Fashion: Net Gain

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Through a glass, darkly, two sets of women eyed each other. The ones outside wore storm coats, mufflers, woolly gloves and boots, and shivered anyway; those inside lolled in nothing but incandescent light and a couple of inches of cloth. None of the show-window mannequins had the get-up-and-go to make it to the Caribbean for Christmas, and few of the lady shoppers had the necessary funds. Still, stores across the U.S. last week were piled high with shifts to go wading in, slacks for strolling sandy beaches, blouses for leaning on foreign balustrades, and ball gowns to have shipboard romances in. Most abundant of all were the bathing suits.

Bikinis and maillots, blousons and middies, all spilled off racks and shelves around the country. Styles were simple (fewer turtlenecks and full-length sleeves than last year), patterns bold (with slashes of stripes and oversize polka dots predominating), and colors smashing (incendiary pinks and theatrical splashes of black on white were favorites). But the real news were the models made, at least in part, of fishnet.

The girls on the French Riviera have been slinging the hole-happy stuff over their bikinis for years. Only this season, however, did it cross to native shores to fill in the spaces exposed by plummeting necklines and high-riding shorts, offering new methods of engineering that open vistas in unexpected places. Cole of California used fishnet to screen a deep isosceles plunge ($26), Rose Marie Reid to add a jeweled lace topping to a maillot ($50), while Designer Bill Blass took a big breath, and a giant step, left gaps where gaps had never before been left, and let flesh fill in instead of fishnet.

The selection is as vast as the price range. The view is vastest of all.