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ON A PERSONAL BIAS by Bernice Peck

COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET: Hot diggity. Were they not fantaaaastic (and fab), the Paris couture clothes for winter? They floored me. Women's Wear Daily, who coins each season's fashion passwords, tagged the whole thing High Chic and Retro. (Retro I took to mean: oldies dug up to be goodies again.)

Even when there is no newspaper strike Women's Wear is the High Holy of fashion reporting. Thus, I decided to do some fashion archaeology at home. Went for Retro-digs in my own storage closet which, had it a window, I could easily rent as a room. That spacious. And, being an old-clothes junkie, there's stuff in its depths unseen for decades.

Unseen, at least, until Yves St. Laurent grinned his Opium-Perfume pixilated grin and (once more) declaimed, "I have changed everything." He had, too.

Take those gloves. Gloves. Lush crushy suede gauntlets, silky kidskins rippling up the arm (braceleted, yet). Alors, Yves, my closet gives up 4 big boxes of gloves, from when nobody well dressed left the house without them. Peacherinos, mine, many 50 bucks a pair. (I was a big splurger.)

Another part of the High Chic movement is that Junk Jewelry, the junkier the chic-er. It is not the first time. For I uncovered some 20 lbs. of tremendous unreal pieces, bona fide rhinestones and such, just sitting there, glittering and waiting to knock someone's eye out.

High on a shelf, one hatbox a-chock with hair "ornaments" that rear upward in a startled mannner when thrust into the coif. And a batch of little cupcakes amazingly like those that Paris termed cocktail hats. Some with veils, yet. Trying on a few for my friend Joe, invincibly Chic himself, the rat laughed. "Droll," says he, "or maybe it's just you, old girl. But you'd be a smash on the Late Late Show." Well, YSL had mentioned "accessories full of humor."

I had mixed luck digging for some of the Retros. No little close-to-the-body dresses with hunchy pouf-sleeves. Pity. But the slim straight skirts, a trove of same surfaced in marvelous fabrics. Parents had stipulated high slits, this being the year of the leg. Well, I can manage the slits, what's a razor blade for anyway?

As for the (mandatory) sheer black stockings, well sir, I found dozens, some even in the meshy point d'esprit, goodlooking. However, none of those seamed or rhinestone-flecked jobs turned up. Even so, nifty legs, everyone will say, as mine peer from thigh-high slits (that's a lot of slit, brother) I've razored into one vintage snaky black eve. dress. (Black is back, too, even though some of us never knew it had gone away.) I'll need to buy some thready-strap sandals set on 4-inch spike heels, mine aren't high enough to send me flying.

Ah. But the brightest beam comes from the dimmest depths of the storage cave. Kept, somewhat from sentiment, my absolutely First fur coat – Pops was still paying the bills. $1,250, as I recall. Not even shabby. Early Ben Kahn, it was (dear, dear Ben Kahn, ever my favorite fur-monger), of inch-deep blonde beaver. With a shape enough like Yves' "new proportion" to fool me, at any rate.

This shape, as Women's Wear caroled softly, reverently, is "the big-shouldered loose coat in winter-white with the fulness falling from the built-out shoulders." Gotcha, Women's Wear.

To know: This year Ben Kahn is turning out blond beavers again. Fawn-beige is the name this time, and Halston the designer. Blonds skip gaily from $4,000 to $5,000 (when embellished with matching fox, which makes them even more Luxurious and Glamorous. And Chic.).

Coming out of my closet, I speculate I've saved a bundle. Maybe we only go around once. But some fashions can make it twice. Write, if you get lucky in your own – or even Mummy's – closet.

Oh sure, the surest way to feel sure in old clothes is to have the new additions hanging there too. Besides, when our own Seventh Avenue boys and girls have finished simmering down all that Paris High Chic, it will be positively nice to wear. I think.

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