STARS, STYLE AND FASHION.

From the Desk of:  J.D. Lacroix

 Contributors: Fabiola Rossi, Penelope de Vassy and Marie Louise de Chambertin

GET RID OF  THIS VERSACE STYLE!

'Today we know the price of everything and the value of nothing." Oscar Wilde said that and he hadn't even seen In Style magazine.

In Style is the drop-dead worst magazine in print. It presents attractive objects in dizzying abundance -- fine, that's its job -- but the way it associates beautiful design with cheap unearned celebrity is wrong and dangerous. Even I feel fretful after I read it, and I've never run up a credit-card debt in my life. How many women go bankrupt after reading In Style?

Salma Hayek was on the cover last month wearing a dress by Versace, a fashion house so much better run by Donatella than the late Gianni. The dress is a pinkish beige satin, the color of a pearl whose oyster was tickled full-time in its own private ocean. Its ribbons swing outwards, then inwards, then outwards again, giving the superstructure a lot of support. I can't tell whether it's comfortable, but the knockoff (with miniskirt rather than Versace's strategic silk georgette rag skirt) I bought at Galeries Lafayette in Paris on Sept. 10 is loaded with Lycra and I could exercise in it with comfort.  

 

Photos:  Salma Hayeck

The label is Anti-Flirt. What are the Flirt people selling, the ribbons minus the dress? Adam Gopnik recently wrote in the New Yorker about the decline of the American department stores as they lose their ability to disguise acquisitiveness as membership. In Paris, almost all the great ones -- Galeries, BHV and Printemps -- are flourishing. Proof? You can buy a knockoff of a Versace dress faster than you can ink your lips. And I can also buy an apron, a T. Leclerc Banana face powder and a Babyliss ionic travel hair dryer. You can't miss.

 

I paid about $300. I can't see that Donatella minds because only rich women can buy a genuine Versace ball gown. I'm not rich and a residual Scottish morality means I wouldn't spend thousands of dollars on a dress even if I could. Her little match girls wearing Anti-Flirt are useful to her.The choice was between this and a lovely but horrible pink satin suit with ruching at the crotch and a neckline to the waist. Barbara Cartland would have happily been buried in it. "Am I too aged to wear the ribbony dress?" I asked the beautiful young saleswoman.

"No, because you're so skinny you frighten me, and I'm French," she said, or words to that effect. So I'm safe for now.-Heather Malick  

Photo: Donatella Versace