Fashion Redux

Fashion Redux
Phyllis Hand is something of a pack rat, selectively hanging on to the fashions she wore as a teenager.

Her wardrobe, a repository of high-hippie regalia dating from the early 1970s, forms an unbroken chain to her past.

"I still have my original puka-shell necklace," Hand, a society photographer in Houston, confided. "All my turquoise jewelry, I still wear that."

Gone missing over the years, though, were her Kork-Ease, rugged platform sandals that funkily complemented her wardrobe of Mexican peasant blouses, swirling skirts and cut-off jeans.

So the news that a local merchant planned to reissue her favorite shoe sent her into orbit.

"You're bringing them back?" she remembered gushing. "You're kidding me! I'll be lined up, the first to get a pair."

The brand is but the latest in a string of shopworn or forgotten fashion labels that have been given a new life, having been positioned and marketed to attract the same consumers who embraced them in their heyday.

It also helps that these names, which resonate with the original consumers' children and grandchildren, serve as markers that defined an era.