PETER Lau's hair is now very, very long. Otherwise, nothing much has changed. The designer whose definition of ''feminine beauty'' breeds the suspicion that his fashion research is much fortified by X-rated movies and Frederick of Hollywood catalogues, is still at it. That is, clothes fit for those euphemistically known as ''working girls''.
Working women tend to take a different view of them. Or rather views, as the males who flocked to see Lau's latest collection, would observe.
Amazing how many men in this town are into women's fashion, a newcomer to the Hong Kong ragtrade might have thought, eyeing the wall-to-wall crush at the Excelsior Hotel's Top of the Town nightclub the other evening.
The opening segment of Lau's show cast instant light on this phenomenon. Out pranced a flock of leggy young things looking like the Ukrainian Folk Dance Troupe from the neck up. As for the rest - waah!.
Fashion as voyeurism is not new, but few are as single-minded as Lau when it comes to exposing most of what bounces and jiggles (or in the case of catwalk models, occasionally experiences minor tremors).
This preoccupation with the female body as an object for carnal fantasies has brought Lau a certain notoriety: Hong Kong's ''sexy'' designer. It has also firmly typecast him. A Peter Lau collection which doesn't titillate? Absurd.
There is nothing in Lau's Autumn/ Winter 94 range for his XCVIII label to threaten his reputation. As always, the seasonal categorisation is largely irrelevant - brave the cold in most of these outfits at your own risk - and all is secondary to that one-track approach to fashion.