Ocean theme popular for sports-inspired clothes

By Paula Rath
Advertiser Fashion Writer

The two-piece dress is interpreted as a high-waisted skirt with an embroidered bra. Chanel

In an odd juxtaposition of sport and fashion, Chanel sent a model sashaying down the runway with a surfboard under her arm. Bien sur ("but of course"), the surfboard bore a Chanel logo in black and gold.

Alexander McQueen, whose designs usually are dark and Goth-like, took his inspiration from the ocean as well.

A dreamy gown, sewn from more than 250 yards of pale chiffon, was reminiscent of sand at the bottom of the ocean — perhaps in a nod to that churning scene in "Blue Crush" that replays throughout the film in the mind of actress Kate Bos-worth?

Whether the inspiration came from "Blue Crush" and its North Shore big surf, or from the fact that fashion designers are traveling more than ever to sunny, surfside climes, is unclear. What is evident is that surfwear is at the forefront of the sports-inspired clothes being shown on runways in New York, Paris, Milan and London.

Helmut Lang called his collection the "Next Wave," a nod to having spent his summer scuba diving and watching surfers in Montauk, N.Y. Even Prada translated wet-suit graphics into runway looks with an urban edge.

Nicholas Ghesquiere, designer for the house of Balenciaga, was also inspired by ocean sports. January Vogue quoted him: "The scuba suit is both protective and decorative, with its graphic colors. And that was very interesting — but we did it all in couture fabric, to evoke neoprene. The prints were like a naive fantasy of an underwater world and a jungle, cartoony 3-D virtual images with sharks and panthers."

Sports on the Chanel runways are not entirely new. Coco Chanel was an athletic woman who rode horses and sailed boats. She once said, "I invented the sports outfit for me, not because other women practiced sport, but because I did myself."

Coco Chanel had the audacity to sweep aside all the fashion codes that constricted natural body movements, breaking all the rules. The freedom of movement her clothing allowed, paired with "sports-like" fabrics such as jersey, gave women a new way of moving.

Chanel often is credited with bringing modern elegance to women and enabling them, for the first time, to wear pants as a fashion statement. She herself wore "beach pajamas" made of white silk, a leisure style that is seen as the mother of track suits.

Not surprising, then, that this year Karl Lagerfeld, who designs for Chanel, created shorts that look much like the "boy shorts" popular among Hawai'i surfer girls. So it wasn't really such a stretch for him to put surfboards on his runway.