At Klein and Lauren, No Looking Back

By CATHY HORYN
Published: February 9, 2008

You have to be new in fashion, or you’re on the side. It’s as simple, and as complicated, as that. There may be a recession coming, and you would think that designers would want to create new and desirable looks, but that has not been the story of the fall 2008 collections, which ended on Friday night with Marc Jacobs. Old has been the story.

Two exceptions are Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren, and it’s not because they’re big names or anything like that. On Friday morning, dressed in faded jeans, Mr. Lauren offered cool, polished sportswear, drawing on Adirondack lodge style — or what must be a very chic log cabin.

There were lean suits and dresses in charcoal cashmere, tailor-made for people looking for quality and a contemporary fit. The collection was also loaded with classics like a long swing skirt in black jersey and elegant shoes and boots in suede and crocodile. This has been a merciless season of ugly shoes.

But Mr. Lauren was also fantastical. It was as if the lumberjack plaids, the feathered sequined skirts, a red Mounties jacket and the organza plaid gowns were part of a private house party, in which the guests only slightly bothered to put on evening clothes and instead made use of anything available — a blanket, a pheasant’s tail.

At Calvin Klein, Francisco Costa delivered a superb collection of minimalist coats and dresses in black cashmere and boiled wool that often had contrasting shiny elements in silk. More than anything else, the clothes — the way they appeared to be molded with random volumes — were interesting to look at. You couldn’t say that about many collections this week.

Among the strong looks were sleeveless dresses with overlapping cuts of wool in the front or insets of crinkled chiffon, a gray pencil skirt with a silk and wool twill bustier, and a supersimple jacket — based on a riding coat — that was seemingly reduced to a shadow.

The tailoring, fedoras and bright fox vests at Bill Blass on Thursday looked suspiciously Saint Laurent. Well, Mr. Blass never bothered to deny that he sometimes knocked off Saint Laurent, but did his successor Peter Som have to remark on this in his first collection for the label? Shouldn’t he have been looking harder at the things that made Mr. Blass tick?

The silent collaborations between designers — between, say, Balenciaga and Oscar de la Renta — would make interesting ground for a young designer to explore. But if a fashion house is a kind of school, you have to cover the basics before you can tackle the complex stuff, and Mr. Som hasn’t really dealt with or even understood the basics at the school of Blass.

Mr. Blass was much less interesting as a designer than he was as a man, but the distinction was at the heart of his designs. He was a friend to the many women in his life, but no one was more afraid than him of being possessed. Boundaries, then, mattered. He was extremely masculine; it affected everything he did, the way he stood or talked.

Although Mr. Som used men’s wear fabrics for suits and soft skirts, this masculinity was pro forma. And many of the other styles — the beaded floral dresses with tight waists and bell-shape skirts, the kimono-sleeve coats, the French platform shoes — looked fussy or indifferent or just plain old. Mr. Som could have made things easier for himself if he had really focused on two Blass standards: the suit and the little black dress. Creating a snooty suit and a sexy little dress for 2008 would have been a mean challenge.

How do you go from Shakers to Bo Peep? Zac Posen’s collection of pleated dresses and coats embroidered with satin loop rings was indeed a switcheroo. Last season he was extolling the virtues of Americana. On Thursday, it looked as if the entire contents of a French courtesan’s wardrobe had spilled onto the runway, along with the tufted upholstery.

Against a backdrop of gilt chairs, Mr. Posen sent out a sequined tuxedo vest, French maids’ blouses, and minidresses and suits made in a glistening ivory cloqué that resembled bubble wrap. All this was shown with black tights, perilous platforms and little pompoms planted on the models’ lacquered heads.

Mr. Posen obviously worked hard on this collection, but the collage methods put him very close to Marc Jacobs, as did the amount of lingerie, and it made the concept seem not merely unclear but also foreign to him.

Isaac Mizrahi, who was recently appointed the creative director of Liz Claiborne, showed his couture collection the other day. It’s really a world apart: long dresses scattered with silk leaves and autumn fruits, stiff bell-shape skirts with plain scoop-neck tops, new takes on Fair Isle sweaters, and dramatic evening dresses in sturdy tweeds. The wit and sense of craft are sometimes sacrificed to a strange dollhouse formality, but Mr. Mizrahi’s ability to blend sportswear and glamour (a glitter parka, a terrific fur coat made from rag strips of fur) is always original.

The pair of crimson dresses at the start of Keren Craig’s and Georgina Chapman’s presentation for Marchesa was in such a deep and precise shade of red that it could have been mixed by a lipstick chemist. Just as dreamy was a gown in layers of green tulle embroidered with flowers and feathers. It was like the sugary glaze of a petit four.

The designers offer the full-on effects, like a strapless white tulle dress with a filigree of black embroidery and a dense hem of white feathers. But this season the drapery and the colors stand out, particularly a one-shoulder gown in Prussian blue chiffon and a short dress in amethyst silk that looks as if the organza folds were whipped. Evening wear seems such a stodgy, humorless category, but Ms. Chapman and Ms. Craig bring a kind of narrative to their collections. It’s gorgeous, but it’s not the same old fairy tale.

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