Do You Get Where He’s Coming From?

By CINTRA WILSON
Published: February 21, 2008
WHEN I first visited Adam, the picture windows displayed a female mannequin that was trapped inside a bell-shaped bird cage, wearing a fur-lined silver vest. A male mannequin in the opposite window was paradoxically free: seated on a wooden bench in a comfortable Mr. Rogers zip cardigan, reading a book about architecture, surrounded by a nifty collection of ornamental bird cages.

In many stores, one feels starved of proper influence from the past. Sophomoric designs spring into the fashion world that are so right-this-second as to be divorced from any history or future; they resolve no tensions that fashion has been feeling for the last several hundred years, or even the last five. They feel haplessly marooned in the present.

The designer Adam Lippes doesn’t have this problem. His designs seem to be moving toward something, or back to something. But this, too, has its dangers: if the specific influences the designer is drawing from lack depth, or he isn’t influenced deeply enough, his overall message can be inscrutable.

The first stuff I glommed onto at Adam was shiny holiday finery, on sale. Gold lamé dollybird dresses with high boat necks, studded along the collarbones with classic rings of Greek goddess/regal Egyptian rhinestones ($169, down from $250).

They transported me to Oscar nights in the mid-to-late 1960s: back when the Oscars meant something. Real men with sideburns wore butterfly bow ties and were fighting drunk, and women back-combed their hair into ice sculptures and painted Cleopatra eyeliner halfway up each temple.

This rack brought to mind the movie “Darling,” a portrait of London right as its behavioral pendulum was swingin’ away from the repressions of the ruling-class establishment into a breezy decadence (that proved as clunky and as bloodless as the old mores it was subverting). New cultural adventures were swirling around those dresses; wars were beginning to end. Captain Kirk kissed Lieutenant Uhura in a space beyond race. Barbra Streisand strapped on a Nefertiti headdress, with no irony whatsoever. Colors were bleeding and minds were beginning to open. It was the tipping point of suggestion that girls still locked in their Goldwater girdles might want to burn their bras in a few years.

The mannequin at Adam obviously wanted to escape her cage... but did she know why?

This wasn’t vital information. There was a laudably uplifting and clever mood pervading the place. Mr. Lippes hits his inspirational nails rather exactly on their heads, but they’re art nails. Fellini beach party bonanzissima! Blouson dresses in billowing stripes made from the cotton of faded circus tents. A yellow chiffon halter dress transports J-Lo through time, to guest star on “The Love Boat.”

Designers generally make the shopper aware of their muses through their clothing; Mr. Lippes takes a bit of a shortcut by displaying his personal library. Art and architecture books by Alex Katz, Jackson Pollock, Richard Prince, Nan Goldin, Tord Boontje and Jean Nouvel are scattered on coffee tables and lean in thick wooden bookshelves alongside hand-blown Danish water glasses ($26) and pastel T-shirts folded in stacks of gradient color.

A tiny woman with a shag haircut and little round librarian glasses emerged from a dressing room wearing a button-up turquoise smock. Smurf veterinary clinic, was what first came to my mind.

“That is so almost there,” I said, hurling my unsolicited opinion at her.

“I don’t really like it.” She tugged at the hem.

“I don’t like it, either, but I see where it wants to go. It’s almost incredibly cute. I like the idea of it on you exponentially more than I like it on you.”

It had bulbous pockets on the hips, which made it an unforgivably eggy, shapeless shmatte such as one might wear to serve pies at the Hickory Pit. But there was something precious about the blouse. It was weirdly innocent and benignly nurse-like. If she had been teaching knee-high children to finger-paint, it would have been glorious. As a garment, though, it was way too spayed. June Cleaver jokes aren’t funny anymore, since our collective sexual maturity started going retrograde.

My sales assistant was a gentle, blushing boy with shaggy hair and a necktie zipped under one of Adam’s baby-blue cardigans, and a pair of thick, square plastic glasses I identified as Early Air Force — a frame once referred to as “birth control,” for its efficacy in repelling girls (which just goes to show, one man’s poison is another boy’s date).

The more expansive the imagination of the designer, the more the clothes invite you to romp around onstage in the lifestyle of the designer’s imaginary playhouse. I nearly succumbed to a black knit dress with a peekaboo neckline, pleated sleeves and silk braiding around the neck and belt ($295). But it was wholly transparent; the fantasy wasn’t my style. It required a Lindsay Lohan-esque urge to stand around at a Hollywood bar showing your panties in a way that looks unintentional.

The New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther wrote in his 1965 review of “Darling”: “The heroine, as played by Julie Christie, is a vigorous, vivacious sort, full of feline impulses and occasional disarming charms, but uncommunicative of the urges that make her tick.”

Adam’s caged woman must have been imprisoned for something, and we can only hope that she eventually figured out why. Perhaps Mr. Lippes is telling us that in an unpredictable world, it’s best to dress hopefully: white canvas, Rita Hayworthy sailor tap-pants ($185) could be just the ticket for weathering the tail of a long winter. Just add silver tap shoes and fan-kick, sister: this, too, shall pass.

Adam

678 Hudson Street (near West 14th Street); (212) 229-2838.

ADAM-IZED The golden-boy designer Adam Lippes brings his label to a black-tiled showplace in the meatpacking district. Spiffy, trendy confections wrapped in soft-baked minimalism. Girl-friendly.

ADAM-ANT All the stuff you need for play dates with the beautiful art-youths of Bushwick (roll over, Williamsburg).

MADAM, I’M EXPENSIVE Most of the prices are reasonable, but I really wanted the silver fox blanket (sorry, PETA!) to put in a hammock and never get out: $2,300, and that’s just cruel.

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