Intimations of Chic

What would T. S. Eliot have thought of New York's Fashion Week? Or Wordsworth of the Bryant Park scenery? LAURA JACOBS finds the spring collections to be pure poetry

LAURA JACOBS

I've searched my college books for odes to spring.

Haut poet Wordsworth hails its "blended notes,"

Keats waxes lyric on spring's "honied cud," which summer "ruminates"

(wow, that cow image is a dud!)—

But what of spring-summer dresses, suits, and coats?

Let's skip from pastured ruminants to hip illuminates:

The silvered eyes, the gold lame,

The see-through styles that carried the day for 1997.

Let us go then, you and I

(it's heaven—the freer verse of Eliot, the frock of Pru), When Fashion Week is spread out behind the library At 42nd and Fifth Avenue.

DAY ONE is kind of fun.

There's Conde Nast's pale male James Truman And Bazaar's Queen of Hearts, Liz Tilberis.

Here's VF.'s jury, Andre Leon T. and Elizabeth S.

There's Suzy Menkes (Madame Pompadour)

And Demi, cue-ball head (less is Moore).

Kal Ruttenstein's breezy in his Gene Meyer ties,

While tweezered between her henchgirls and -guys Sits Vogue's Anna Wintour, shielded from the masses.

In her changing-daily dark Chanel sunglasses

She could be handmaiden to Apollo (god of design)—

No, make that Galliano,

Poured into Vogue like too much wine,

The Wallbanger of the day, all wallflowers can stay away. One has to chant (or decant): Dior, Dior,

What's in store for the nimble thimbles behind your legendary door?

Hide the keys to Bar, dread the locks, He's on his way, just left the Dover docks.

(The pirate's parrot flew the coop, too;

She's left John for Chanel —Amanda, how could you?!)

And guess who's just arrived for the Versus line:

It's Liz Hurley and Hugh, the on-and-off two, looking, well, Divine.

In the room Ingrid Sischy comes and goes,

Talking of Leonardo DiCaprio.

Describing clothes, dear reader, isn't easy,

The stunning lack of words can make you scream—

Seam, shape, line, silhouette—

You have to stretch like gabardine with spandex.

Take Donna Karan's D line on DAY TWO,

A debut niche to make her extra rich. Don't get me wrong, We need these jersey tubes (we do?).

But in that rubberized-kelp dress You'd better be reed-thin.

If not, bring on the sake, 'cause you'll look like tekka maki. D&G, another first at the New York shows,

Is Eurotrash-meets-Prada-at-Watergate (I think I'll skip that date).

The evening's close: C.J. Yoon Ono's roses To the Pure, the Demure, the Her in Couture.

DAY THREE, I'm noticing the Herd.

These glossy fashion babes all dress the same,

Like birds in migration:

Pipe-cleaner pants, chartreuse charmeuse,

Versace camel coats a little ratty.

Sincerely, I don't mean to be catty,

But since when is clonal dressing known as style? Meanwhile, Amy Spindler—the Times—is serene in her seat. Her hair is even almost neat!

No hint of the hootchy-cootchy she did reviewing Gucci,

Where though she said the show was thin, depressing,

Her excited prose was eager for undressing.

Imagine this, she cried, And then described the Gucci woman who Has just "had sex in a bathroom stall" (the loo)

In a "steamy nightclub until her face is slick ..."

Ick! The Gray Lady wearing purple—it curls one's toes.

It's the Striptease School of Reviewing Clothes.

Carolina Herrera is snazzy for spring,

With a loot of gold-leaf leathering {ooo that two-piece suit). Han Fang? Haiku in organdy, georgette.

And at the Puck Building on Lafayette,

The pup who gave us Grunge ("what fools these mortals be"—tee-hee)

Is finally making up:

Marc Jacobs works small and clear,

His beaded paisleys like a Berg concerto—

Warm with emotion, yet in intent severe.

In the room Ingrid Sischy comes and goes,

Talking of Gianni and Giorgio.

DAY FOUR: More?

Richard Tyler, a curious collection—

Part deconstruction, part confection.

A host of ghostly fashions for wearing inside mansions, Tailoring hanging on one single thread in seams like stays, Darts whispering of whaleboned days long past.

Todd Oldham, magpie-bright and rainbow-hued, seems subdued,

Cuts keyholes, notches, as if peeping through To see (but not quite reach) what might have been.

Still alive—DAY FIVE—the rain's a pain.

Ralph Lauren perks things up with coffee cups, Strawberries big as coconuts, and palms.

A trip to Africa sans Blixen,

This collection is "about" (that's fashion diction)

The urban huntress who wants to look relaxed,

A lioness in the sun, a Nubian.

Michael Kors is focused, too, zooming

Into a concentrated few clean shapes—box kite, klieg light.

And it's hippie-dippy day-trippy at Anna Sui,

Her bedroom bonbons laced with faerie dust.

I think she tries too hard—Breakthrough or Bust.

For those with supermodel lust, a question poses:

Are these girls getting rusty or what?

Strangely low-ebb, present without seeing, Metaphysics a la Kundera: the Bare Lightness of Being. For instance, take Naomi's little trial.

All week she wrestles, conscience clenched,

Almost giving, muscles tensed,

And every time she wins against The slight impulse to smile.

Still, every time you turn around There's Polly Mellen—enchantment-bound!

Her silver hair, her laser stare,

Her little o mouth waiting to surround a "BEEEAAA UUTIFUL. "

Miu Miu begins DAY SIX.

That's Miuccia's pet line for skinny pick-up-sticks Who swear by the pitch of Prada's color palette,

Tones only dogs can hear: wet mud, oxblood.

And what's that Quaker shade she's mixed?

My God—it's honied cud.

Later that day: Le Cirque du Soleil—

Bill Blass and Oscar de and the legion of ladies who lunch On frisee and foie gras,

The social frisson and marital fatwa,

All sitting in a bunch.

Pat and Nan (eyes glinting with the hunt),

Barbara and Ivana (blonde and blunt),

Princess Firial, Carolyne Roehm (both sit in front),

And back three rows there's C.Z.

Looking squeezy in her tweeds.

In the room Ingrid Sischy comes and goes Talking of Yoko Ono (oh noooo!).

THE SEVENTH DAY—but who needs rest? It starts with the best.

God seen on 39th Street: Geoffrey Beene,

The might of Mies, the volume of Brancusi,

Get to know this work and you grow choosy.

If Tyler's seams show delicate duress,

Beene teaches his to somersault, caress, and dive—

Vanish in thin air, then turn up alive . . .

Over here!

He's fearless. In true modernist tradition (the humble as sublime),

He makes a lowly pocket high design (and then it's picked By those who shall go nameless but are famous in the slicks). From Beene's horizon line, it's on to Calvin Klein In the meatpacking district (now, there's a metaphor).

A po-mo daze, an art-loft haze, his poor lambs also wear More jersey tubes, sheaths caught between a wrinkle And a drape—with no Escape.

Baaah . . . Ommm.

Donna Karan's quest continues,

Her search for spiritual home (the Buddha's ozone, Shangri-la). In jade and jasper stones and bronze organza,

She's landed east of Eden—hot desert winds—

Seams winding serpentine up female limbs.

A sumptuous vision.

And touched with vice (but also very nice),

Wrap dresses tight and cut like sacrifice.

All finished, and it's cold. The street is dark.

No one's wearing trousers rolled, but hark!

I hear the flutter of Shelley's lace jabot

Sifting the west wind of fashion shows, which goes:

Sashes and sparkles, my styles among mankind!

If Wintour comes, can Spring be far behind?