A Body-Language Translation: Cling’s the Thing--More or Less

The body-flaunting camp rarely sits out the season, regardless of fashion’s prevailing winds. In a summer when many designers espouse loose and breezy fashions, some resisters prefer a bit of cling.

Bodywear is the explicit alternative to summer’s more discreet fashion trappings. These stretchy, hugging clothes borrow equally from the dance and exercise worlds, as well as from the looks of fashion thunderbolts Donna Karan and Azzedine Alaia--the latter of whom might be credited with attempting the highest fashion with the least amount of fabric this season.

These snug statements reach the streets in pared-down candor or more concealing layers, and in moods ranging from formal to funk.

The sarong, T-shirt dress, leotard and maillot all are components of body-dressing. At its most casual, it means bicycle shorts with a tank top, or a leotard with leggings and boxer shorts. It’s a barely there miniskirt over a maillot, or a body suit with a long, wispy skirt.

Shiny Lycra and other close-fitting synthetics are central to this out-from-the-gym dressing. And the options continue to widen as bodywear companies, such as Dance France and Tickets in Los Angeles and Bonnie August in New York, abandon literal definitions of exercise gear and feature leggings, shorts and little skirts that are only vaguely intended as sweats.

These pieces make for direct body language--and more so in the new summer graphics, which include stars, arrows, stripes, animal and floral prints in bold and pastel color schemes.

Some fashion consultants have gone so far as to encourage women to gain a couple of pounds for these curve-exposing silhouettes. No one, of course, buys that advice.

These are not clothes to wear if the diet starts tomorrow.