Dressing For The Millennium

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

February 19, 1999 / 10:31 AM EST / CBS

Fashion Week is never about the practical. It's all about generating a "buzz."

And, as one fashion expert says, the designs of the season are often simply signs of the times in which we live, whether it's about the upcoming turn of the century or the impeachment of the president.

So here's the quick lowdown:

Skirts are short.
Patterns are plenty.
Hats are high.
Necklines are low.
The general "look" seems to be all about comfort.

Amy Spindler, style editor for The New York Times Magazine, has been covering the fashion shows for fall, and she tells CBS This Morning the color for the season is tangy orange (sort of a rusty shade), with baby blue close behind. And the fall fashion "must" is the bulky sweater.

"Designers," says Spindler, "have been reading the same publications and watching the same TV shows the rest of us have. There is a little Y2K fever going on. There is a lot of anxiety and angst being addressed by the clothes, whether it's from the thick fabrics or using cloaking things, like ponchos."

Fashions also are reflecting a patriotic mood. "Whichever way you felt about the Clinton impeachment situation, people felt the presidency was threatened," Spindler explains. "People rallied around."

And some designers have been "looking at the astronauts, and the space race, and all these great moments in history."

New fashions also are being inspired by American pioneer history and photos from the '30s and '40s, Spindler adds, explaining that fashion is always influenced by politics.

"Especially this whole millennium thing has been a very big fear of all the designers," she says. "This is the first collection for the year 2000. They are worried about it. You see all these very high-tech things, utilitarian clothes meant to protect you from anything that might go wrong after the Y2K situation. [The designers] are thinking about that."

But business suits for women have disappeared, so don't look for them in any of the new fashion collections.

As for spring fashions, there'll be plenty of news in Fashions of the Times, a special magazine section in this Sunday's edition of The New York Times.