Books on Looks

TELL PEOPLE YOU’VE been doing a lot of reading lately, and instant respect is yours.

“Ah,” they nod knowingly. “What this time-Updike? Didion? Vonnegut?”

“Justabookonfashion,” you mutter, but everyone has heard.

“Oh.”

Your reputation as a literate being fit to function in society has slithered down the cracks with just that one sentence.

But despite the fact that many people view fashion as a frivolous subject, there are some fashion books worth reading. Behind the frivolity is big business, social commentary-even an ephemeral art. Admittedly, many of these books aren’t worth the gas it takes to go to and from the bookstore, much less the cover price. For that reason, you might as well skip the latest beauty tips from Christie Brinkley, Linda Evans and a number of other media stars. Most of them seem to have used words only to fill up the space between those full-color pages of the authors in the latest exercise and dance wear. So on to better selections.



What We Wore by Ellen Melinkoff (Quill, $6.95, soft-cover).

This book, subtitled An Offbeat Social History of Women’s Clothing, 1950 to 1980, should be mandatory reading for any budding fashion designer. It explores in great detail the lengths to which women have gone to have the look of the times. “In the name of conformity,” Melinkoff writes, “it seems we would wear anything.” In tracing the evolution of women’s clothing over three decades, she also shows us how changes in society and technological advances have affected women’s clothing.

The main inspiration for fashion during the Fifties, Melinkoff writes, was the end of World War II: “Women were encouraged to give their wrenches to the returning GIs and go back home to raise the baby-boom generation. To foster that kinder, kirche, kuche role, women’s fashions became softer, more feminine. If we were to act like women, we had to dress like women. To pull off Christian Dior’s New Look successfully required a considerable amount of infrastructure, the Sherman tank line of corsetry. The natural female figure was merely raw material that had to be poured, molded, whittled to perfection. How did it feel to be living sculpture? Awful. But we endured in the name of womanhood.”

The move to the suburbs and the introduction of television also changed fashion, but the latter was much more important. Television speeded up the fashion process, especially fads. “With TV, we could see.. .what Justine and Pat on American Bandstand had worn to their high school this very day. To see it was to want it. We saw more, we wanted more, we spent more. The golden age of consumerism had begun.” Television itself spawned a new fashion: at-home wear for watching TV with friends.

Melinkoff chronicles in detail the must-haves for the fashionable Fifties woman: gingham shirtwaists, tulle petticoats, hoops, cinch belts, poodle skirts and clips, Italian haircuts and tops, capri pants and white nylon gloves. And she writes about the importance of color in that era: “Black was considered safe and expected when it was the color of skirts and capris; it was thought daring for tights and turtlenecks… So intellectual, so avant-garde. No matter how many outfits like that we saw, we thought every one of them reflected a personal creativity on the part of the wearer.” Even so, black was a basic color. Pink was even more exciting, the color of the decade: “We wore pink. We decorated pink. We drove pink.”

Underwear was an all-important element in a decade of modest femininity. Items that are now almost obsolete were de rigueur then: girdles and Merry Widows, garter belts and stockings, full slips, and, of course, the padded bra. Melinkoff probes the possible pitfalls of wearing one:

“There you were, feeling like a million bucks with an extravagantly padded bra under your new Orion pullover. Then boom, someone brushed up against you and one cup popped inward.. .There you stood, in public, looking like a meteor crater. You couldn’t just take the padding by two fingers and pull it out like a piece of lint. There was no graceful way to handle it. You’d have to move to another state where nobody knew you.”

The Sixties was the greatest decade of change in America, she writes, and that was clearly reflected by the clothing we wore. Women’s fashions moved from Fifties “pouffiness” to the refined clothing of Jackie Kennedy to the mod look to the anti-fashion attitude of the hippies.

Fashion paralleled the youth movement as it grew. In 1960, designer Mary Quant’s “look of the precocious child” was a radical departure from the prevailing older-is-better feeling of the Fifties. “Her message was: You’ll see the world differently from inside a mod minidress than in a shirtwaist and girdle. She was right. And her timing was perfect.” By the end of the decade, not only did women of all ages wear the mini, but they also unanimously rejected midi- and maxi-length styles in 1969.

Melinkoff observes, “That such an important issue as self-determination in how we look should be waged over the mini was curious. The mini made us feel uncomfortable, cold, tense and often just plain silly-looking, but we never cried, ’Stop! We’re being manipulated here.’ We perceived the midi as making us look old, when life was becoming increasingly youth-oriented. We knew how the world was divided: Young was beautiful and old was ugly.”

Underwear changed just as radically: Uncomfortable girdles were replaced by more comfortable ones, but eventually even those were abandoned. They were no longer necessary to hold up stockings, because now there were pantyhose. Although pantsuits were introduced as high fashion in the mid-Sixties, they were still unacceptable at work and in many public areas.

The anti-fashion hippie look, Melinkoff writes, went from “a gesture of protest by the disenchanted and disenfranchised to a cultivated look for those who wanted to be ’with it.’

“The look was one of evolution as well as revolution. At first, a plain undershirt was a strong statement in itself. No one had worn them as outer fashion before. They became too prosaic and needed to be dyed purple to say the same thing that plain undershirts could have said the year before. Then they had to be tie-dyed. Concentric circles and undulating line, psychedelic colors.”

The extremes of the hippie look continued into the early Seventies with such styles as hot pants, platform shoes and Ali McGraw-inspired cloche knit hats. Around 1973, the real Seventies style emerged: conservative, but with a choice. Dress-for-Success clothing emerged as more and more women vied for professional positions: “Some felt they had to duplicate men’s ensembles-a dark suit with a vest, a tailored shirt and a briefcase. The look was very hard-core and was finally recognized as more than necessary to be taken seriously.” For the remainder of the Seventies, Melinkoff spotlights its major fads: Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dresses, the Annie Hall look and designer jeans.

But she spends much less time on that decade than on the preceding two, and that’s the book’s only major flaw. Melinkoff is a fine writer, and her analysis is right on target, but the book seems to run out of steam toward the end.



D.V. by Diana Vreeland (Knopf, $15.95, hard-cover).

If this autobiography reads more like a conversation than a narrative, it’s no wonder: The author freely admits that she talked rather than wrote the whole thing. As such, establishing any chronology of events is hopeless, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

Vreeland, the former Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar editor who currently arranges costume shows for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a character-no other word can adequately describe her. It seems impossible that any one person could meet as many people or be in so many different places at once. She claims, for instance, to have been the last person to see the Mona Lisa before it was stolen from the Louvre, to have seen Charles Lindbergh’s plane on its trans-Atlantic flight, to have sold Wallis Warfield Simpson the lingerie that won her the heart of the Prince of Wales-and that’s just the beginning. But knowing La Vreeland, it will probably turn out to be the truth-or at least a close approximation.

Those who are easily annoyed by digressions and non sequiturs may not like this book. (But even if you have a hard time following it, you will probably enjoy getting lost.) With that in mind, here are Vreeland’s pronouncements:

Artifice: Adores it. Always has.

The color red: “I can’t imagine becoming bored with red – it would be like becoming bored with the person you love. All my life I’ve pursued the perfect red…”

Coco Chanel: “Coco was never a kind woman. She was a monstre sacre. But she was the most interesting person I’ve ever met.”

Elizabeth I: “She’s at the top of my list. I loved the clothes. It took her four hours to dress-we had a lot in common!”

Fringe: Misses it.

Favorite books: War and Peace. The Tale of Genji. The Ludwigs of Bavaria.

Handbags: Tried to eliminate while at Harper’s Bazaar. Didn’t succeed.

Her husband: “He had a fantastic glamour for me. And he always retained it. Isn’t it curious that even after 40 years of marriage, I was always slightly shy of him? I can remember his coming home in the evening-the way the door would close and the sound of his step. If I was in my bath or in my bedroom making up, I can remember always pulling myself up, thinking, ’I must be at my very best.’ There was never a time when I didn’t have that reaction-ever.”

The Japanese: “Something Japanese like hara-kiri we find impossible to understand. Yet it’s as normal to the Japanese as smoking a cigarette.”

Her wedding: “[The church] wasn’t sparse – it was practically empty. Not one invitation to the wedding had been delivered, I was told. They had all been thrown out by mistake.”

Her work as a fashion editor: “I think part of my success as an editor came from never worrying about a fact, a cause, an atmosphere. It was me-projecting to the public. That was my job. I think I always had a clear view of what was possible for the public. GIVE ’EM WHAT THEY NEVER KNEW THEY WANTED.”

Tahiti (where she’s never been): “I bet it’s much plainer than people imagine. Gauguin was such a romantic. Perhaps he lived in Tahiti, but he could have made the whole thing up.”



Conservative Chic by Amelia Fatt (Times Books, $9.95, soft-cover).

The term “conservative chic” may seem mutually exclusive, but Fatt, a fashion consultant, argues otherwise. To begin with, she tells us what conservative chic is not: matronly, high-fashion, preppie, designer monograms, Dress for Success or super-sexy. What it is, Fatt writes, “is a way of dressing with timeless elegance in clothes that are flattering to you and appropriate for your lifestyle.” If you have conservative chic, says Fatt, your clothes are “conservatively cut in chic color and pattern combinations,” and your wardrobe “looks stylish but won’t go out of style.”

