ReTRo HouSeWiFe

WHILE DRESS DESIGNERS SING MIDI BLUES
Having 'Biggest Year In History' Claim Jubilant 'Fun Clothes' Firms

It's "happy time" for manufacturers of California sportswear. Although dress designers may be singing the midi blues and eyeing diminishing revenues many firms specializing in pants and fun clothes report that business is up 25 per cent and more over last year.

"We're having our biggest year in history," grinned Sam Bretzfield, president of International Set, a label synonymous with posh pant costumes for leisure living. "We can't decide whether we want this midi muddle to continue so pant sales will keep zooming or whether we want the hemline question settled so we won't have to work so hard."

Mr. Bretzfield is past president of the California Fashion Creator's Association, which is currently holding its 20th national spring press week for 90 newspapers and television editors from around the country. Pants have always been part of the California "life style," but now. they are becoming a cross-country uniform. At least half the editors here for press week are attending the sessions in pant costumes - chiefly knits.

International Set opened a daylong program devoted to the sportswear story, an area in which California designers excel. Sharing honors were Alex Colman, White Stag, Koret, and a neighbor from the Pacific, Malia of Honolulu.

NO TRUE MIDI

Nobody showed a true midi skirt (mid-calf, that is), although longer lengths stalked the runway in sleeveless midi coats over pants and occasionally in wrapped or buttoned skirts which just covered the knees. These are extensions of fall silhouettes in spring fabrics that are cool, carefree and colorful.

Interestingly, in a time when dresses are often controversial and "costumey," sportswear is endorsing the classics — tunics, jumpsuits, straight-legged pants, blazers, and sharp-looking, belted vinyl and canvas toppers. Even those cropped pants of 1956 - "clam diggers" - are playing a return engagement. Only this time around they're being called "sand diggers," and the legs are wider.

Another common denomination in the showings is the return of black to active sportswear. Sometimes black and white are combined as in
White Stag's handsome black sailcloth, midi-length deck coat bordered in white and worn over white pants.

Bamboo is a classy new neutral, and watch for coral to be a favorite come spring. Also lime. Prints are splashed throughout sportswear in lush color combinations that are trademarks of California. Coming on strong is brandy - laced with white.

Terrycloth is bidding for attention, both in terry velour and in a cotton seersucker version. International Set is enthusiastic about a new woven jacquard polyester which joins the long popular polyester knits. And International Set is endorsing silver in big buckles and buttons. Throughout all the lines, the layered look is giving way to the two-piece pant suit, another "classic" signature.

MISSIONARY

Adding a different dimension to sportswear are "missionary" dresses from talented journalist turned-designer Mary Foster of Malia of Honolulu. Former East Coast residents, Bill and Mary Foster are owners of the successful and mushrooming island firm. Malia is noted for swimsuits and cover-ups, coffee and patio dresses in imaginative and exclusive prints.

Mary said she deviated a bit this season with the "missionary" dresses for several reasons: "They were inspired by the magnificent new book, "The Hawaiians," a history of the islands. The dresses use the collage
technique of mixing several fabrics and prints in a single garment (the missionaries were frugal and never threw anything away). And the
dresses are very much a part of today's fashion mood." The colorful, calico-like dresses in ankle lengths feature yokes, puffy sleeves, tiny buttons, ruffles and niching. They're reminiscent of the granny dresses of several years back and would be fun for dorms, patios and informal parties.
But who knows? Perhaps they'll be the new street wear.

Word from Paris is that young girls are wearing ruffled calico-like maxi dresses by day as well as by night. Hope Dennis, fashion editor of the Honolulu Advertiser, told me, "Any of these missionary dresses could be worn anywhere in the islands right now, even to the office. They fit in with our wonderfully relaxed life style."

Malia also showed the kind of clothes which have put the label in stores throughout the states in only a few years - swirls of color in play dresses
and pant costumes and wrapped hostess gowns.
My only disappointment at this writing is that I haven't had an opportunity to see what young Californians are wearing on the streets. Press week headquarters, the new Sheraton-Universal Hotel, overlooks the vast Universal Studios and the Hollywood freeway and isn't within easy distance of shops or schools or community centers. Here, we see tourists. From: Big Spring, Texas Herald, Sun., Sept. 27, 1970