Fashion's Fall

During last month's Paris shows for ready-to-wear fall clothing, director Robert Altman appeared with stars like Sophia Loren and Julia Roberts to shoot scenes for his new film, Pret-a-Porter (Ready-to-Wear). At first the fashion community welcomed him -- what a chance to show off! What free advertising! But a chill quickly set in. Banning the movie crew from his show, Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld said, "I'm afraid Robert Altman will make fashion look like a nightmarish cartoon." Evidently Lagerfeld has not noticed that he and his colleagues have achieved that all by themselves. The depressing news of the fall collections just shown in Paris, Milan and New York is that the nightmare is far from over.

An epidemic of cynicism passing for wit has overtaken fashion as designers work harder at being funny than at crafting beautiful clothes. There has always been a theatrical side to fashion, a love of the extreme. But lately the over-the-top gesture is usurping the real thing. A decent goal of female clothing design is to enhance a woman, but styles in the past few seasons have often made a grotesque distortion of the natural silhouette. Interruption in the form of extravagant collars, peplums and other superfluous add-ons to skirts has replaced any graceful flow. Having peaked several years ago, multiple layering is back, even bulkier and more intrusive than in its last incarnation. All the elements that make a great dress -- materials, tailoring, imagination -- seem to have been degraded.

When the venerable house of Chanel shows a black fur hat the size and shape of Mickey Mouse's ears, as it did this spring, something is wrong. Lagerfeld's other japes included fuzzy fake-fur skirts shaped unmistakably like muffs that barely covered the buttocks. He has made the classic Chanel suit look tartier by the year, a crude parody of itself. At this point it would be preferable -- and more courageous -- to retire it altogether; versions of the design go back to the '20s, so the suit may have run its course. Lagerfeld has also vulgarized the Chanel logo, plastering it large all over accessories and jacket backs.

Jean-Paul Gaultier first made a corset-like bustier for Madonna four years ago, and it was a good joke. Now further variations of underwear as outerwear have overtaken the runways. So have other tired gambits, which can only encourage a woman to stay out of the stores and wear what she already has in the closet. The metallic look is suffering from fatigue, but it's still in favor. And nobody looks good in disheveled fake fur, now everywhere. The effect is to present a woman as an unclipped poodle who just swam a stream and had a good, vigorous shake.