Graphic, Graceful and Slightly Perverse

By ERIC WILSON
Published: September 10, 2008

For a while, fashion’s new guard seemed to be stuck in a sophomore slump. Some, and I will be kind by not mentioning names, appear to have already fallen off the radar, gauging by the turnout at their shows this week. Even more-popular designers, though producing nice enough clothes, have been struggling to achieve more than a passing grade.

DEREK LAM A tank dress with drawstrings.
But among the newer names of Fashion Week, the spring collections have included two A-game shows, from Thakoon Panichgul and Derek Lam. Each designer has developed a signature. Mr. Panichgul’s is the floral print dress draped in an offbeat way; Mr. Lam’s is a preciously tailored ladylike look that always seemed somehow appropriate for the Midwest. And this season each was smart to ask himself, “Well, what else have I got?”

Mr. Panichgul, whose label is called Thakoon, started by cutting away panels from his dresses and replacing them with cages of tulle ribbons, suggesting a harder edge, if not quite bondage. This also gave a sense of transparency to the clothes, some of which were put together in combinations of sheer and opaque fabrics, like one dress with a skirt made of cotton organdy and an exposed bra top bound in tulle. Another chiffon slip dress was covered up with a see-through trench coat, something a flasher could wear without all the effort of buttoning and unbuttoning.

Mr. Panichgul also collaborated with the artist Laurie Simmons on a surreal print of long-stemmed roses, the stems being women’s legs, which added a slightly perverse feeling to his collection. That’s a nice contrast for a designer who had built his reputation with sweetness.

Like other designers, Mr. Lam appears to be wrestling with the heavy legacy of Yves Saint Laurent, who died in June and whose work has been the subject of major exhibitions in Montreal and San Francisco. Although Mr. Lam cited Coco Chanel as an influence, his oversize lamé chiffon peacoat, sheer blouses and elegant black evening trousers were crisp-looking in a YSL way.

He also showed a group of jersey tunic dresses and jumpsuits in the pale sandy color of microfiber raincoats from the 1990s that, with the addition of adjustable drawstrings, seemed unusually casual and relaxed. All this, and it didn’t look weird at all.

If the new guard needed reinforcements, there were plenty on hand. Of note was a playful performance by Catherine Holstein, a peppy up-and-comer who made some voluminous little dresses that looked to have bathroom tiles attached as sequins. And the models were wearing sweaters wrapped like mushroom-shape turbans on their heads. Until a dress passed by with tiles arranged like a heart on the back, it wasn’t obvious that she was drawing the pixilated characters from a Nintendo video game.

At Ohne Titel, Alexa Adams and Flora Gill turned sequins into tattoo patterns on sheer tights and bodysuits. (The American synchronized swimming team, lampooned for their ensembles, should feel a sense of validation.) More practical were beautiful pistachio and pink knit dresses, which looked like summer-camp potholders as interpreted by Balenciaga.

One of the cutest ideas to come out of the very cute Brian Reyes collection was an oversize pocket T-shirt made in an expensive silk fabric for evening. This was an old Bill Blass trick, luxing up the basics.





Mr. Reyes showed some chic shirtdresses and gazar tops that also called to mind the old guard, but his vision of transparency, in a beaded dress with a sheer panel of fabric in the back, was certainly new. It was cut low enough to reveal the model’s thong.

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Bankable Glamour From Kors

By CATHY HORYN
Published: September 10, 2008

Michael Kors got down to business on Wednesday, sending out a smart spring collection that probably saved a few retail chiefs from watching their profits further erode. And Narciso Rodriguez, in a cooler mood, lightened up his minimalist line with stripes and offbeat prints.

RODARTE A pleated skirt with a chiffon top and laser-cut leggings.
Wherever Mr. Kors plants his oar — Portofino, Malibu — the results are inevitably and hopelessly glamorous. And with the economy entering what appears to be a long stew, Mr. Kors’s sporty American glamour seems highly bankable. And this time he has found just the right contemporary looks. The Beach Boys were on the sound system in the Bryant Park tents, but that’s about as nostalgic as the show got.

Just as in Mr. Rodgriguez’s show on Tuesday night, Mr. Kors offered a fresh take on stripes, opening with a belted tunic in royal blue and black striped cashmere over black stretch-wool shorts. Despite the surf theme, and some adorable two-piece swimsuits, the stripes were more graphic than nautical, and were complemented by bold polka-dots and gingham checks. So the style can be worn anywhere.

In every way the collection seemed thought out, full of trends like clam-digger pants and metallic fabrics as well as more-sophisticated pieces. The best of these were a pair of dresses — one in red gingham silk and the other in a lightweight navy wool pinstripe — that were cut so that the hem rose on one leg. A number of designers have shown variations on the hiked skirt, including Marc Jacobs and Mr. Rodriguez. There was also a style at Kors with a spilling top in white silk. It’s a great look.

Overlapping stripes of electrical tape gave Mr. Rodriguez the pattern for graphic black-and-white prints. They were rendered as a slim cotton skirt shown with a sharply notched black canvas jacket, and skinny print trousers worn with a clean, tailored jacket. Mr. Rodriguez evoked the line and dot theme in other sexy ways — with black stripes caging a slim dress of burnt coral silk or as a bandeau top under a lean black linen jacket.

The collection was as fresh-looking as it was varied. Jackets were generally cropped and close to the body, usually with a curving line. But the newness was really in the dresses, in the waves of stripes over a silk dress with black chiffon shoulders and a floaty, sheer back.

Let’s imagine that Kate and Laura Mulleavy’s Rodarte line was designed by Alix Grès, the Paris couturier who set the postwar romantics straight with her modernist pleated dresses. What would Alix do? It’s an interesting exercise to compare the working methods of two contemporary designers, widely hailed for their “vision,” with a woman of unquestioned genius. What made Madame Grès exceptional?



For one thing, she held a set of beliefs about women. She designed for them, not for editors or abstract notions. Though she was a tyrant in her fashion, she always had women in her sights. This is not the case with the Mulleavy sisters, at least this season. Their latest collection consists of pleated skirts and body-conscious mesh tops and slick pants, all in monochromatic Pan-Cake hues with laser-cut leggings and nasty gold platforms. The mood is tough — Valkyries in chiffon — and the style clipped and pasted from other designers, mainly Azzedine Alaïa.

But that’s not the real problem. It’s that the Mulleavys didn’t seem to have a woman in mind when they put together these clothes, as they plainly did when they first showed their lovely, broken-down knits. It was as if their interest lay solely in achieving an effect with an object.

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