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Ladies, You're Okay Some penetrating, wrist-slapping essays have been published on the financial state of fashion--rotten. Given shared credit: the bleak economy and last year's midi-dictum, the fanciest disaster in fashion history. (Sam, you made the pants too long.) Many detractors are kidding the big designers for backtracking on their midi-mistake. Not me. I kind of love them for the admission of error--implicit in their now knee-nudging daytime hems. And that's not all. I also love them for quitting with the dictator-tripe and for trying to please. For they have clearly decided to re-woo an important customer neglected by many while high fashion was on its recent mad romp. No, chum, that customer is not me (zingy sportswear-separates, in layers, are my around the clock uniform). She is the woman who quit buying last year and kept on wearing what she owned. Even when she could afford new feathers, too few designers were focusing on what she felt good in, so shopping wasn't too much fun. She didn't want my layers of sportswear--except for sports. And she didn't want to compete in the Startling Originality Sweepstakes -- or with her 14-year-old daughter--wearing the fantasy-costumery that has been the other big trend. Well, what did she want? Things to feel new, stylish and peachy in. The evening stuff could be semi-pow (maybe), but for daytime she insisted on fashions that resembled--uh--clothes. Maybe even the kind of clothes we all wore a few years back, the kind since dismissed by the highest priests of high fashion as conservative, a word equating with squaredom. She wanted dresses, real dresses. And suits. Suit-suits. She didn't want to do what I dote on, Putting Together a batch of separates. It does take time. As for those ammo belts, see-throughs and mini-hotpants, forget it. Wrong girl. Well, now. For fall, practically all the big-name designers here and in Europe have finally seen things her way. Thus, what was considered blandly safe is once again fashion. The movement is described as "the comeback" of pretty, feminine, ladylike elegance. The clothes are gentle, very much like what the neglected customer was after all along. How about that, now? So, if her husband isn't screaming about taxes, she should run right out and buy. Everything's going her way. There is a prime example of this look, only it is not comeback, just a happy continuation for both parties in question (to my mind, each best of kind). Norman Norell simply goes on making what he calls "daytime things that are just good clothes to wear." Ever hear anything less self-important or pompous, hey? And Mrs. Charles Revson goes on wearing them. Her clothes don't vary enormously from year to year. They are never jazzy. People do indeed often stare at her in her perfectly simple little dresses and suits--but with pleasure, not in shock. She gets new Norells every season, says she never ever gives them up, and still wears one of his "little black wool dresses" dated 1957. True, not many can pay Norell's prices, $475 and really up, let alone look as delicious in them as Lyn Revson. She is a size-6 cupcake with a 22-inch waist that isn't half bad with a belt around it. The point, though, is this: she dresses exactly as she likes, and always has, in the style that is now "coming back." You know, ladylike-elegant, feminine, pretty. Isn't fashion funny? Fun, too. And for those who like themselves best in non-spectaculars, isn't it dandy that fashion can once again be a lady? on a personal bias by Bernice Peck 36 ^[[2015.64.11]] [[end page]] [[start page]] [[advertisement]] Don't be confused. All cans are recyclable... steel cans most of all. [[image- woman in store, looking at can]] Recycling is "old hat" to the steel industry. For the past 30 years, more than half the raw material used to make new steel has been old steel. Today's cans and cars and carpet tacks and thousands of other products are made from steel recycled from yesterday's cars and carpet tacks and thousands of other products-58 billion pounds' worth last year alone. What's new is the steel industry's program to help collect used cans-all kinds of cans-and to recycle all the steel it can get. [[image- Steel logo]] Tinplate Producers American Iron and Steel Institute STEEL-[[underlined]]the[[/underlined]] recycled material. [[/advertisement]]
