvet reproduction of an art deco vase perched on her head. Piaggi's Milan millinery was pretty tame stuff compared with her headdress in Paris two years ago: a basket brimming with shrimp and other fresh seafood.

A typical day during the Milan marathon consisted of about ten showings, each roughly 45 minutes in length and in different halls at the Milan Trade Fair Center. The seating plan was generally the same for each designer. On one side of the runway sat emissaries from the U.S. heavyweights: Women's Wear Daily (Publisher John Fairchild, Associate Editor Carolyn Gottfried, European Fashion Writer Marian McEvoy), the New York Times (Morris, Carrie Donovan of the Sunday Magazine), the Washington Post (Hyde), the International Herald Tribune (Hebe Dorsey), Vogue (Fashion Editor Polly Mellen) and Harper's Bazaar (Fashion Editor Gloria Moncur). In their hearts they know that however expert they are at fashion journalism, their heft and influence derive primarily from the importance of their publications. Opposite them were the most influential Europeans. Said Dorsey, a veteran hemline watcher: "If I'm not in the front row, I make a fuss. In the third row you can have a nap and no one will notice. But in the front row you're the Queen of England."

The pace was grueling, and at least one former fashion doyen, James Brady, ex-publisher of Women's Wear, was glad to have remained at home in New York. Said he: "You get a designer who shows about 300 pieces, then feels he has to make a speech for half an hour. The Italian press is yelling basta, basta. And the French press is rolling up programs and flinging them at him. And the American press is hung over from drinking too much."

Fashion writers tend to suffer from an overfondness for airy prose and bubbly hyperbole. Wrote Mary Russell in the New York Times Magazine: "Colors are beautiful and subtle. Inspired, perhaps, by Milan's fog-swathed mornings ..." Not much investigative reporting goes on, but why should it? If a dragon oversleeps, there are always the ubiquitous handouts to fall back on. Everyone knows the rules, like not being too rigorous in differentiating between what will appear on a retailer's rack some day and what is a mere designer's bagatelle. Said Grace Mirabella, editor in chief of Vogue: "The designers are now creating a number of models just for the runway. They have no intention of making them. The daily press know it, but they often go along with it."

Still, the reporting from Milan last week was more businesslike than in the past. The Times, the Post and Women 's Wear all wrote about how high inflation was inhibiting high fashion. Said Morris: "I write for the lady in Larchmont who is having her breakfast." One reason the coverage was subdued was the absence of any explosive new trends. There was nothing that remotely approached the magnitude of Dior's 1947 "new look" (long, full skirts with tiny waists) or the miniskirt in 1965 or Saint Laurent's 1976 peasant look. Indeed, the dragons were hedging their assessments as skillfully as any veteran political reporter. Looking forward to the London, Paris and New York showings, Bernadine Morris wrote in the Times: "By the end of next month it will be clear whether hemlines are on the way up or down or whether women of the world will be back in pants the way they were a decade ago."

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