Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 31, 1990                   TAG: 9007310040
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: TRACIE FELLERS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

IT'S NOT ON THE CUTTING EDGE OF FASHION, BUT SUMMER WOULDN'T BE THE SAME

There's the traditional rep tie. Khaki pants. And the madras shirt.

Madras, a fabric made of fine woven cotton, originated in Madras, India. But the fabric - usually characterized by colorful plaids, stripes or checks - has shown up in American sportswear since the early part of this century.

Madras "was around as a cool summer fabric as early as the teens and '20s," said Bill Brandt, a sweater and swimwear merchandiser for Gant Corp. of New York, a major manufacturer of madras sportswear. "It really became a popular item in men's sportswear in the '40s, when it was brought back in the classic plaid combinations."

Five decades past its peak, the colorful cloth is still around - and still strong in the marketplace. According to Roanoke Valley retailers, sales of some madras garments have surged this spring and summer.

"This has been a good madras spring and a good madras summer," said Tom Hudson, manager of Mitchell Clothing Co. in downtown Roanoke.

"The last couple of years had been a little slow. This year was better than normal, and we hope next year will be better still. That's how the trend seems to be going."

Madras shirts have sold well this spring and summer at John Norman stores, said Jeff Wendell, president. "The nice thing about madras is that it seems it never goes out of style. You can always throw on your friendly madras shirt . . . . It's like an old friend.

In addition, Wendell has seen "a slight resurgence in [madras] sport coats, because sport coats are coming back. We're selling fancier sport coats.

"We're not quite back to the '50s and '60s, when there were racks and racks" of madras sport coats in men's stores, but "we have noticed that we sold more," Wendell said.

At S&K Famous Brands Inc. in Roanoke's Grand Pavilion Mall, demand for madras sportswear, primarily shirts and shorts, "is very much on the upswing," said senior manager Steve Elkins.

Though many might associate madras clothing with an older, traditional dresser or the guy who spends a lot of time on the golf course, its appeal cuts across age groups, Hudson said.

True, "madras is not on the cutting edge of fashion," he conceded. But "there doesn't seem to be an age group that buys it more than the other. The young man and the middle-age man both seem to like it well."

"I think what's kept it popular all along," Brandt said, "is the kind of hand-spun, hand-woven effect in the construction." Even in today's technological age, "most of the fabric is still partially hand-woven."

Hudson said madras is a consistent choice for spring and summer wear because it's cool and comfortable. "I think madras is the coolest shirt a man can wear. It's open weave, all cotton, soft . . . extremely comfortable and extremely lightweight."

Though madras fabric is available in solid colors, "our biggest interest is in the plaid and the more muted plaid," Hudson said. For spring and summer, soft roses, greens and blues have shown up most frequently in Mitchell's madras shirts - "not big, bold reds or greens," he said.

While madras traditionally is a spring and summer fabric, Mitchell's will have a few long-sleeved shirts for fall, "pretty much in the same variety of colors - the roses, the browns and the tans," Hudson said.

Madras is as identifiable with summer as an old flannel shirt is with winter, Wendell said. "A madras shirt goes with the basics. It always goes with khakis or jeans, or your favorite pair of shorts. It's easy."

Retailers seem to agree on at least one point in madras matters: There's no demand for bleeding madras, the original fabric in which the colors fade and blend together.

"It used to be in the old days we had bleeding madras because the vegetable dyes they used were not colorfast, and they used to bleed together and bleed on other things, too," Wendell said. So gradually, madras garments "would lose their brilliance. That was part of the mystique and part of the characteristic that people liked about madras."

In the madras revival of the late 1950s and '60s, manufacturers successfully marketed the bleeding as an asset of the fabric. Some people liked the "soft, watery effect" the colors eventually obtained, Brandt said.

But there were problems. Sometimes a favorite shirt's color and pattern faded faster than people wanted, Wendell said. Today's colorfast dyes mean that garments last longer.

Roanoke's Leggett stores took a gamble with bleeding madras shirts this spring and lost. "They died. We didn't do anything on it," said young men's buyer Mark Bright. The shirts slumped across the country, he added.

At the beginning of the season, Bright expected the shirts to catch on with customers. But he's since decided that shoppers simply aren't interested in the fabric. "Orders were canceled. That happened all over the country. We canceled a lot of them when we noticed they weren't selling."

However, Leggett will have a lot of the non-bleeding madras for fall - mostly traditional shirts by manufacturers like Gant and Resilio, Bright said. Colors to watch for are "anywhere from khakis and browns to burgundy and teal."