The real Eileen Fisher stands up

A strong brand identity like designer Eileen Fisher's is a good thing: Her customers know what they can count on her for. But it also has a downside: It's easily stereotyped.

Last week I argued that Fisher's clothes don't need the makeover they're reportedly in for. Her customers are happy and her business is healthy. Besides, Fisher's clothes reflect her own convictions about what clothes should do and be and - Fisher fans take heart! - that's unlikely to change, so it's just as unlikely that the clothes are in for radical redirection.

But I think Fisher's right to think her image needs a degree of attitude adjustment.

One thing you notice in recent press coverage is how big the gap is between the clothes Eileen Fisher actually makes and what people who don't wear them think they're like. From what you read, you'd think a typical Fisher garment is baggy, shapeless, oversized, scratchy and the color of compost, damp newspaper or cold oatmeal.

Long, long ago, as I recall, Fisher's clothes were big no matter what size they were. But that was a brief halcyon era when oversized was cool, and clothes from DKNY and the Gap were similarly enormous. As a person who recently tried on a sleek black mandarin-collar Eileen Fisher jacket in a size large and found that the fit through the hips was just a bit too close, I can testify that, for good or ill, this is no longer the case. In fact, it hasn't been in years.

There's also a misconception that Fisher's palette runs from oatmeal to taupe to gray to duckety-mud brown. It's true that she likes earth tones. And, like everybody, she also wears a lot of black. (When I interviewed her ages ago, she told a funny story about being mistaken for a nun in her simple white T and black cardigan and skirt.) But it's also the case that she's been a proponent of delectable color from the beginning: corals, jades, pinky reds, limes, lemons, violets, magentas, turquoises, aquamarines, tangerines, etc.

Neither is it true that she works only in rough-spun linen and scratchy wool. Or that all her customers have gray hair and wear flat shoes exclusively.

The cut of her clothes is often described as "forgiving" - which reflects a rather parochial assumption by the describer that a female body that fails to resemble that of a 6-foot, 110-pound fashion model has committed a terrible sin for which it must necessarily crave forgiveness.

The thing is, Fisher's working from a totally different paradigm, where non-standard bodies require not to be forgiven, but to be clothed - preferably in a way that is simple, attractive, completely comfortable, and requires no effort on the part of the wearer.

No wonder hard-core fashion types don't get Eileen Fisher. In the culture of high fashion, dressing is competitive, and so must necessarily be difficult and require unstinting effort. (Otherwise everybody would be fashionable and what fun would that be?) To succeed, you must by dint of training and self-deprivation (or lucky genes) achieve a body that fits within absurdly narrow parameters. You must always have the right clothes for this particular minute (or, even better, the next one) as well as the right accessories, the right stance, the right attitude, the right hair, the right skin, the right face, the right pedicure, etc. It's a whole career.

Moreover, you must have the personal force to wear something that would make any normal person look like a lunatic without appearing at all ridiculous. Don't kid yourself: It's way harder than rocket science.

Up front, a recent New York Times story about Fisher's purported makeover quoted a line from a current off- Broadway play, "Love, Loss and What I Wore," by Nora and Delia Ephron from the book by Ilene Beckerman: "When you start wearing Eileen Fisher, you might as well say, 'I give up.' "

In a sense it's true: Fisher's customer opts out of the fuss, the worry, discomfort, the constant one-upmanship that are features of fashion played as a competitive blood sport, and embraces Fisher's idea that getting dressed should be about pleasure and utility. She wears clothes that she likes, clothes she looks good in, clothes she understands without effort, clothes that won't be laughably out-of-date 15 minutes from now. She wears clothes she doesn't have to fiddle with, clothes that don't require her to sit or stand a certain way or endure painful undergarments, clothes she can breathe in - and also walk, reach, bend over, etc. And this frees her to raise her children thoughtfully, or run a university, or discover telomerase, or any of the other things done by women with too much to do to devote their entire lives to how they look. (Which, by the way, has to be 95 percent or so of the women who buy clothes.)

To a normal person, it seems like a reasonable compromise. But a full-time hard-core fashionista confronted with someone dressed this way will naturally feel contempt or pity, and will not be able to resist a dismissive remark. Such a person will see Fisher's clothes as "designed for graying bobos who dabbled in ceramics and had lifetime subscriptions to The New Yorker," as Ruth LaFerla put it in the Times.

Such a person will fail to notice that a lifetime subscription to The New Yorker and the leisure to dabble in ceramics is not most people's idea of a fate worse than death. Especially not compared to daily spinning classes, 4-inch heels and feeling obliged to spend $1,000 for a handbag.

Still, Fisher can't afford to have her brand defined by snippy hard-core fashion types who think she's making glorified potato sacks. So, even though there's nothing wrong with her clothes - except that I can't afford them - it still makes sense for her to do what she's doing: tweak her advertising, show her enveloping sweaters with leggings instead of loose trousers for a change, use a few models who wear high heels and haven't gone gray yet. It would be a mistake to change her brand identity, but it's only reasonable to show off the range of attractive possibilities that coexist within it.

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McLaughlin is a syndicated fashion columnist. She may be contacted c/o Universal Press Syndicate, 4520 Main St., Kansas City, MO 64111 or patsy.mcl@verizon.net.