Hot Pants

This summer - 20 years after they first took the world by storm - hot pants have risen again. And trailing those notorious short shorts on the fashion scene have been other 1970s styles. Are you prepared for platform shoes? Poorboy ribbed sweaters? Wild wigs? Oversize eyelashes? Synthetic shirts with oversize, pointed collars? Vinyl pants? Cuffed double-knit bell bottoms? Zip-front jackets? To-the-knee laced boots? It was inevitable that when 1960s-influenced garments made a reappearance in the 1980s, it wouldn't take long for the return of styles popular during the 1970s.

Oh, what a swinging time it was. The fashion design students at Moore College of Art threw their annual fashion show on Friday and knocked 'em dead. The students filled the stage in the school's auditorium with wildly creative fashions, as music ranged from Elvis Presley's blaring "Viva Las Vegas" to "Homeless," the hottest house-music song of the moment. They served up trapeze dresses in a variety of unusual materials, sequin cutoffs, fanny-hugging skirts, catsuits with mod details, binding hot pants in stretch Lycra and scandalously sheer ensembles.

The verdict is in. American designers are just as guilty as their European counterparts of baring more leg than the law should allow. Nearly every designer on Seventh Avenue, from newcomer Gordon Henderson to established fashion icon Oscar de la Renta, gave the nod to short hemlines for fall 1990. But the designers, whose fall collections concluded Friday, were definitely not guilty of paying too much heed to the "international ethnic" look trumpeted in Milan and Paris.

AS MUCH AS Philadelphia sports fans and players trash Veterans Stadium today, they loved it back in April 1971. Here are some of the comments that were printed after the dedication and first game at the new park: "It's just great. It's easy to get here, easy to park, easy to see, and pretty to look at. " - Sam from Philadelphia "In the old stadium, there were poles to look around, and it was less comfortable. There's no trouble here. " - John from Willingboro, N.J. "If you can't play here, you can't play.

Count another U.S. designer down, but not out. Todd Oldham, the great ringmaster of fashion, is scaling down his money-losing designer collection after eight years. Oldham stunned an already shell-shocked industry last week with the announcement that he would close his wholesale business, no longer selling his over-the-top designs to retailers. Instead, he will offer his expensive threads only through his two boutiques, in Miami and New York. Oldham's announcement last week continues a spate of designer failures as the industry comes to grips with business realities and economies of scale.

Don't look now, men, but the three-piece suit is back. And no, it doesn't look better than ever. It just looks old and tired, one more leftover from the '70s returning to the forefront. At the height of its popularity, of course, the three-piece suit was the only way to be truly dressed up. Depending on the fabric and cut, it was suitable for work as well as formal affairs. It was even considered dressy nightclub wear. I got my first three-piece suit in 1976. It was a brown gabardine outfit, which I wore to serve as master of ceremonies for my high school homecoming pageant.

And the beat goes on. The 1970s mania that swept the runways of Milan and Paris is taking root in New York as well. In the opening days of the spring fashion previews here, which started Monday and will continue through Friday, U.S. designers delved so far into the 1970s that at times the shows looked as if they were staged by thrift stores rather than by America's top design talent. A case in point was the Perry Ellis show Monday. Designer Marc Jacobs dressed waiflike models in cropped knit blouses, floral wide-leg jumpsuits, ribbed sweaters and tunics slit down the sides.

AGENCY CONSIDERS ADOPTING BETTER WAYS TO FIND FATHERS When Eric Thompson opened the urgent-looking Overnight Express letter, he got the shock of his life. So did his wife. The letter was from a Chicago adoption agency, saying he'd been named the father of an unborn baby. It said the mother was planning to put the baby up for adoption and his consent was needed. More urgent, however, was the explanation his wife needed. The 34-year-old electrical engineer stammered that it all must be some sort of mistake.

"Everything old is new again" may well be the theme song of the fashion industry this fall as that venerated '60s souvenir - the mini - struts back into the spotlight. For those of you contemplating recycling your A-line dresses and vinyl boots, think again. Although there is some truth to the adage "if you wait long enough, everything comes back into style," nothing, alas, comes back into style precisely the way it left. The '60s minis were stiff, structured, cookie-cutter numbers that made women look like paper cutouts.

Yeah, it's still hot, but summer is over anyway. Forget the calendar and its babblings about Sept. 22. Labor Day is the end of summer as we know it. It's time to stop fantasizing about quitting your job and working as a caddy or a bicycle messenger or anything that doesn't involve four walls and a telephone. Get back to work. After all, you had a pretty good summer in '93, as summers go. It was nice weather, except for a few sweltering stretches of 100-degree- in-the-shade days in July, which the city's hysterical Health Department blamed for more than a hundred deaths.

