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Kavita Daswani

FOR Bill Blass, fashion is one of the most tiresome topics of conversation imaginable. Nothing, he said, bores him more than people who talk only of this season's hemline or the colour scheme of some former collection.

  Not that the subject itself doesn't appeal to him. As one of the most highly-acclaimed fashion designers in the United States, and a couturier of celebrity status, Blass is bound to adore clothes - designing, making and looking at them.

  'Fashion is such a visual thing; how can you talk about it? It has to be looked at, touched, not discussed,' he said.

  Blass was expressing his views on the world of fashion during a brief stopover in Hong Kong recently, which he described as 'purely exploratory'. He retails a small collection of his immaculately tailored suits and evening dresses through Joyce, but has been keen to see what possibilities exist for expansion.

  After a couple of days conferring with retailers in Hong Kong and checking out stores and consumer habits, Blass said he hadn't yet quite made up his mind about how he could contribute to the shopping landscape. But he did have some other observations to make.

  'New York is the only other place I know where people shop like they do here - only a little bit less,' he said.

  'But I do find that stores and malls here don't have as much character as they could. They could be anywhere else in the world. London is about the only place where shops and shopping streets are individual and have a look of their own,' he said.

  Certainly, Blass would know about international buying trends: while his clothes are sold primarily in the US - specifically through outlets in the league of Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus - his name is used on some 40 product lines in Japan, Canada, Mexico and the US.

  A change in his contract terms with his Japanese licensing partner has recently enabled him to scout for other opportunities in Southeast Asia. And while setting up free-standing boutiques in Hong Kong, Singapore and elsewhere is obviously an ideal, Blass and his entourage of financial and merchandising experts aren't sure that the timing is right: a softening in the retail sector and more restrained buying is making even the top international designers think twice about expanding in what was once regarded as the world's last gilded shopping frontier.

  Blass is something of a fashion icon in the glitzy international triumvirate of nobility, society and celebrity: his clothes are worn by the sort of women you see in the social pages of New York-based fashion bible W, movie luminaries, the wives of industrialists and heavyweight politicians.

  His style is consummately elegant and never flippant, although even a growing band of women in their late 20s and early 30s are drawn to his label. His clothes are, as one local fashion-watcher described, 'for real women'.

  But when a New York publication said Blass 'just loves to scoff at the pretensions of fashion, especially since they have nothing to do with the way his ladies live', they weren't far wrong. In the Bill Blass bible, fashion should be streamlined of its attendant frippery and condensed to clothes that are eminently stylish.

  That no-nonsense attitude is surely a product of the era in which Blass grew up: he was born in the 1920s in Fort Wayne, Indiana, moved to New York in 1939 and went to work as a sketcher and designer, learning about couture-style tailoring.

  After a series of designing jobs, he set up his own company in 1970 and soon after went on to become one of America's high-fashion sensations.

  His designs are sought by the likes of screen celebrities Oprah Winfrey, Angelica Huston and Mary Tyler Moore, White House wives Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush and royals like Princess Firyal of Jordan.

  Looking at his offerings for next spring and summer, it is easy to see why some of the world's most high-profile women opt for Blass creations: Women's Wear Daily called his upcoming line 'crisp and clean with a touch of hip', praising his as 'devil-may-care confidence'.

  If Hong Kong is fortunate enough to see it, Blass for spring and summer next year is pure 'Americana' - where 'taste is more important than fashion', he said.



The Bill Blass style bible