Gorgeous exploitation?

Everybody writes about the exploitation of women, but nobody sues any fashion designers. Considering the trend against sex discrimination, one would expect a lot of women to get together in a class-action suit and make a case that designers are creating styles for them to wear that don't do them justice.

Or is it just that deep down women feel that without the tiniest bit of exploitation along feminine lines things would get awfully dull?

According to our private surveys, some small progress against discrimination is being made. For the past millennium, no fat female could get a job as a fashion model. All the new styles would be shown to the public on skinny models, then they would be made into clothes in Sri Lanka, so, as an end result, they would fit anybody.

Things seem to be changing. One hopes for the better.

When one encounters these new 1984 fashions moving through a hotel lobby it is hard to believe there is a woman inside them. One can only hope they are not the same shape as the clothes.

This year's fashions feature huge, ungraceful, floppy pants which must be a reverse exploitation from ''Gentlemen Prefer Hanes.'' They are so large an average woman has to take three steps before they move.

And the jackets! They either have football shoulder pads inside or women have been overexploited with aerobics.

But worst of all, everything has pleats. Big, accordion-style pleats. If a fellow hugs a woman these days he gets a chord in G minor.

Or, as that sly woman exploiter, Henny Youngman, says, ''Take my wife, pleats!''