Tiny T-shirts in mint greens, baby blues, and cotton-candy pinks, plus little embellished chiffon dresses, make Heatherette a fashion phenomenon. Simply put, this women's clothing line appeals to boys who wear makeup, and the girls who love them. Pouty-lipped celebs Foxy Brown, Lil' Kim and Paris Hilton are fans, often photographed in Heatherette's Flashdance-style tops with the words "Try Me, You'll Like Me" or "Look at Me" emblazoned across their chests. The men behind Heatherette, designers Richie Rich and Traver Rains, showcased their stuff at an in-store shindig Friday night at Matthew Izzo in Center City.

Me and Mrs. Jones may feature Grammy-winning Lou Rawls and his velvety baritone in a central role, but the true star of this new show is the music. Packed with 44 of the infectious, hook-filled 1970s R&B hits produced by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff at their Philadelphia International Records, this is one supremely soulful musical. While the easiest route would have been to turn this list of songs into a simple revue, Kathleen McGhee-Anderson and Charles Randolph-Wright, who also directs, aimed higher, cleverly fashioning Gamble and Huff's chart-toppers into a wonderfully entertaining saga of loves lost and found.

AS MUCH AS Philadelphia sports fans and players trash Veterans Stadium today, they loved it back in April 1971. Here are some of the comments that were printed after the dedication and first game at the new park: "It's just great. It's easy to get here, easy to park, easy to see, and pretty to look at. " - Sam from Philadelphia "In the old stadium, there were poles to look around, and it was less comfortable. There's no trouble here. " - John from Willingboro, N.J. "If you can't play here, you can't play.

In the '80s, when working women were relatively new to the halls of power, they wore mannish suits and huge shoulder pads to stake their claim. In the pre-millennium '90s, minimalist black and gray fashions in sleek, stretchy, techno fabrics dominated. Now women are confident enough in their place (in the work force and beyond) to take a fashion risk. Thus feminine styles made a comeback this spring - a trend that will continue well into the fall. It's a return to the style of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (her pink Chanel suit is timeless)

The news that Philadelphia's Board of Education has unanimously approved mandatory student attire (can you say "uniforms," boys and girls?) awakened a long-dormant sensation I never thought to experience again. Call it an itch. As a kid, I knew what purgatory was. It was the maddening, itchy hours spent encased in a sweltering Catholic school jumper seemingly crafted from yak hair. It was the daily affixing of the mandatory plaid "pillbox" to my skull with bobby pins the size of knitting needles, and the snapping in place of the jaunty green bolo-style tie with the neck-constricting properties of a python.

Count another U.S. designer down, but not out. Todd Oldham, the great ringmaster of fashion, is scaling down his money-losing designer collection after eight years. Oldham stunned an already shell-shocked industry last week with the announcement that he would close his wholesale business, no longer selling his over-the-top designs to retailers. Instead, he will offer his expensive threads only through his two boutiques, in Miami and New York. Oldham's announcement last week continues a spate of designer failures as the industry comes to grips with business realities and economies of scale.

This year there will be no New Look. Not that fashion has ceased to exist or that people no longer care about it, but rather, the empire of fashion has fragmented into hundreds of competing looks. Today probably the dominant characteristic of fashion is the proliferation of "style tribes. " The term was invented by my friend Ted Polhemus, an anthropologist who has spent years studying the effect of youth culture on street style. Ever since the 1960s, when the mods and the hippies developed their own styles, young people have used fashion to identify themselves.

In a world of weird TV shows, Viva Variety is one of the weirdest. It's an American-made spoof of every wacky, cheesy European variety show ever to darken the airwaves in the wee morning hours. There are contortionists, glass-eaters, celebrity guests, all manner of musical entertainment and, new this season, the Friedkin Brothers, who, the show's PR kit advises, "use something other than their hands to play percussion. " And then there are our hosts - Mr. and the former Mrs. Laupin (say it in Eurotrash - Lahh-pahn)

The not-so-cool majority of that happenin' time The children of the children of the '60s who are reading about the summer of '67 are probably going (they don't say, they go), "Wow, Mom! Wow, Dad! Like, did all that stuff really happen? Were people really groovin' all over the place and funkin' to these, like, legendary bands? Did you guys go to concerts? Were you into hippie dress? Were you, like, really afraid of the war?" Do we - the majority of us (by unscientifically determined standards)

AGENCY CONSIDERS ADOPTING BETTER WAYS TO FIND FATHERS When Eric Thompson opened the urgent-looking Overnight Express letter, he got the shock of his life. So did his wife. The letter was from a Chicago adoption agency, saying he'd been named the father of an unborn baby. It said the mother was planning to put the baby up for adoption and his consent was needed. More urgent, however, was the explanation his wife needed. The 34-year-old electrical engineer stammered that it all must be some sort of mistake.