By ERIC WILSON
Published: February 8, 2008
Come fall, if professional women are taking their fashion cues from “Lipstick Jungle,” they will be wearing gauzy princess dresses that emphasize their breasts. If they are watching the runways, however, they will be dressing like Hillary Clinton.
Fashion’s mood of enforced sobriety is understandable in the context of difficult political and economic times, but it has resulted in a lot of safe, and frankly mumsy, clothes being shown this week. But two collections, those of Maria Cornejo and Vera Wang, stood out because the designers were probably thinking about women who want to appear serious without feeling as if they are being trussed up like a turkey (or browsing in the mother-of-the-bride department).
Ms. Cornejo’s collection, which involved brighter colors and more strict tailoring than her audience is accustomed to seeing, brought to mind elements of power dressing from 1980s Donna Karan. A loose coat and a long-sleeve dress in red alpaca were cinched at the waist with a thin black belt and a wide obi, respectively. Origami dresses of loosely folded wool were tightened to the body with straps of fabric crisscrossing the chest. The shoes and fisherman’s boots were sensible and flat, something you should not expect to see in the “Sex and the City” movie.
Restraint is usually not an easy word for Ms. Wang to embrace without a martini first. But she has begun to see that simpler is better, given the clearheaded collection she showed Thursday. Dreamy colors, in shots of bright yellow tempered with mushroom gray, came from the Dutch Fauvist painter Kees van Dongen. And some of her smashing, swirling dresses, affixed with crumpled bits of chiffon, might have been based on Rembrandt’s hats.
There were nice surprises: dresses with sequins on the front had silk chiffon or pleated tulle on the back. But she could not resist piling on some inexplicable elements — one outfit had so many layers the model appeared to be sprouting a fox tail.
And then there were the necklaces, which looked like stripper tassels strung with a lanyard.
Some of the most subtle examples of the conservative look came from Phillip Lim, a designer whose collection is less expensive than most runway fare and quite often is more refined. Mr. Lim showed dresses and skirts in plain gray wool or denim that came down to the midcalf, a length not popular since the Eisenhower era, and he managed to make them look respectably chic. He cut a great pair of relaxed looking trousers (cropped and tapered at the ankle like a carrot). And to a dusty old silk chiffon bow-tie shirt — he even called it a librarian blouse — he added a handful of crystals that stood out on the runway like stars.
Derek Lam’s show felt as if it were set in a funeral home, with the walls and runway shrouded in black; and the models, some wearing lace blindfolds, were dressed for a party in Monte Carlo, where they would sneak upstairs to crack a safe with David Niven. I’m not saying it was a dark collection, but the word black appeared in Mr. Lam’s program notes 88 times — and there were only 44 looks.
RSS Feed (xml)
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar