Designer Collette Dinnigan comes up roses in her debut at Paris fashion's hall of fame

By MICHAEL FITZGERALD

n Rue Notre Dame des Victoires, Collette Dinnigan is fidgeting with a necklace of glass beads and studying Polaroids on the wall of her rented Paris showroom. A dozen assistants hover around the Australian designer. Will a pink silk slip make it into the designer's autumn-winter pret-a-porter collection, to be unveiled the following afternoon at the city's Carrousel du Louvre? "It's pretty," Dinnigan says softly, before shaking her hippie-chick blond hair, "but we don't have anything to go with it."

Until recently, the same could have been said of Sydney-based Dinnigan's clothes. She began making exquisite silk chiffon underwear for friends 10 years ago and was soon getting orders from Barneys New York and London's Harvey Nichols. Then Dinnigan began stepping beyond the boudoir. For her 1996 show at Australian Fashion Week, she blended lace with raffia for a beach-inspired look; her flapper-style collection last May stretched to beaded evening wear. "Collette has a lot of perseverance and tenacity," says respected Paris boutique owner Maria Louisa Poumaillou. "And each season she expands on the lingerie look."

Dinnigan's March 10 show revealed a fully fledged designer who can stake a claim on the world's fashion capital. For the first time she had been invited by Paris' Chambre Syndicale du Pret-a-Porter to show her creations in the hallowed salons beneath I.M. Pei's glass pyramid. Her collection also revealed--as Victorian bloomers gave way to prewar-length rose-printed dresses, Indian-embroidered crushed velvet jackets and metallic black evening gowns--a designer who works instinctively from the inside out. Enthused Suzy Menkes in the International Herald Tribune: "It was a reminder of all things that female fashion stood for before androgyny stamped its heavy boot."

Stitching the old with the new has been Dinnigan's signature style; her camisoles had a contemporary edge long before Dior's new Britiish designer, John Galliano, announced a return to romance. Last week's show was Dinnigan's most expansive yet. Under the direction of compatriot Catherine Martin, the Oscar-nominated production designer of Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet, a sequined green damask curtain opened on a cascade of sepia-washed clothes "your grandmother would have liked to wear," says Martin. Evoking music-hall nostalgia, a 7-year-old Shirley Temple impersonator called Zizi mimed On the Good Ship Lollipop. "We wanted to bring theater back into the show," explained a nervous Dinnigan.

The production wasn't seamless. In the first few minutes, photographers yelled for the lighting to be turned up, and the wedding-dress finale seemed rushed. But South African-born Dinnigan, whose yachtsman father sailed the family to New Zealand, where she grew up, knows how to weather a storm. "I feel like a very old designer right now," the relieved 32-year-old told journalists after the show. "But maybe we'll sell a few more dresses."

Dinnigan's sixth Paris show moved her closer to the exalted realm inhabited by the likes of Yves Saint Laurent and Galliano. "By showing in the Louvre," she says, "we hoped people later going to Dior would come to us instead of going to lunch." A crowd of 500 was given a taste of Australia, from Emu Bottom Homestead biscuits in white lunch bags that sat on each gilt chair, to an irreverent style on the catwalk. For her first show in 1995, Dinnigan paraded her clothes in an old tea room, with models milling among tables; here the audience was showered with red carnations. "Poetic and charming," opined Saks Fifth Avenue's vice president Nicole Fischelis. But it was the clothes that buyers had come to see. "The show showed us that her line is evolving and is much more complete," says Fischelis.

From her early lace cobwebs of muted green and pink, Dinnigan has always been a weaver of romantic spells. But don't be deceived by her seraphic smile and distracted air. Having launched her own Website last month, Dinnigan is determined to get out and flog her wares. Says Vogue Australia editor Marion Hume: "To make it takes 40% talent, 20% good taste in the creative people you surround yourself with, and sheer steel and determination. And she has steel and determination."

And a touch of Aussie cheek. At the end of the show, Dinnigan sent Danish supermodel Helena Christensen jitter-bugging down the catwalk in a silk satin and tulle bridal gown to the strains of La Vie en Rose. For an Australian in Paris, that takes nerve and nous.

--Reported by Nadine Frey /Paris