New York Fashion Week Show
Menkes reports from Vera Wang, Tory Burch, Marc by Marc Jacobs and Narciso Rodriguez.
Vera Wang
The message was on the wall at the Vera Wang show, where the models walked out through an arch of black leaves on to a gravel runway that looked like it ought to be sand. The fashionistas in stiletto heels or barefoot sandals were not amused.
Vera’s show started with impenetrable black. (No surprises there.) But the bodice of a dress was decorated with frills of scrunched chiffon to create textural effects. Black embroidery on the front of the dress also gave a gleam of light.
Towards the evening hour, the pall of black dissipated into light fabrics traced with silver – some even romantic, as in long chiffon dresses split for striding on the gravel. Since Vera only uses off-colours, she mixed violet and gold, which were effective – if a winter, rather than a summer, tale.
Tory Burch
The France C?te d’Azur is a style milestone for summer time season New You are able to 2015 year. But in a small and vibrant display, Tory Burch took a different viewpoint on the Southern of France: Vallauris and the arty community of Pablo Picasso at the time he was there with Fran?oise Gilot when his designed ceramics were created.
But Tory is too intelligent a developer to take a concept and allow it to smother her own spirit. Instead, she converted the concept of an paintings knitted manually into outfits with traditional information.
“Home unique,” Tory said after the display to describe the weaved designs of thin jacquard dresses, raffia tweeds, and surrounded crochet covers.
The area attention – artisanal but not at all in a Nineteen seventies treehugger way - was a excellent fit with the sharp and clean Tory silhouettes.
Deep in the designer’s style spirit, she seemed to be concentrating on a clean, white-colored pure cotton clothing, developing everything around that symbol in a accurate or more fantastic way. With the clothing – lengthy or short-sleeved – and the cleaner outfits, were white-colored shoes and smooth silvered shoes. More gold design might mild up a mid-calf outfit or buttoned-up lengthy outfit.
When color came, it was rich: red and sea blue; or assessments of lemon pieces on a red sky qualifications, all indicating the Picasso ceramics.
The easiness of the evening dresses australia and the mild timber developer made the display seem clean as Southeast Italy back in the day.
Marc by Marc Jacobs
I was so mesmerised – but not in a good way – by the stratospherically loud music at the Marc by Marc Jacobs show, that I was more concerned with my ears exploding to the sound of a thousand decibels of Johann Strauss’s The Blue Danube than with what stylists Luella Bartley and Katy Hillier had done in their second collection.
My eyes having been tortured with flashing bulbs from pyramid structures of scaffolding, it was tough to take anything away from the collection except the anger and energy of the show.
“Energy” is the key word. The design duo has shaken up violently what used to be the Marc Jacobs commercial brand. The boy-band-looking models strode out with in an androgynous wardrobe of splatter-spotted tunics, black on white, or a top defiantly rolled up to reveal a sky blue bra above draped pants.
A slogan T-shirt read NEW WORLD SYSTEM. The attitude was hyper-aggressive, but the mashed-up clothes were often quite sweet, as in a shirt and shorts in fuchsia pink or strapless party frocks. Shiny rubber leggings and circular bags, with a central hole, looked space-age Sixties.
I kept thinking of Stanley Kubrick, not just because The Blue Danube plays in his 2001: A Space Odyssey, but because of his 1971 movie, A Clockwork Orange, with its scary, youthful rage, violence and wild energy.
nd even if I stuffed my ears with a scarf and had a miserable migraine for the rest of the day, I have to admit that there was something in this Marc by Marc show that grabbed the fashion moment.
Narciso Rodriguez
“Sexy elements of sport!” announced Narciso Rodriguez backstage after a striking collection that celebrated a streamlined modernity with a subtle twist.
The designer has always been a minimalist, following body curves and slicing away fabric at geometric angles. But this show had loosened up without softening the basic message.
That was summed up by little white dresses, loose and wavy in the skirt to take a generous stride, and with similar wavy lines, but in iridescent sparkle across the chest.
The concept of bending the bleak and chic brought formal dresses australia with a black bodice low-cut at the breast or black inserts swooping across the body above the easy cotton skirts.
The idea of breaking up straight lines might focus on the back with a sporty harness criss-crossing the vertebrae, or the eye line might be interrupted by an unexpected mix of colours: coffee, pink, rust. The palette throughout was subtle, bringing gum pink or lavender to set against the starker black and white.
Many designers have paid lip service to “fashion geometry”, but here is a designer who is a master mathematician yet makes it seem so simple. It is as though he takes a compass and set square to the body, linking shapes together.
It all added up to a stand-out collection, true to Narciso’s modernist spirit and a blessing for women who are looking for streamlined clothes that still flatter the form.