YESTERDAY was newbie day at Olympus Fashion Week.
The tents at Bryant Park were dominated by shows from buzzy young designers, including Behnaz Sarafpour, Esteban Cortazar, Jeffrey Chow and Peter Som.
First off, I want to thank Som for helping me out of a bind.
For the last two days, I’ve been trying to come up with a snappy phrase to use to describe the “look” of this season, to no avail.
But then I opened Som’s show program and eureka!
There it was, in black and white type: “For Fall 2004, off-center elegance is dead-on.”
Som was dead-on in his evaluation of the season’s eccentric takes on old-school classics.
He was also dead-on with his collection, which brought together all the big trends and presented them in a way that was quirky, but elegant, and reminded me a lot of the kind of looks Prada does.
The day clothes had a great slouchy elegance to them – think fur stoles worn over cardigan sweaters, easy-going tweed pantsuits and the like. And the evening dresses were simple, but special looking. Best were the pieces with swishy organza “leafs” layered on them like the scales on a fish.
The same use of organza came up earlier in the day at the boffo collection shown by Jeffrey Chow, who used iridescent silk circles instead of organza leafs to cover his lady-like party dresses.
Other hits on Chow’s runway were the high-waisted peplum coats, sassy little fur capelets, pretty pencil skirts, and floaty blouses with pie-crust collars. Best of all, Chow’s clothes looked special – like the kind of things you’ll pull out of your closet for years to come and associate with good memories.
I guess the same can be said for Cortazar’s clothes – if you’re Pat Benatar and trying to trigger a massive flashback to 1984.
Long silver leather trumpet skirts worn with chain mail tops? Royal blue off-the-shoulder sweater dresses? Messy silk shirts undone over hotpants? Unfortunately, Cortazar had them in spades.
In addition to the new kids on the block, two old-school names showed terrific new collections.
Carmen Marc Valvo’s tribute to old-school Hollywood glamour on and off the screen featured “Hepburn pants” and cashmere sweaters and some of the most stunning silk charmeuse evening gowns of the week.
Ralph Rucci’s show received the week’s first standing ovation – deservedly. His architecturally cut wool coats and dresses were sublime, and his work with exotic skins (one gown’s green croc skin bodice was pieced to look like the stiff leaves of a tropical plant) was exceptional.