Conservative Chic tells you what clothing styles and accessories are suited for this look, and how to mix patterns and textures to achieve variety. It succeeds somewhat in making the conservative look chic, but not enough.

Fatt treats women as individuals, urging them in a forthright manner to wear only the classic pieces that look good on them. And about wearing status symbols, she writes: “This is an adolescent attitude. Good taste is not the display of someone else’s initials (or even your own). As a matter of fact, a display of designer monograms reveals such an insecure sense of taste that it is a dead giveaway if someone truly sophisticated is sizing you up.” Her suggestions for using color, pattern and texture are helpful-the section as a whole is much more detailed than in similar books.

But this book falls short with its illustrations, many of which resembled paper dolls without the white tabs. Worse, too many of them looked dated, even though the book was published just last year. So much for the wardrobe that won’t go out of style. Finally, Fatt’s accessories tips, which sounded fine on paper, don’t seem particularly inventive in the illustrations.

For those women who work in very conservative fields-law or business-this book has some excellent guidelines. But women in more relaxed work environments will probably find it too stifling for their tastes.



The BOOk Of LOOkS by Lorraine Johnson (New American Library, $12.95, soft-cover).

This book is just what its title suggests: A book of 45 different fashion looks, including The American Indian, The Dandy, The Flapper, The Gibson Girl, The Ocean Voyager, The Punkette and The Soldier. As Johnson says in her introduction, it’s intended to be a way of sorting out dress components into categories. For each look, there’s information on the clothes and their background, as well as accessories, hair and makeup for that look-all accompanied by large color illustrations.

Here’s an example: The Aviatrix look, which drew its inspiration from Amelia Earhart, is basically a leather bomber jacket worn over a jumpsuit or overalls. The only accessories are flat boots, a long scarf and a duffel bag. Hair should be short; makeup should be minimal and healthy-looking.

None of the looks described are meant to be worn undiluted; they’d look far too cos-tumey. But The Book of Looks is a good (albeit simplistic) reference on style trends for anyone with an interest in fashion. What’s most interesting is that all but a few of these 45 looks-even the ones that sound rather bizarre, such as The Cat Woman and The Castaway-have influenced fashion perceptibly in the past decade alone.



Yves Saint Laurent by various authors (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, $35, hard-cover).

If you missed the retrospective exhibition of Yves Saint Laurent’s work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, or if you saw it and want something to remember it by, this book-which illustrates the exhibit-tells you all about Yves.

The Saint Laurent retrospective is the first such exhibition featuring the work of a living designer. Why? “Because he is a genius, because he knows everything about women,” says Diana Vreeland. “The exhibition is not just a collection of clothes. For 25 years, Saint Laurent has fully exemplified Jean Cocteau’s phrase: ’In every landscape or still life, a painter always portrays himself,’ ” says Pierre Berge.

Interspersed throughout the book are short essays by friends and patrons, but mostly there are pictures. One group is a melange of all the people and things that have influenced his work: Proust, Chanel, Wagner, Maxim’s, Zizi Jeanmaire, Goya, Kyoto, Picasso. The other pictures are beautiful stills of the clothes featured in the retrospective.

Many of his clothes were inspired by those of other cultures: African dresses of shells and beads in 1967, ornate Russian ballgowns in 1976, Chinese ensembles in 1977, Spanish toreador outfits in 1979, Scottish plaids in 1982. Art was the main influence in other years. In 1965, he did Mondrian-influenced De Stijl dresses; the following year, pop art themes-outlines of faces and bodies-were splashed across dresses. In 1969, his crepe georgette evening dresses were worn with gold body sculptures. And in 1979, beaded profiles appeared in his evening wear.

It’s interesting that pieces that now seem perfectly classic shocked people when they were first introduced. The navy wool pea-coat, from his first collection under his own name, was a surprise to some of his haute couture clients because it was clothing that ordinary people wore. And in the mid-Sixties, Saint Laurent designed the first of many tuxedo looks: women’s evening wear patterned after men’s. At the time, it created a stir because women wearing pants still weren’t allowed in many restaurants and public places.

Like What We Wore, Yves Saint Laurent is a trip down memory lane-though for most of us, his clothes are what we wish we had worn rather than what we actually did. Still, looking over these photographs reminds us of how pervasive his influence has been over the last 25 years. The great art, Prince Met-terich said, is to last. And that, probably, is why the Metropolitan chose to honor him over a hundred other names in fashion.