Word: python
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...juts into our eyes like a stiletto from the next century. Its proportions are so gargantuan that even an unwilling observer is thrown into the role of a tiny mannequin in an architect's scale model. The low-rise section has the sinuousness and personality of a granite python, and the tower rises mute like an Aztec altar. Some people claim that architecture like this requires a new grammar of response; I think instead that Mather House almost demands that we abandon our way of seeing...
Boots and belts, hats and handbags, shirts, shawls, coats and evening gowns, even linens, lampshades and wallpaper - all bear the stamp of the serpent. Genuine cobra can be had as a raincoat, simulated copperhead as upholstery fab ric. And women known to keel over at a photograph of a python are now swaddling themselves in the real thing...
Couturiers were the first to be charmed. Yves Saint Laurent showed a staggering array of snakeskins in his most recent collection, which featured a line of python-printed chiffon dresses (Mme. Pompidou took hers to Chicago last month and wore it with a gold ser pent belt). Givenchy's snaky stretch-wool suit is already being copied, scale for scale, and London Designer Jean Muir has a whole group of satin separates, all slithery with the python pattern. America's Adele Simpson and Bill Blass have embossed the markings onto vel vet and chiffon; Halston has gone...
...were only too delighted to respond to the spell. Most took full-page newspaper ads celebrating serpent fashions. Manhattan's Lord & Taylor opened a special shop, "Great Snakes," last month, stocked it with everything from real py thon tunics to synthetic-snake robes, jackets and dresses, and fake python steamer trunks. At Saks in San Francisco snaky accessories are going at such a striking rate there are never enough around for a window display. In Manhattan, boutiques got into the swing, repapered their walls with snakeskin and offered esoteric items like the cobra patchwork belt pouches and spats...
...There is a fascination with snakeskins today," says Shoe Designer Beth Levine, whose all-python boots are doing nicely at $250 a pair. "It's a whole feeling for slithery things, from a crochet knit to a snake; it's textural and natural." For herself, she adds, "I can live my whole life without a snake." Fortunately for Fleming Joffe Ltd., biggest U.S. supplier of snakeskins, many women cannot. The company did a $1 million-plus trade in skins last year, with python the biggest seller (naturally black and white, the skins are often bleached out and dyed...